Pros: - 3x m.2 for compact storage with no wires - Nice heatsink for main m.2 with PCIe 4.0 compatibility - 1 x PCI Express 4.0 x16 slot for GPU - 2 x PCIe 3.0 slots (wifi, etc.) - Great brushed aluminum look on heatsinks will compliment most color schemes - 4x SATA connectors for legacy drives - XMP easy as a button click to set up

Cons: - No built-in wifi or bluetooth

Overall Review: Great looking lga 1700 ATX motherboard that is perfect for upper mid-range builds. If you are looking to overclock you RAM without the need to overclock your Intel CPU then this is a perfect pick. Plenty of USB connections on the rear panel and fan connections on the board itself. Having three m.2 slots is awesome for clutter free storage. Just a quick click of turning on XMP on the main Bios screen and my 3200MHz RAM was running at specified speed. Easy to use Bios and Asus tools to configure fan speeds/curves and other features. All the bells and whistles for anyone who isn't ready to move up to new expensive PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 RAM technologies. 95% of PC builders don't need/or have a use for these newer technologies anyways.

Pros: I bought this to replace a R9 280 I had in my living room gaming/htpc computer. I did a few benchmarks on games before and after installing this card. I saw on average a 40% increase in FPS and as high as 50%. I bought the R9 280 a little over a year and a half ago for $200 and it was the best budget card for 1080p gaming at the time. This thing blows it out of the water and I only payed $150. I went with this specific card because the reference blower would work better in a htpc case and because of the price. It is just a hair behind the the RX 480, performance wise, but significantly cheaper.

Cons: It can get a bit noisy when the fans start to speed up but that is expected for a reference blower. Even so, it is quiter than my Sapphire r9 280 Dual-X card it replaced. It also will hover in the low to mid 70c but I do have a small form factor case so it is also expected. I haven't created a custom fan profile yet but I'm sure that will knock a few degrees off without too much noise added. Last thing is it doesn't have a backplate, but for $150 on sale I don't care.

Overall Review: For 1080p budget gaming this is as good as it gets. It will run even AAA games at 60fps on ultra/high settings. Don't let anyone tell you different, 4gb is enough VRAM for 1080p gaming. I have a GTX 980 in my main gaming PC and it's 4gb of VRAM can handle even 1440p AAA titles. I wouldn't pay more than $160 for this because you coul get a 3rd party card with a better cooler for $10-20 more. But at $150-160 this is a steal. As someone mentioned, do yourself a favor and adjust the max power draw to +20% in MSI Afterburner and make a custom fan profile. You could even bump the overclock to 1300mhz and be within spitting distance of a stock RX 480.