GIGABYTE GA-Z97-HD3 (rev. 2.0) LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Simple Layout, Extremely Fast Post, 3 BIOS Views, Front Audio Header is at the the far bottom left of the board as opposed to some boards that have it near the PCIe slots. NO issues, everything worked as intended. Cheap for z97 board.

Cons: The only con that this board would have, and mind you this VERY minor, is that two of the three fan headers are located right above the PCIe 1x slot. I kinda wish that only one was located here and then they move the second one closer to the front of the board. This will help avoid having a fan cable draped across your graphics card or hanging down from the top if you have fans and/or 240mm radiator coupled with this board. Since the case I used (Corsair 200R) only had one fan on the rear, and one fan the front, this really wasn't much of an issue, but for others this might be.

Overall Review: All in all I am very pleased with this board. A couple of things I would like to point out though is that first this board adheres to ATX form factor, it is just 7.5'' in width as opposed to your typical ATX width. All the mounting holes are the same. I personally liked how compact it felt, all the while providing a good amount of upgrade options. My client was very pleased with this build. Another thing is that this board DOES NOT SUPPORT SLI for nvidia cards. It is however, ready for crossfire for AMD cards. The secondary PCIe slot only runs 4x. The BIOS was very nice I thought the layout was fairly decent; I liked how the 3 different views gave you a choice to set you options. I personally liked the classic which is your basic view, albeit with mouse support still and a simple GUI at the top. The ST mode was a little more enthusiast oriented where it had CPU/Memory information on the left and system status on the right. All the settings can be changed as well as a resolution toggle that I thought was pretty neat; I could either view in 1280x720 or 1920x1080. I kinda wish my 2 other z77 boards had something like that since those don't take fill the screen. The default BIOS screen is interesting. It is a Metro style view, where it lists all the most frequently changed settings. I personally didn't care for it as much; I set my default view to classic. The other interesting thing that I notice was that when you have this paired with a locked CPU (Non-K SKUs) the options for changing core multipliers still let me change the values however they did not save regardless if you press F10. I thought this was kinda odd, wish they would have just grayed out all the options pertaining to OC. Some options, however, looked like you could change them but when you tried click on them they would not budge. No biggie but I thought it was kinda odd. Driver disc was a typical installation disc, just choose the main drivers individually. One of the drivers required a windows update; Its included on the disc as well as .Net Framework 4.5 The build turned out crazy fast for a really good price. I was jealous of their system. I think anyone wanting a good z97 board but doesn't want to pay a whole lot should look at this board. By adding an SSD in the future, I don't see this computer getting replaced anytime soon! It's wicked fast ! My clients build came in under $600 with rebates/promos. Hopes this helps ! :) Specs: Intel i5 4590 3.3 GHz HD Intel 4600 Graphics GIGABYTE GA-Z97-HD3 ASUS DRW-24F1ST DVD Writer WD BLACK SERIES WD1003FZEX 1TB GSKILL Sniper 8 GB DDR3 1600 Corsair CS450M PSU Corsair 200R Case Win 7 64 Bit

Pros: Update to review below. I ran through the scenario with a couple of other technical friends and some forums. We managed to sort the issue out. Make sure you are on the F8 bios if you are planning on running Win 10 with this board. Apparently this issue is affecting x99 boards from various manufacturers as well.

Cons: Had to re-seat the RAM in order to get the board to post. Not really a con per-say just adding that info.

Pros: I don't even know where to start... Price: how is this thing so cheap? Brand: Gigabyte has made a great name for themselves and I'm a loyal customer after only a few of their products. Features: for $100 you get everything than you would expect and maybe a little more. Sound: Really good Realtek audio driver I have an i5 4690k overclocked to 4.5 GHz with this motherboard on air and it's simply amazing.

Cons: no SLI support, but who cares... it's $100. Some people have complained that the form factor is off and the holes don't line up with their case standoffs; I think those people are buying cheap $30 cases or old cases from 2008, because my Fractal Define R4 lined up perfectly with every single hole in the motherboard. This motherboard is about an inch and a half narrower than normal ATX motherboards, but the holes line up with all the middle holes from a normal ATX case, so there's no part of the motherboard hanging over.(this probably should have been in other thoughts since it's not actually a con but oh well)

Overall Review: System: CPU: Intel i5 4690k @4.5GHz RAM: ADATA Gaming 1600 8GB Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97-HD3 GPU: HIS IceQ² R9 270 SSD: Samsung 850 EVO 128GB HDD: WD Caviar Black 500GB Power Supply: Corsair CX 600 Case: Fractal Design R4 Black Pearl CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO Overclock is stable for everything except for small FFTs in P95 (temp skyrockets but doesn't crash) The other 2 tests in P95 runs stable at 60 C I was worried a $100 motherboard wasn't going to allow me to get a good overclock, but this thing is doing an amazing job.

Pros: I was really surprised by how small the board is when I opened up the box, compared to the other boards I had in the past (ASUS, GA, MSI, Intel). It feels kinda flimsy and cheap, but I guess that's what I paid for, so I can't really say it's Gigabyte's fault. I paired it with the low cost Intel Pentium G3258 and it overclocks the CPU from the base 3.2GHz to 4.3GHz simply by doing a "20% upgrade", and it goes to 4.9GHz without any issue (with a 3rd-party CPU cooler). Windows 10 drivers were out on the day of the OS release. Overall I'm happy with the purchase.

Cons: Newegg specifically says in the product title that this board is a "Rev. 2.0", but I received Rev 2.1. If you believe what is said on the Internet, Gigabyte did some "downgrade" on 2.1. Rev 2.0 is considered the best among the three revisions. Just an FYI if you're specifically looking for a 2.0. The board has 3 system fan connectors. The one that connects to the front fan (System Fan 3) actually cannot be controlled within BIOS (only Fan 1 & 2 are displayed in BIOS). So my front case fan runs at full speed all the time and it's really noisy. I had to disconnect it and will have to find an extension so that I can connect the fan to one of the other two sys fan connectors which both sit at the center of the board. I hate that setup.

Pros: Very clean looking board. Does what it says on the box. Easy OC tools.

Cons: See other thoughts.

Overall Review: Not fully negative. The default view in the BIOS is unreadable to me. This is easily resolved by an FKey that enables a "classic" BIOS view.

Pros: It's a decent motherboard for the price.It has many features on it you would normally find in higher-end motherboards for a higher price. Used it for a new build i put together and it's doing well so far with my other components installed.We will see down the line how long it lasts.

Cons: The only problem i have with it is how fragile the 6 SATA pin connectors are.Either they used low quality pins to secure the housing,or poor quality control and design was implemented here. Can't believe how easily they come loose and break when connecting other stuff to it.

Pros: Paired this with a xeon e3-1230 v3 processor and 8 gigs of GSkill and bam, up and running no glitches what so ever.

Cons: You get what you pay for, nothing more, nothing less.

Overall Review: Would buy again

Pros: I love this motherboard dropped right it everything installed easy as could be. So far has been very much worth the money.

Cons: Only problem I have is I wish the ram slots were further away from the CPU so I didn't have a tight fit with my cooler.