GIGABYTE GA-X48T-DQ6 LGA 775 Intel X48 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Everything - Massive processor support, 1600+ FSB, Ferrite Core Chokes and Solid State Caps, Triple Phase Power design, Smart PCI slot placement, Intel XMP memory support, silent pipe cooling, quality workmanship, nice box

Cons: These are minor but I'll mention them anyway- Single IDE connector, crazy cool plate blocks some aftermarket CPU coolers, manual overclocking only via Easy Tune Pro utility, default overclock settings need adjustment (see CPU voltage below), Easy Tune display switches the CPU and system temps

Overall Review: This motherboard rocks. Using an E6750 in the CPU socket and Corsair DDR3 1600 XMP memory the default settings are 400 FSB (1600) with the processor clocked at 3.2 GHz. The BIOS set the voltage to the CPU at 1.57V which I manually lowered. The XMP memory profile worked and shows 7-7-7-20 at 1.8V. The current BIOS does not seem to allow manual change of the FSB but I suspect this will change with future versions. To change the FSB manually you need to use the Easy Tune utility. The Zalman CNPS7000 series CPU coolers will work fine and not interfere with the crazy cool plate attached below the processor (it's removable). I've acquired some of the highest benchmark scores with this board and memory and am extremely glad I purchased it.

Pros: WOW!!! This board rocks right out the box. no problems at all slapped in the wolfdale 3.16 ,corsair ddr 3 1600 2 gigs and a 8800 gtx 768mb card and never looked back. By far the best board i have owned in years. Came with the bio F4 . board rev 1.03

Cons: NONE AT ALL !!!! fast, easy install, DDR3 works with no problems, just make sure you buy from the memory list at the mfg site .

Overall Review: my asus striker extreme sucked the life out of me, i'm a GIGABYTE customer now!!!!!! wish i never bought an ASUS BOARD !!!!

Pros: SUPER!!! I love this mobo. Works with Quad 2.5 GHz processor, Heat sinks under mobo helps cool processor and chipset. Installed PC310600 and easily detects without configuration.

Cons: none really, except for the price. But if you want quality it is well worth the price.

Overall Review: If you are installing Windows Vista, only install important updates, one of the recommended updates that was installed ended up making me lose my mouse control. But i think that is due to vista and not the mobo. Oh. Also if you install a separate heat sink make sure it's not one that you have to use a separate holder to lock the heat sink. The heat sink under the processor is a little big so it will not fit. If you had a normal heatsink it should work with no problem. I had to cut the place holders to make it fit.

Pros: Booted Right up with Q6600 and 2GB OCZ DDR3 1333. Easily overclocked q6600 to 3.2 and RAM to 1400. Zalman 9700 fits fine. Plenty of connectors and features.

Cons: None so far

Pros: It works. With the high specs this chipset has you can overclock non extreme edition chips pretty hard with out worrying about your board keeping up. DDR3, PCI-e 2.0 x 2, tons of onboard usb, external SATA brackets,and lots of high quality parts. This board should be able to hold any one up until the LGA 1366 sockets come out late this year (maybe).

Cons: The crazy cool back plate is neat but really useless. If you are getting this board you probably will have a advanced cooling solution or something high end air. It comes off okay but, eh I wouldn't have put it on there to start. Despite this board being just released a few weeks ago, some of the software on the driver cd is many months old. Definetly get the newer NIC drivers from Realtek.

Overall Review: Right now I'm taking it easy on it. E6600@3.0GHz with 2 gigs up OCZ DDR3 1600@1333 in it. System is rock solid thus far. I really like having the headroom to overclock a cpu with being as worried about the board.

Pros: This is the 3rd Gigabyte motherboard I've used in building a new system. I'm not looking for the fastest MB but the most stable while allowing for good Over Clocking. Gigabyte does it again with this board, it recognized the full 8GB of Corsair DDR3-1800. RAID drivers work fine, stable over clocking, with lots of CPU/Memory/Voltage tweaking options. Board is pricey, but if your looking for a board that will run rock solid stable while powering all your hardware this is the board.

Cons: Not really a con, but had some intial stability issues under Vista-64. Once all the drivers were loaded and updated however this board purrs. Make sure you install the latest BIOS update F5 at this writting, and the latest intel chipset drivers, which Vista installs after the 2nd update, and the latest Gigabye updates from their website.

Overall Review: running the following on this board with room for 2 PC! and 2 PC!x slots. QX9770, Enermax Galaxie 1000, 8GB Corsair Dominator DDR3-1800, 2 ATI Radeon 4850-512, 2 WD 300GB VelociRaptor RAID-0, 2 WD 1TB Caviar Balck RAID-0, SoundBlaster Fatality XFi Gamer Extreme, Hauppauge 2200 HD TV card.

Pros: Has 12 USB 2.0 ports, 8 SATA II ports, supports crossfire, ddr3 ram, the best of everything you could ask for in a board. Overclocks great, supports backups, comes with tons of stuff, good documentation, dual gigabit ethernet, esata brackets

Cons: the pata port is a little low on the board, it could have been a little higher to avoid stretching out the cable a little, same goes for the floppy drive in a large case. The first pci x16 slot is awful close to the ram slots. Make sure you seat your ram before your video card or you will have difficulty putting it in.

Overall Review: running a q9450 @ 3.2 stock voltage with low temps. Should have gotten 1600 MHz ram instead of 1333. If you are going to oc (why wouldnt you?) to 1600 get 1600 ram!! dual gigabit lan is useless but a nice feature. A hard drive still cant fill a sata I bus, let alone a gigabit network. We need faster HDD's now!!!

Pros: The RAID works great, I have 4 1GB disks in 2 Mirror (RAID 1) sets. Everything is fast, my core temps (in a rather warm room) stay around 95F/36C and have gone as high (sustained) as 105F/40C.

Cons: The cable for the IDE Drives is not long enough for the first connector to reach my first DVD burner. The second connector will reach either drive. I had to get a new cable to hook up both drives. If you use 2 2GB sticks of RAM you cannot add 2 more sticks. This kept me from rating the mobo a 5. I really wanted to add 2 more 2GB sticks later but now I will need to buy 2 4GB sticks instead. I'm also concerned about overclocking, but as I usually don't OC, I'll let it go. The mobo with an earlier rev BIOS was setting improper values forcing overclocking. The overclocking was causing the machine to hang. (More below)

Overall Review: Update to the new E5 BIOS. I had a problem mentioned earlier where the FSB was being reset to 400 when I wanted 333 - this was causing the machine to hang and require a powercycle (which made the RAID sets need to verify, taking hours). After upgrading the BIOS to E5 I set all my memory and CPU timings manually. Its been 5 days and things are great again. Before the E5 BIOS the machine was hanging 2 or more times a day, no hangs in 5 days since updating. The E5 BIOS may have made it so that setting the FSB to 400 will work with my E8500 chip but I really don't want to test. It's fine now and I'm happy.