MSI Big Bang-Marshal (B3) LGA 1155 Intel P67 (B3) & Lucid LT22102 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 XL ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

Pros: Large number of PCIe 16x slots. Japanese capacitors. Nice looking. Descent heat sinks. Overall hardware quality seems to be good. Separate PCIe 6 point power plug. Useful for those that want to use power hungry SLI/Crossfire or simply overclock their GPUs. Spacing of the two 16x slots are nicely spaced apart for heat dissipation. However, it creates a unusual gap length for SLI cable. All metal screws, no plastic tabs. Generous USB ports.

Cons: Horrible software. Buggy on the client side and server side. Ex/ OC Genie does not work properly. Creates a unstable system. Did not recognize the memory properly. Can not update BIOS. The software refuses to believe the new BIOS exists. Can not update the Control Center, LiveUpdate fails to download the latest version, the web site fails to list the latest version for manual download. One of the utility software is in Chinese characters, hence all garbled on English systems. LiveUpdate, the software in charge of keeping all the BIOS, drivers and utility up to date is extremely buggy. Super Charge does not work. A software that supposedly allows high current USB devices such as iPads to charge. Only 2 slots can simultaneously be 16x, and only if no other then those two slots are used. Memory slots a bit too close to the CPU to use with large CPU coolers.

Pros: 4 x8 slots with p67 is rare, 4 way crossfire is awesome! Took my 2500k to 5GHz with ease. Nice blue Intel color scheme. Quad crossfirex, x-fi software.

Cons: Lucid hydra 200 chip. Do NOT install the lucid hydra driver. Can't stress that enough. Just let it be an unrecognized device in device manager. Crossfire will not work and you will get blue screens with the driver installed, even if it is disabled.

Overall Review: For the money, you might as well get the sniper3 from gigabyte. This was the hotness at release, but now there are cheaper better options.

Pros: Familiar with MSI from previous experience.

Cons: unsure of Tri Sli Capability? 16x whatx whatx with three 580's

Overall Review: I am very close to choosing between this board or a Big Bang with a 2011 socket I would rather use this board and keep my good i7-2600k and use my three MSI Lightnings in Tri-Sli. Any guidance towards this goal from anyone?

Pros: First, it should pointed out that NONE of the slots on this board run at x0, regardless of the populations of any other slot. x1 is the minimum (only applies to slots 2, 4, 6 and 8), which i will agree is probably too slow for a cable TV tuner. I'm a folder, so this board was perfect for me in every way. x1 is not an issue for folders. Neither is Hydra. I somewhat wish that chip wasn't there, to be honest. One less thing to cool and may have saved a few $$. I'm currently running a Zotac GTX 460 and 2 EVGA GTX 590 Classified Hydro Coppers in my slots. No issues at all.

Cons: No one makes boards for folders, but this is about as good as it gets. Toss the Hydra, toss the X-Fi, keep the power saving software and concentrate on just the brute force. Can't really take off an egg knowing i'm in the minority.

Pros: It is really pretty and has a beautiful packaging- if you care about that junk

Cons: This board just won't work with my 3ware raid card and only works with my cable tv tuners in certain slots. I can get the video card to work in every slot but these cards will not work in others. I am on board #2 and I have the latest firmware that MSI gave me. I just can not populate 8 slots (the reason I bought this board)

Overall Review: I think the problem is the hydra chipset but I can't be certain. The 3ware card is a 9750LXi and I am pretty stuck with it at this point. I am about to ship the two bad boards back and look elsewhere. Terribly disappointing because I wouldn't have bought a new machine if this one was no good!

Pros: To whom it may concern, in the previous review, the user complained about not being able to populate all of the PCI-Express slots. The reason is because boards like these only really have the slots wired so it can go 16x-0x-8x-0x., etc. Because of this, not all slots are able to be populated. Though I am not a representative of MSI, I would like to apologize on their behalf for not mentioning this to their customers. The reason I happen to know this is because I have seen quite a few video reviews of this board and my suspicions were confirmed that not all of the slots were able to be populated.

Cons: I hope this helped the other used,

Pros: It has a great look to it, and it has many great features for overclocking, such as the Click BIOS, and OC Genie, plus eight PCI-E slots make this board great for multiple devices.

Cons: At first eight PCI-E slots looked promising, but when it came down to the actual use for them, they were extremely disappointing. Lucid Hydra just doesn't cut it when it comes to multiple graphics cards. If they revised this product and stuck in a chip set that supported +3-Way SLI, and or Crossfire, maybe this board might of done better.

Overall Review: Again, not to happy about the Lucid Hydra, but the board looks good and the Click BIOS makes it easy to overclock.

Pros: Great idea.

Cons: Hydra just not ready for primetime yet.

Overall Review: Again, great idea. They just need to polish this tech a bit more before putting it on the market. Read Tom's review.