Pros: low profile. not broken. I like that Samsung makes its own stuff in-house. Makes me feel all tingly.

Cons: I dunno.

Overall Review: OCd to 1866 at stock v. 2133 at 1.4v but there's no appreciable difference so I put it back to 1866. Hell I'm sure I wouldn't notice any difference from 1600, but OC'd it just because.

Pros: Good first attempt in a new market. Sleek, seemingly well made, quite a few extra buttons for convenience functions, excellent tactile.

Cons: see below. Also, in my experience, Gigabyte is a bit of an odd duck when it comes to customer relations. I've dealt with them a couple times and communication was a bit awkward. Based in Taiwan (I think), it seems like they haven't quite integrated a non-Asian division of their company. The website reads like an AltaVista translation, and even their English narrated corporate video is an obvious, somewhat humorous translation: "technology to carry the chips of youth, and hope of infinite expansion." What? Of course that does not detract from what appears to be a sincere passion for making quality products. This company fascinates me, and I think we're gonna see Gigabyte go from niche motherboard producer, to major player in computer accessories and peripherals. In fact, it looks like they're ramping up for a full line of complete PCs.

Overall Review: As a follow up to my previous: I think I was wrong about the key spacing, at least I think it's more than that. There's something about the board that causes hand strain when using and I cant figure it out. It could be the way the frame forces a particular kind of hand placement.

Pros: Quality PCB, good cooling, decent performance. Asus makes solid GPUs.

Cons: Outperformed by the GTX770 which is $100 less.

Pros: Typical Kingston reliability and performance.

Cons: none.

Overall Review: It's RAM. It's Kingston. It's good.

Pros: really nice unit, and genuinely quiet (even has a switch for fan modes). Nice flat modular cables. Coming from a bronze rated psu, I actually notice a difference in stuff like temps and required voltages for OC.

Cons: na

Overall Review: Picked this up elsewhere before the Egg carried it. This is a rebranded Superflower (not just on the inside. Kingwin literally just slapped their stickers on it). That's a very good thing, making these on par with the best. I've tried other psus from premium brands that claimed to be quiet but were not. Don't think I've heard the fan run on this yet. Don't limit your search to the marquee psu brands; these Kingwins are premium.

Pros: -A quality of onboard sound you won't find on most mobos under $300, and likely better than many discrete sound cards. It is hands-down the standout feature of this mobo. It's nice not needing a discrete sound card, which just impedes airflow. -4 PWM fan headers, which I'm using now instead of my fan controller. -Intel NIC -Solid, hefty. I was actually surprised how heavy it was. Maybe the copper/fiberglass lining accomplishes something and maybe it doesn't, but when you hold this board you definitely get the impression that Gigabyte puts more effort into construction than most brands. The I/O panel is even lightly padded. No corners cut, here. -Everything booted up fine, which is as it should be.

Cons: -Poor utility software. The Gigabyte chipset/driver utility functioned like a half-written program, freezing and getting gui glitches. -Would be nice if each fan could be controlled individually. Fan control only has two speed curve adjustments: one for the cpu fan and one for the other three combined..but, each case fan header has its own temp sensor and the speed presets in bios seem to control them rather intelligently. -Gigabyte seems to think 130c is the red-line temp for Ivy. No, it's 105c, and that wouldn't be a big deal unless you tried to use the automated OC tool in EasyTune, which could attempt to push the chip to damaging levels. -EasyTune is rather sad. I don't think they've given that software a real update in six years. -Ridiculous decals and poster included. I know it's a gaming board , but what am I, 12?

Overall Review: Ultimately the utility software doesn't matter much to me because the hardware is solid. Feature for feature, this board really doesn't have any equals in this price range, with the possible exception of the ROG, and from what I've seen in recent years Gigabyte has upstaged their main competitor when it comes to build quality. Had my 3570k stable at 4.7 *just changing the multiplier and leaving everything on AUTO*, which speaks well to the bios intelligence. I turned it down to 4.2 because it was a bit toasty at 4.7, though really the 3570 doesn't even need an OC.