Pros: Quality: Anything I've ever seen from Gigabyte in the last many years that has the UltraDurable stamp on it feels well-built and this motherboard is no exception. The reinforced "armored" PCIe and RAM slots are a very welcome addition, especially for those who replace graphics cards or test items often. The RED LED accent lighting is really nice if you are into that.(I am) I/O: This board has all of the standard Z170 I/O ports you'd expect with the addition of U.2 and Thunderbolt 3 interfaces. It also allows for the configuration of up to 3 NVMe drives in RAID (M.2, U2, and PCIe x4). However, be mindful these interfaces consume PCIe lanes otherwise used for SATA ports. (read the manual carefully) Overclocking: Surprisingly, I typically do manual tweaking to obtain a modest overclock on a CPU. Gigabyte has built-in CPU Upgrade profiles for certain chips and preconfigured settings. Typically, these give to much voltage to obtain a stable clock. However, I set my 6700K to the 4.6Ghz setting and it put the Vcore to 1.32v and is 100% stable and modest temps. Definitely worth looking at this setting if you are a novice or just want to set and forget. Gigabyte App Center: While I can't say this is a perfect execution of motherboard software, I have started to like it the more I use it. The screens aren't super busy to look at and nice to work with. The App Center lets you add or remove applications as you see fit. I found the System Information Viewer, Easy Tune, and Bios Updater the most useful for my needs. SIV is really nice for fan profiles.

Cons: UEFI settings: The UEFI is difficult to navigate if you intend to do manual tweaking. There are no descriptions for most of the fine tune settings. These items are also not described in the provided manual. I am coming from an ASUS ROG board which tells you right in the UEFI what everything does and what increments to use, so this was a letdown. I cannot find how to enable certain settings for adaptive vcore, which is frustrating and should not be that hard to figure out. I know they are there just not well labeled or named. Software documentation and labeling! CPU fan pins: The CPU fan leads are only setup for a PWM fan. There is no way to change this to a typical 3 pin voltage regulated fan. So a normal fan runs at 100% all the time. At least there is a CPU/OPT lead right next to it. This was again another nitpick item.

Overall Review: Over all this is a really nice board and in typical Gigabyte fashion the hardware is great. I think the UEFI could just have been executed a little better with more documentation. For an Overclocker, this is frustrating. At the price point you are going to want to research your needs to make sure this fits the bill. While it has a U.2 interface, it only has (1) M.2 where as others may have (2). The LEDs are RED only, not RGB. The GIGABYTE GA-Z170X-UD3 Ultra is basically this boards twin brother, just in Blue with Blue LEDs. I think Gigabyte could have also upped the onboard audio to match the GIGABYTE GA-Z170X-Gaming 6, but to each their own.

Pros: - Solid performance. No blue screens or issue with hardware at all. - XMP profile loaded correctly and was fairly easy to setup - Despite a few complaints about the UEFI BIOS settings (see below), overall it was ok. At worst, much better than prior UEFI offerings from Gigabyte in recent years. I am glad that Gigabyte does have custom fan profiles to work with rather than just an arbitrary auto that they used to have years ago. It worked well and keeps my rig quiet while keeping it cool at the same time. - Beautiful layout, colors, and design. The Red LED may be an issue for some but the fact that it can be easily turned off isn't a deal breaker. Those wanting full RGB designs will pay much much more for them. - Lots of ports for everything including USB C, Thunderbold, and USB 3.1 for future proofing. - Fan headers included sub headers for watercooling pumps.

Cons: - My biggest complaint with this board is the UEFI interface. Those who have used ASUS's or ASROCK's interfaces lately or really within the past 5 years know how polished they are. Heck even MSI has a pretty good UEFI interface as well. - Using the UEFI, my mouse was slow to move and made it difficult to make changes to things that required a mouse. - UEFI options seemed somewhat limited or hidden in some cases compared to other manufacturers.

Overall Review: Gigabyte's App Center is now like a empty shell in which you load modules for controlling things such as MB frequencies, fans, etc. Honestly, it wasn't my favorite. I felt like options were limited especially compared to some other manufacturers. Other than those issues described above, the board performed well and was rock solid during testing. I encountered no problems with stability or otherwise at stock speeds. I would put this on the short list of motherboards to consider if I was building a new system. Tested with the following: Corsair DDR4 2x8GB 3200 MHz RAM (XMP enabled) Intel Core i7 6700K Corsair 750W PSU NVIDIA GTX 960 Corsair H100i v2 Water Cooler

Pros: Before rattling off the hardware features and compelling specs for this motherboard, I want to talk about the software that allows us to interact with it. Gigabyte "gets it" when it comes to software and it is clear they've made a sizeable investment in R&D to bring a great set of utilities to us in the form of the App Center (a bland name for a really nice set of tools!). The App center acts as a wrapper for some BIOS settings, an update tool and a monitoring tool. For example, EasyTune is worth the price of the MB itself. Let's say you are building a gaming system. You are going to overclock, mess around with memory voltage and related settings, fans on high, etc. The EasyTune interface lets you set up all of the key parameters for this and store them under a named profile. Of course, there are also default profiles you can pick from. OK, after you've been playing your favorite game for awhile, you want to watch a movie on the projector in your game room. With EasyTune you can easily set up another profile for lower CPU performance, default memory settings, and put the fans on silent -- so now you have a silent media computer and can enjoy the movie. There are monitors you can set up for temp and current so all of this can be made fail-safe. The profiles can be toggled via hotkey assignment, so to create that silent media PC just hotkey and it's done. I'll run out of room if I go on about App Center; there are other tools like BIOS update, live monitors, LED on/off (this board is only 'red'...hmmm), set security features, RAID config, boot mode, and a few others. I've been building computers since 1980 - first with a wire wrap board ;-) -- and I can say that this chunk of software that Gigabyte provides with their newer boards is by far the best set of utilities I have seen. Very cool. Of course if you want to go 'old school' you can always bring up BIOS and there are literally dozens of settings...you guys know the drill, it is all there to geek-tweak to your heart's content. Now, as far as the HW specs and performance. Things that impressed me: - Very solidly built, beautiful clean layout and minimal discrete component count. - Board weighs just shy of 2 pounds - it's nice and beefy. - 3 PCI Express ports (x16, x8, x4) -- 8 shares clock cycles with 16, and 4 shares with SATA3 0/1 (turns them off actually). - 1 USB 3.1-C port, 1 USB 3.1-A and a mix of six other 3.0/2.0 ports. - HDMI port but you'll likely never use it since you'll be dropping in dual GPU cards... - Built in audio has S/PDIF out which is nice to have. - Comes with 4 SATA cables, SLI bridge connector, G Connector and even some nice logo'd velcro cable ties. - Comes with stickers for labeling your ports and cables. I ran the board non-stop with a 'mild' overclock and using an Intel i7-6700k @ 4.5GHz, 16GB of G.Skill Ripjaws 3000 in XMP mode. A couple of older Corsair SSDs. Zero issues, Win10 boots in under 20 seconds with no weirdness. Note that the newer Intel CPUs might not overclock with this board due to some uCode changes Intel has been making...verify this before selecting a CPU for the board. The 'k' series of CPUs will be fine.

Cons: - Hard to complain at this price, but it would have been nice for a 2nd M.2 SSD for a slick on-board RAID solution. Is there a way to stack them? (question for the engineers at Gigabyte) - that would be nifty. - I'm sure there's a reason for this, but the I/O backplate is padded on the inside, and can make it a little hard to get the board mounting holes to line up. - More fan headers would have been nice. - Only 'red' LED mode...c'mon guys...really?

Overall Review: This is the fifth Gigabyte board I've personally had in one of my computers. My office desktop system I use every day is built on a Gigabyte board that is around 5 years old, it's an AutoCad workhorse and has never let me down. This is one of the brands I never hesitate to recommend to friends or family - top shelf all the way.

Pros: Every feature you could ever need Really cool LED's Bios Is great, one click overclocking for I5-6600k and I7-6700k with different clock speeds for your preference.

Cons: Cpu power pin is up top making it hard to hide cables or put in a dual radiator. (Radiator problem might just be my case)

Overall Review: Iv'e had my system up for a bout a week and Iv'e had zero problems. Booted the first time. The ram slots have a sort of aura Led effect making empty channels even look cool. I was really hesitant on buying my z170 motherboard because every one had multiple 1 egg reviews, simply because it was DOA. I do get that it is annoying, but 1, you haven't used the board at all so how can you review it, and 2 every computer related component has a chance of coming DOA, it is a risk every buyer takes and everyone knows, so there is no point on saying your board came DOA. Newegg offers 30 day return on almost every item, return it, get a working board, then review it.

Pros: Works fine if you don't use optical audio

Cons: Optical audio constantly cuts in and out (this has been going on at least since Sept 2016 so Gigabyte is well aware of the issue yet has not fixed the problem (I really wish I would have read this before purchasing).

Overall Review: I need to now decide if I will return this motherboard since I am still within the 30 day window... I have a ticket open with Gigabyte so I will see what they have to say...

Pros: -Beautiful Black/Red design with Sliver highlights -Red ambient lighting -M.2 2280 support -Thunderbolt 3 -Excellent Onboard Audio -Well thought out placement of fan headers -Bios is feature rich and fully unlocked

Cons: -Bios layout has a learning curve, not hard but not as good as MSI Mobos -Nothing really, so far a solid error free experience

Overall Review: This board is simply Beautiful. It feel so solid and sturdy when you first hold it making it seem like they mistakenly sent you a $400 dollar board instead. The design is well thought out and comes with clear wrapped Silver SATA cables and a Q-Connector for the headers. The PCI-E slots are re-enforced to prevent sagging from big GPU's. My Geforce 1070 stays perfectly level with no dipping at the end. The ambient Red Lighting seems too bright at first but is actually quite subtle and blends perfectly with my chosen case lights and the GPU lighting as well. The BIOS is great except for the fact that in order the get a definition of the action, you must go to a separate box instead of just getting a pop up message using mouse hover. Not a big deal considering most users already know the meaning if they are buying a board like this to begin with. Hopefully future firmware updates with enhance the BIOS experience. I don't see the point of overclocking nowadays with modern hardware, but tested it anyway to see how high I could go with this. I was able to get a successful 4.7GHZ Overclock on my 6700K with ease. The Gigabyte tools App in Windows works great and allows you to monitor changes, Temps and clocks in real time. some adjustments can be made on the fly withouot requiring a restart. I love this board and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for the best bang for the buck Z170 MOBO on the market.

Pros: Bought this board to build into my new PC for the summer, I decided to go with an i5-6600K, and got it Overclocked up to 4.8GHz using a corsair Liquid cooler H80i. Overall installation was easy the extra spacing between the PCIe slots was super helpful as I had some older GTX970's and now they breath so much better. I'm using 16gb and will add more later on once I get some more cash. System runs great very quick and smooth.

Cons: The colors don't show that much but its not a big deal breaker for me. Not only that I saw some other boards with RGB

Overall Review: The biggest plus is that the board is black on black which makes it great for any color scheme.

Pros: Was looking for LGA1151 compatibility with Thunderbolt. Add in NVME x4 and I was sold.

Cons: Had to RMA the first one. Second one is running fine so far. Not sure why Newegg bundled the Intel 600p SSD since it is not on the compatibility list from Gigabyte and it isn't recognized in the bios.

Overall Review: My last Gigabyte mobo lasted 6+ years and is still running strong so I had to stay brand loyal. Hopefully this replacement lasts just as long.