GIGABYTE GA-EP35C-DS3R LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Dynamic Energy Saver Ultra Durable II Intel Motherboard

Pros: Great features ( DDR3, raid, , step by step installation instructions, tweakable bios, stabilty etc.) This is my 2nd Gigabyte build. Currently running like a champ and VERY fast!! I am a gamer so speed is important to me. I would highly recommend this MB to people that are considering building their first computer.

Cons: Listed below are minor problems I encountered during this build. Most of the info below is not really a motherboard problem. I am just stating it in the CON section to help others. Raid with XP was a little difficult. It requires a floppy drive 3.5" to load the 3rd party raid driver for XP. I think Vista already has the required drivers. The stock Intel heat sink/fan was difficult to mount to the MB. During the first run, XP found new devices ( onboard audio ) and asked if I wanted it to search for drivers. . I clicked "OK" and it loaded the wrong audio driver and would not work. Actaully, this was my mistake and had to go online to the Gigabyte website for a fix. I found the info in the "FAQ" section for this MB. Make sure you click cancel then load the MB disc.

Overall Review: My specs= XFX GeForce 9800 GTX Black Edition 512MB PCI Express, Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 Yorkfield 2.5GHz LGA 775, Patriot 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 Dual Channel, OCZ EvoStream 720W ATX Power Supply, and Two raided HDD's (Western Digital Caviar SE16 Sata 300 320 Gb.

Pros: No problems with E8400, 4GB G.Skill DDR2 1066 running in raid. I have run it with Vista 32bit & 64bit Windows XP 32bit & 64bit No problems

Cons: IDE connector a little low.

Overall Review: Go to Gigabyte and download latest drivers, a new audio driver has custom Equalizer

Pros: Good value. A lot of BIOS options. Intel ICH9R works great for my RAID1. Plenty of SATA ports, which is important because everything is switching to it. Lots of USB on the back. Pretty good manual. Pretty blue PCB. Placement of a PCIe x1 slot at the top of the mobo is great- I don't have to block my graphics card fan with my sound card. SATA cables, IDE cable, floppy cable, eSATA cables, stickers (if you like them) included. Gigabyte "case badge" the size of the "Intel Inside" and "Designed for Windows Vista stickers. Fast. XPress install for mobo drivers ran for 30 minutes without intervention, saved me hassle. 3 DRAM slots. Starts at 1.8 voltss and can go .4V+ if neccesssary for your RAM. Good overclocking options. Autoclocking program "Energy Saver" can clock down your proc when the power isn't needed, saving $, power, and heat. Solid capacitors (if any of you have ever had voltage liquid capacitors from an old mobo go and take every component in your system, you'll understand).

Cons: NO FIREWIRE, WHY? Your sound card may include a port though. USB Placement should be closer to the front of the case- in larger cases, the connectors may not reach. PCIe x16 lock is frustrating if you have a card in the expansion slot above.

Overall Review: Great mobo. An important note: if your mobo has a defective LAN port, the enable/disable LAN option will be absent in the BIOS and the "SMART LAN" cable test option will be grayed out and unselectable. Newegg shipped this from Cali (this was the only computer component I bought not shipped from NJ), so it took a little longer to get to me than the rest, but it only took 3 days and was extremely well packaged- nestled safely in the packing peanuts, with no damage to the mobo box or the shipping box. Newegg always packages well though, so it's not surprising :)

Pros: I was impressed with the well written manual for the mother board. It was fairly clear, straight forward, generally, better than average. The 'fail safe' saved me as I had inadvertently done something stupid. That was a nice piece of engineering. The Egyptians had a saying that goes back millennium; There is no proof against fools. Well, most people know the modern version of that. Gigabyte managed to put in some 'proof' against foolish mistakes. Very nice! My initial opinion is really high of this mother board.

Cons: My negatives are not really the fault of the mother board. The cons, so far, are related to legacy issues. There are no serial or parallel port connectors on the mother board. I have a legacy issue with a serial port, DB-9, that is available on the mother board ( as well as LPT), but you have buy the accessory plate / connector to hook up to the mother board. I understand that this is not an issue for almost everyone else as USB has taken over for the old serial port. It's only an issue if you have legacy devices that you have to support.

Overall Review: CPU is a Xeon E3110 with 2 GB DDR2-800 (for now). Yes, the Xeon E3110 works in this board. If you can't find an E8400 family CPU... for a few dollars more... Win 2K and high def audio is an issue here too. It's not just XP. Apparently, Windows gets confused with HD audio. Several scenarios seem to occur in this area, but what seems to work is to unload the UAA driver in the device manager and re-scan for hardware changes. If all goes well, Windows will detect the 'new hardware' and install the drivers, again. It works in XP. Endless re-installation of the RealTek driver will get you no where.

Pros: To be fair, I'm upgrading my review to average since I've managed to solve the main problem with RAM. Performance is average and stable so far.

Cons: Doesn't show you the actual DRAM voltage and only allow increments of 0.1V (instead of 0.05V). The first issue is plain stupid (if the first thought that comes into a user's mind upon looking at a feature is "What the f$#k??!!" then it's bad engineering :-) For DDR3, the half-volt is important, although not critical

Overall Review: I have managed to make my OCZ 1333 DDR3 mem runs at that speed, by taking a leap of faith and overvolting it by 0.3V. This is the DS3R rev. 2101

Pros: Good build quality, lots of USB ports, SPDIF in and out, 6 SATA connections, solid performer.

Cons: Although the Documentation is better than most, I had difficulty installing a raid array. I went through the normal sequence: set up bios, enter the raid bios and set up the array, load the drivers from a floppy... and after all that I had BSOD in XP64 or a hang with Vista. I eventually resolved this by installing Vista on a separate drive and formatting the raid array. (Vista detected initialized and formatted it with no problem). After the array was formatted, I had no problems re-installing Vista on the formated array.

Overall Review: Great features, great price, posted on the first try.

Pros: Plenty of sata connects, strong/well built board, 8 rear usb connects and pretty nice layout for the most part. Runnning ddr2 right now but love being able to run ddr3 later when prices come down. This board can be memory picky so do some research first! I ended up with 2x2gb of G.Skill model #F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ and its runs great. Was able to over clock memory to just over 900 and my e8400 to 3.6 with no problems.

Cons: I have a Antec 900 case. With the psu at the bottom of the case, the connect to the cpu 4 pin connect is a major stretch! With a tunig tower installed first, the cpu connect was next to impossible with the board already installed. I ended up taking board out and connecting the 4 pin cpu first and then placed the board back into the case and installed. Much easier! That was really the only "con" I could come up with. Love the board and speed.

Overall Review: I've only built 4 computers in my days but this board was a pretty easy install. Just remember to connect the 4 pin cpu power before installing the board into your case if you have a big cpu hsf. The tunig tower is a monster and did cause problems with this. Live and learn I guess.

Pros: Support both DDR2 and DDR3 Memory. Supports a hibernate mode that works well with Vista. All drivers seem to work flawlessly with Vista as well. Plenty of SATA ports.

Cons: The Board is VERY memory picky. According to Gigabyte technical support, they support crucial Ballistix Memory. I purchased this memory with the board and had problems immediatley. Blue Screens, Software crashes. You name it. After running memory tests and reading other forums. The Crucial Memory and this board do not like one another. I exchanged the Crucial Memory for some OCZ memory and now everything is running just fine. I would have been much happier if the board had more than one IDE port.

Overall Review: Board is somewhat small.