Intel BOXD975XBX2KR LGA 775 Intel 975X ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Stable, Fast and best of all booted on first try. Very clear documents and board layout, cables were included and love the locking system for SATA devices.

Cons: This is all nit picking but since I can I will. IDE controller placement right angle to board. USB,1394A,SATA all grouped together to close when cabling is attached what a octopus very hard to attach any more cable to SATA if needed. Also if you change hard drives on the Marvel SATA bus the bios changes that new drive as the boot drive. After marathon install of XP-Pro on reboot nothing, checked bios and boot device order had changed.

Overall Review: I purchased this board reading only the first few reviews, which were excellent, then read the rest and thought I made the worst purchase of my life, bios problems, raid problems, strange screen problem. NOT the case, upgrade bios first 2663, download latest Raid drivers Intel and Marvel and everything will work smoothly. Loven every minute of it! Conroe E6600 2.4, 2-150g 10K raptor Raid0(Intel),2-300g Maxtor SATAI Raid0(Marvel),1-500g WD 500g SATAII, 2gig patriot, no overclocking(yet).

Pros: Once you get your numbers tweaked in and figured out, this board will be rock solid. At first I thought this board was a dud, but after playing with timings and reading up on this board to tweak it, I got my E6600 running @ 3.825Ghz with only 1.4 Volts. It is well known in the industry that Intel makes some of the best quality and reliable motherboards you can find because they focus on business applications that need 110% reliability. Who better to make an OC board than the manufacturer who makes the Chipset and CPU? Also, Vdroop is minimal on this board, it does drop, but isnt the constantly changing wild fluctuations seen with everyone of my Asus and Abit boards. Also this board lets you control the Strap. I woulda prefered to be able to change these timings manually, but I dont think any of the manufacturers even let you change the timings let alone what strap to run on. By far the Best motherboard Ive used to date and Ive been in computers since OCing 4Mhz Intel 8085's to 12MHz.

Cons: Stupid Hard Drive Light stays on all the time if secondary raid isnt enabled... Also, Board doesnt include back plate support which kinda sucks cause my watercooling needs to have it. Intel's website can be a bit confusing on what is the latest driver and sometimes is is outdated and it is just downright confusing sometimes to sort through Intel's ten million whitepapers

Overall Review: Intel E6600 @ 3.825 w/ 1.4V on 1066 Strap using 3,4,4,6 timings for memory. Intel Raid using 4 WD raptors gives me 260MB/s Avg according to HDTach with Burst 3.25GB/s. I run Prime 95 24/7 and not one lockup. With my 8800GTX oc'd to 685 PCmark05 says there are only 346 computers that have submitted their tests that are faster than mine. According to future mark, my computer is in the top 500 for all computers that have submetted results on any of their benchmarks.

Pros: This motherboard is easy to install and set up, compatible with QX6700 Kentsfield quad core processor, runs great with 32-bit OS

Cons: Very picky on memory that is supported. When matched with QX6700 processor, bios flaws make it impossible to install Windows XP 64-bit or Windows Vista 64-bit using quad cores. Latest bios update does not fix problem, tried to roll back to previous bios version and the board stopped working all together. Spent a few hours of combined time on phone with Intel tech support but they only point fingers and do not take responsibility for the bad bios release. Many people are having this problem based on multiple tech forum sites.

Overall Review: I have never had problems like this with a genuine Intel motherboard. I have never had to resort to using tech support to try to resolve issues. Unfortunately this is a bad board and processor combination if you want to run 64-bit operating systems. 32-bit works great and runs smooth. Be careful of which memory you buy for this board. Most importantly, the memory should be DDR2, 1.8v-1.9v ONLY, should not have double sided DIMMs with 8 chips per side, they are NOT supported!

Pros: (3) PCI Express Slots, ATI Cross Fire Certified, (4) Memory Slots,(8) SATA Connections; (4) are Intel and the other (4) are Marvel controller, (1) EIDE Connection and (1) floppy drive. Good motherboard layout.

Cons: Out of box can not install operating system on a fresh drive. Must use another computer to download the Bios update, then update via Floppy. If you set up a Raid 5 on the Intel Black Sata connections then windows will not see the other (4) Sata Drives, but all you have to do is update the Marvel Driver then windows can see them. The manual for this motherboard is lacking and assumes a high level tech is installing it. When I go to a quad core, I hope I remember to change the power configuration to the motherboard.

Overall Review: Intel finally caught up with market and put out a cutting edge board, but it is prices a little high. But it is very stable even when being pushed hard.

Pros: After reading the reviews in this section I was prepared for my new board. No real problems with installation or setup. BIOS update and driver installation went without problem. Typical of what I'd expect from Intel!

Cons: Would liked to have had a little more information on connecting case audio wiring, and audio formats that are supported by the board.

Overall Review: Nice board, with plenty of room in my larger case. No real problem making connections, installing ram, etc. with the board in my case. My video card does touch the board audio connections, but it seated and works fine. System: Intel Q6600 Kentsfield, Intel 975XBX2, EVGA 8800GTS-320MB, CM Centurion 5 CAC-T05 Case and RP-500-PCAR PSU, COSAIR XMS2 800 DDR, (2) WD Caviar 500GB SATA HD, ASUS DRW-1814BLT SATA DVD, Rosewill RCX-Z775-EX Cooler, Samsung 226BW Monitor

Pros: High overclocking capability: Pentium D 3.2 (4.7ghz expensive fan/TEC cooled) Holds stability with OC as long as you have stable ram. This is a better over clocking motherboard than anything else I have seen out there when I purchased this as year ago and still stand by this statement today.

Cons: None

Overall Review: You need to realize that if you are overclocking with for example 800mhz ram, you need to set the frequency down to 667 or even 533 in order to keep your overclock because the processor overclock ratio will set the frequency too high if you leave it at 800...the result will be either 3 beeps and require a cmos reset or a BSOD when you have marginal stability.

Pros: This is a very stable board. I’ve use Intel boards before but drifted to some of the other popular boards that you can find on Newegg. With these other boards, I always found anomalies from the get go. While the Intel mobos won’t provide the dearth of OC options the others’ provide, this motherboard provides stability. Stability rates 1st in my requirements for computer use. Case installation, add-on cards and cabling were a snap. Documentation was superb. If you need it, the Intel web site for this board’s drivers, software, etc. is excellent compared to the other popular brands.

Cons: I wanted to test various RAID setups but found that Vista 64 would not recognize a single drive plugged into any SATA port. However, all RAID 0, 1, or 5 setups were fine using either the Intel or Marvel RAID driver sets.

Overall Review: Antec Sonata III, Intel D975XBX2 mobo, EVGA GeForce 8800GTS (G92) 512MB 256-bit GDDR3, Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700, 8GB Kingston DDR2, 3x Seagate Barracuda ES.2 250GB 7200 SATA 3.0, ASUS 20X DVD±R DVD Burner SATA Model DRW-2014L1T, Vista x64 Ultimate SP1, SAMSUNG 2253BW 22" LCD.

Pros: Intel motherboards are for me. I have built on Intel boards exclusively for several years now. Zero problems or surprises. They just work. No, I don't overclock. Stability and uptime are my bag. My gaming days are behind me.

Cons: None

Overall Review: Mated this with a Q6600 and specifically for a 3ware 9650SE-4L controller card which needs to be seated in a x4 PCI-Express slot. My desktop rocks. It loves me.