GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3R LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Dynamic Energy Saver Ultra Durable II Intel Motherboard

Pros: Great board, nice layout, nice BIOS settings. Lots of USB ports, eSATA.

Cons: no firewire on board.

Overall Review: a previous reviewer stated you can't install a Zalman 9500LED on this thing - NOT TRUE! i installed it without a problem. the power connector is a little tricky to hook up if you dont attach it before mounting the mobo, but it can be done. it also does not block any RAM slots. this was one of the easiest board installs i've ever dealt with in terms of OS. running vista ultimate 64bit and all drivers were found during install (except for 2 pci cards). note on OCing - i overclocked my mem too far and kept getting BSODs during OS install. changed to standard settings and everything went smooth. then i went back and tweaked to maintain a stable system. Running with q6600 OC to 3.4Ghz (380x9) (@26 deg Celcius), 4GB g.Skill PC6400, MSI geforce 512 8800 GTS (g92), CM 650W PSU, Seagate 7200.11 500GB SATA HD, SB X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty, SYBA IEEE 1394a FireWire (had 9-pin header for front of case), all in a CM Centurion case.

Pros: Third Gigabyte MB I've used in the past couple of years and they all worked well. This one runs completely stable @ 3.6GHz with an E8400. All it needed was a slight boost to Vcc. NB heat sink is larger than the one on the GA-EP35-DS3L, and I've had no cooling issues with it. The rear eSATA bracket, and included signal and power cables lets me back up to a bare drive that I store in a safe place. The 4 included locking SATA cables are of very good quality. The QFlash feature makes it possible to update the BIOS directly from a USB device without booting from a floppy or a program from within Windows. I like being able to store different CMOS settings. Overall a very nice board for a very reasonable price.

Cons: The on board LAN chip died after 3 weeks; I just put in a NIC I had rather sending the board back. In spite of the boot options listed in the BIOS, or at boot, the board can't be booted from a USB thumb drive/storage card that has been formated as a boot device. Gigabyte has pretty aggressive settings for the PMW controlled fan headers. This isn't a problem for the CPU fan and the CPU stays cool with an AC7 cooler. The SYS2 fan header though, wouldn't even start a 120mm Arctic Cooling PWM fan, and connecting the fan to the CPU header didn't spin it fast enough. The BIOS should be changed to allow setting minimum fan speeds via CMOS settings.

Overall Review: Since this board currently costs only $10 more than the GA-EP35-DS3L, comes with larger heat sinks, a better NB chip that supports RAID and a total of 4 more more SATA ports and the eSATA bracket; I think it's a much better value. I don't know why people down rate a board for things it doesn't have, like firewire, when it clearly states in the specs what it does have.

Pros: I have another one of these on the way to replace my most unstable DQ6 P965 in my other computer Handles ram well, as I am going with Gskill's PC2-8500 8 Gigs @2.1 volts 1078. Very Stable board, plenty of SATA hook ups (8 total) Compact design, smaller than the typic ATX board out these days, I like that!! Takes up alot less room = Better Airflow. Runs cool.. Gigabyte now shows more Bios options without using that old ctrl+f1, but you still need to use that to get all the bios options!!

Cons: No Firewire? I never use it anyways, so no con for me. Even if you use Firewire, This board has 3 PCI Slots, so just order a PCI or PCI-E X1-4 firewire addon card for about 12 bucks, anad you still are saving money!!

Overall Review: Again, I find it frustrating that many people here claim to have " a high tech understanding" That is sheer nonsense for alot of these people. One mentions here they cannot get their USB key to boot. I can get all of mine, just set in bios for boot devices 1. USB-HDD. 2 floppy, and 3, HARDDISK. Make sure you have created a proper USB boot configuration on your USB Key. If you cannot understand this, CHANGE YOUR TECH LEVEL UNDERSTANDING PLEASE!! I am A+ Cert, jeez peeps!!

Pros: Very flexible, stable board. Easy to set up. I'll be setting up a RAID soon, this board has a lot of room for expansion!

Cons: No parallel printer header, only ONE IDE-PATA header, no firewire. Difficult to get the front headphone/mic ports to work. I tried in vain to install an 8800GT vid: "VGA GIGABYTE GV-NX88T512HPV1." It worked beautiful with XPx64/SP2, but not Vista x64. Constant crashes and re-starts. Poor tech support from GigaByte, no help resolving these issues.

Overall Review: In over 20 years, this is the first PC I've built that ran 100% correct from first boot! Received ver 2.1 on the board. Installed an Intel Q6600, an EVGA-6200SE, old Seagate 160GB SATA 1.5, and 8GBs Kingston 800mHz value RAM. After using the automated driver install disk, this baby hummed! Very stable, not a lockup or crash yet.

Pros: The board has a nice feature set, and is good during the short periods when it works.

Cons: I bought this as a replacement for the P35-DS3R, and have had the same problems with both boards. I've had dozens of bluescreens and other problems, including the bios screen completely freezing (with the latest version). It seems to be an issue with my DDR800 Crucial Ballistix, which works fine in other systems. It causes massive instability in this board, which is inexcusable considering the exact part number for the memory is in the list recommended by Gigabyte. I've tried numerous timings (at stock frequency) and using both 1.8v and the memory's recommended 2.2v. Both boards have had other small issues, including getting stuck in reboot cycles if a problem occurs. Clearing CMOS manually has always fixed this on mine. This and a few other small issues are forgivable compared to the memory issue, IMO.

Overall Review: Newegg has been very helpful, and even let me RMA the first board (past the return period) after Gigabyte's main phone number seemed to be unavailable for several days during business hours. It's a shame that a good company like Newegg had to foot the bill for Gigabyte's mistakes. I guess they'll make it back, however, since it looks like I'm going to be ordering some new memory from them.

Pros: Fast, Stable & compatible with OSx86 :)

Cons: Jmicron controller can be a bit of a pita - booting from IDE DVD drive or the purple SATA ports usually won't work - especially for OSx86.

Overall Review: Great lil board! I'm very happy with it!

Pros: I received revision 2.1 and I flashed the bios to F2 right away. I had 4 x 1GB of Crucial Ballistix PC8500 memory set to run at 1066 and a Q6600 clocked at 3GHz at first post prior to the Vista install and I have had no problems. Memory is at 5-5-5-15 with 2.2 volts (+.4) and the multiplier at 3.2. The Q6600 is set for 333 x 9 at 1.35 volts. Very stable, passes Memtest and Prime95 with no errors. I found the layout to be great for my case. Lots of USB ports on the back panel and none of the junk you don't need like serial or parallel. The sound chip is better than the SB Audigy sound card I was using. The GA-965P-DS3 this replaced was a great board but I like this one even better. My daughter is now using the 965P and it is still going strong. Gigabyte makes great motherboards!

Cons: None at all.

Overall Review: This board will overclock much further than I have it. I'll see how much further when I have more time to play. I also have a Zalman CNPS 9500 LED installed on it in the correct position with the fan blowing to the rear of the case. It does not get in the way of the 4 pin ATX_12v connector or the memory slots so I don't know what some of the other reviewers were complaining about. Zalman must have changed the securing clip since I bought mine. My last 3 boards have been Gigabyte and I have been very pleased with them all. If you don't want to have to flash the bios on any MB, you should not be building a PC. I have built a lot of computers and I always check for updated bios before I start. It is just part of the process when the technology is updated as fast as it is with computers. I personally am glad that Gigabyte updates their bios so often. This board has lots of USB and SATA connections, it is built very well and overclocks easily. There is no reason not to buy this board.

Pros: Nice MB. I have a rev 2.1 with an Intel E8400. The factory BIOS recognized the chip and clock speed; some people have reported they had to have an older CPU to install and then update the BIOS, but I DID NOT have this problem. I did however, update the bios, but not to get things up and running.

Cons: None

Overall Review: Installs and works great with CORSAIR XMS2 4GB(2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail