GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX All Solid Capacitor Intel Motherboard

Pros: Very good performance. This board is running at 480Mhz bus for me. Recognized all of my hardware to boot and the bios is very intuitive. All solid state capacitors, so the board will last a long time.

Cons: The IDE connector is on the bottom of the board, which is kind of stupid considering most people only have IDE optical drives now, which means you will be dragging an IDE cable across the length of the board.

Overall Review: If you are wondering, this board works fine with ddr2 800 and penryn processors. I have an e8400 installed, and it was recognized without any needed bios update.

Pros: What an fantastic board! I love the simple style/P35 chipset combo as I did not want/need RAID or multi-gpu. This board has tremendous "bang for the buck". Ran successful POST right out of the gate; recognized my "all SATA-equipped" 150G Raptor, #2 storage drive, and DVD-CD. The P35 chip is excellent, and my E6700 C2D/Zalman9700 H/S were easily made stable. On-board sound is pretty good, but not great. However, the GUI software for audio controls provided with the audio drivers is nice. Bios upgrades were a snap with a USB flash-memory stick and the Gigabyte Bios update utility. My board shipped with Bios F5 and I flashed to F6 with no problems. Board is very stable to work with. BTW: This board is known for being very tolerant of different brands of DDR2 RAM. I have experimented with three different kinds with no problems, from 1.8V "Value" style RAM to high end 2.1V Mushkin (purchased at Da Egg of course!).

Cons: This was not a problem for me, but if you intend to use an IDE equipped device (H/D or DVD/CD), note the position of the IDE header is at the very bottom of the board. Plan ahead for that. Stock on-board sound is not bad, but audio improved after install of a high-end after-market sound card. Some report the Northbridge heatsink gets hot if you push your FSB. However, it appears that doesn't rear an ugly head until one is well past 400 MHz on the FSB. At a 345 MHz FSB setting my NB H/S is only warm to the touch, not hot even when under full load situations. These are rather minor probs as one can easily solve the NB issue if the need ever arises with an after-market NB H/S. Overall, there was no way I wanted to detract from giving this product 5 stars even with the above mentioned issues.

Overall Review: Remember that Cntrl+F1 at the Main Bios screen will allow you to access the board's full features, including RAM timings, etc. The board includes a Gigabyte System Restoration tool that is accessed via the Bios. It allows you to ghost a copy of your current OS...AS LONG AS YOU PROVIDE DISC SPACE for a second disc partition at OS set up. I left 8 gig free on my Raptor at Windows XP install. You can refine the partition/format later from the Windows XP Partition Manager. The first time I tried to save the OS to this second partition I started running into problems.:/ I found it worked flawlessly however, if I just unplugged my secondary hard-drive! After that, I was able to back up my new perfectly tuned and updated Windows XP install if I want a future "refresh" of my system. After reboot, I plugged the 2nd H/D back in and had no problems thereafter. Thermaltake Big Typhoon fit no problem BUT backplate interfered with solder spots on mobo backside. Zalman 9700 fit p

Pros: Inexpensive, great feature set, easy to setup. Despite the typical DOA and other stories, I think this board is an excellent base to build a PC on.

Cons: None yet.

Overall Review: Before installing Windows, make sure you turn off the on-board sound and do not install extra drives. Re-enable or connect them after the Windows install and add drivers from there. Windows uses its own driver for the HD Sound upon install and the drivers that are really meant for the board cannot be installed. If you found you have this problem, go to Control Panel-Add/Remove programs and uninstall the Windows HD software ( I forget how it was actually labeled) and then install the drivers that came with the MB.

Pros: Accepted my E8400 without the newest BIOS, Although I updated later, which was super easy with @BIOS utility. Great power plug placement for cases that has the PSU at the top.

Cons: Northbridge heatsink gets warm.

Overall Review: IDE port placement is at the bottom, I am used to it being at the front, not a big issue I will just have to get a longer IDE cable.

Pros: PERFECT 100% compatibility with Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) straight out of the box. LAN, USB, sound, everything. I'm sure it also works with any other linux distribution with a recent kernel. The instructions were clear enough to guide me through my first build, and though nervous, I was successful. Many many options in bios.

Cons: Lacks RAID support, firewire, and has fewer USB ports, but if you're not interested in RAID and 4 USB ports are enough for you, it is well worth it over it's more expensive siblings.

Overall Review: If you install the ethernet driver in Windows, it will be disabled in linux unless you go into the Windows device manager and enable "Wake-on-LAN after shutdown," after which they coexist perfectly. Other hardware: Antec 900 Intel E6750 2.66 GHz Antec Earthwatts 500 watts Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800 MHz BFG Geforce 7900 GS WD 500GB Sata II BENQ 16x DVD-RW IDE

Pros: Great price and able board with enough slots if you plan out what you are doing.

Cons: Only one IDE connector, however I only want two optical drives so it's not a big deal. Except the extra hard drive I had was IDE and it wanted an SATA for the main hard drive. So other than being unaware that at least in my case I needed an SATA I don't have anything bad to say about the board.

Overall Review: Would of been a nice heads up to know if I am buying a new hard drive that I should not make it IDE because there is a chance the board will not take it. Hence the main point of this review, I recommend this board, but I all suggest an SATA hard drive to go with it.

Pros: Great mobo. High quality and very nicely built. Works great!

Cons: Um, you no second PCI-E slot, But you get what you pay for! And do you need all that stuff anyway!

Overall Review: To the people who complain that it only registers 3.5GB ram: YOU NEED 64BIT windows to read more than 3.4GB ITS NOT THE MOBO'S FAULT. READ AND KNOW WHAT YOUR TALKING ABOUT. The worst part is that alot of the people who say dumb stuff like that say there tech understanding is HIGH.

Pros: Good bios setup with many options for OC'ing or general tweaking. Solid board so far.

Cons: None so far.

Overall Review: For the price and it's flexibility in configuration it's a good board.