Pros: It's kinda weird to say this, but usually there is one particular piece of my computer I like the most. I've been building them for a long time and I always get tickled the most by my graphics card. This time around, everything is different. I really, really like this motherboard and will definitely give Asrock a much closer look in all future purchases. This time around I went with this board because all the options from Gigabyte totally sucked and didn't include IGP (costs hardly anything and makes 3+ monitors much easier - stupid decision). The BIOS is very awesome. During POST it shows the debug information in the bottom right corner (extremely helpful!). The software utilities are really good (except one, more on that below) and I found the user manual to be quite thorough. Overall, I love it!

Cons: I wish it had a few more USB ports on the back, but I'd much rather have all the other stuff so I am actually very okay with the compromise. The Xfast USB software utility is rather irritating. It certainly did increase the transfer speed of my USB mass storage devices, but on every startup and wakeup from sleep, it would take far too long to initialize and sometimes caused devices not to enumerate. It's also rather frustrating that it forces you to plug and unplug the USB device multiple times when it detects that it has never been plugged into the computer before. This utility is really my only complaint. The motherboard itself is still incredible and gets 5 eggs from me.

Overall Review: I highly recommend this board. It did well overclocking my i7-2600k as well. I did not do anything hardcore, but I easily got 4.5GHz and it has been stable for several straight days of super-pi.

Pros: Fired up the first time and never faltered. Using OCZ Vertex 3 SSD and 3TB 7200 RPM Hitachi HD, both on SATA3 connections - both worked perfectly. Instant flash from USB stick is awesome. Recognized the XMP settings on my 16GB of 1600 8-8-8-24 DRAM, but I had to manually select to use that setting. Still, it worked great. Front panel USB 3 ports. Well-labeled connections, no need to consult manual. 2 of the 4 SATA3 cables have right angle connectors on one end. UEFI BIOS is quick and well organized. ESATA port on rear panel is SATA3. 6 well-positioned fan connectors, 5 with speed control. Very quick boot-up, just about 3 seconds before Windows begins loading.

Cons: There was some mechanical interference between the heat sink backplate and the cutout in the motherboard tray of the 922 HAF case. Apparently the CPU socket on this MB is not positioned where Cooler Master expected it to be. But the insulation tape on the backplate kept me out of trouble. I'm not sure if this is unique to this MB or if all 1155 MBs might have this problem in the 922 HAF case. The all-in-one monitor and tuning software utility does not always jive with the settings in the BIOS. I don't trust it. I tried the "Advanced Turbo 50" setting not knowing exactly what it would do. It resulted in what I considered to be extreme overclocking settings (4800MHz and aggressive voltages) and although it booted into Windows with these settings and would probably have run, I shut it down quickly as I saw temperatures nearing 90C (using CM 212+ heatsink). This seems like a risky one-click option in the BIOS, ASRock showing off. FAN speed control is a bit mysterious but function

Overall Review: Great experience: I was experimenting with overclocking without raising voltages and when I reached 4800MHz, the machine crashed a few seconds after booting. I watched it do this for 3 cycles then it stayed off - and the handy CMOS clear pushbutton on the back panel *LIT UP IN RED* like it was saying "push me now to fix everything!". I pushed it, and the machine immediately started up with stable BIOS settings. Totally blew me away!

Pros: Feature set is great. Haven't built a tower in about 5-6 years and this board went in without a hitch. USB3 front panel is great and the UEFI makes overclocking extremely easy. I haven't even tweaked anything yet, just used the UEFI to OC an i5 2500k and moved the slider over to 4.1Ghz, stable at 40C, took me 3 seconds to do. I have more OCing to do but this took no time at all.

Cons: The UEFI status monitor is a little flaky, I'm not sure if it's just my board/install but the temperature jumps all over the place. When I load the UEFI it shows the correct temperature (40C), then jumps down to 30C and stays there. If I reboot into the BIOS it shows the correct CPU temp but once I boot into Win7 it still does the same thing. Not a huge deal since I can check in the BIOS but it would be nice if I decide to push my setup further.

Overall Review: BIOS interface is really nice and easy to use. If you're an idiot like me, make sure to properly seat your SATA connectors before you boot the machine. I spent a good 20 minutes trying to figure out why my DVD drive wouldn't show up in the BIOS and sure enough I plugged a SATA2 drive into a SATA3 connector. Read the markings on the board, it helps.

Pros: Onboard graphics. Four SATA 3 connections, (sadly, 2 are on the Marvell controller). Broadcom NIC.

Cons: I purchased two of these boards. And I think reviewer "uszkanni" is mostly right in his/her assessment of the performance of these boards. They have real stability issues with Windows 7 64-bit and perhaps 32-bit Windows 7 as well due to I/O, HD recognition issues and inability to retain BIOS settings. Windows XP seems to perform OK on these boards (although I haven't used the OS extensively, just as a backup). But with Windows 7, I've gotten BSODs after: (1) rebooting Windows (2) unplugging an esata or USB drive and (3) installing any software that installs a driver that must be loaded during the bootup sequence. Even powering down the PC and leaving it off will guarantee a BSOD on the next startup.

Overall Review: Asrock is up to bios version 1.70 as of this writing. I've tried all of the patches but 1.70. Be aware that each time I updated the bios (either under DOS or from Windows), the update hosed my Windows installation and I had to reinstall. So proceed with caution.

Pros: Assembly went well, Booted no problem. Recognized my 16GB of ram, just had to set the XMP profile. Overclocking is a breeze. RAID and Marvel controllers recognizes drives extremely quickly compared to my previous build. Crossfire works great (Even without the additional molex power) Has numerical post card built in on the board, CMOS reset on the rear IO panel.

Cons: USB controllers are a bit finicky. POST hangs with one of my USB keyboards for ~4 seconds on initial boot. With my other USB keyboard attached it always goes into Bios setup. The only way to resolve the issue is to disable USB compatibility mode. Once disabled my USB keyboards no longer respond during boot (Can't get into BIOS). But I believe it will be resolved eventually with a bios update.

Overall Review: Great board overall. Looks to have quality components.

Pros: None. 2 boards DOA.

Cons: First board would just default back to IDE giving the A3 error before crashing and repeatedly turning on and shutting off. And finally it stopped posted. I tested everything else, GPUs, monitor, PSU, ram. Had to be the board. Got the new board in, getting ready to pop the CPU in and I shine a light inside the socket to find 3 bent pins, one is so horribly bent that even a blind man could see from 10 feet away. DOA. 0/5 Eggs for ASrock!!! I had to give at least one, but its 1 more than they are worth.

Overall Review: There is no legitimate excuse getting 2 bad boards in a row, unless they got absolutely no quality control at all. I'll never buy ASrock again, that is for sure. Go with Gigabyte or Asus, and don't buy this board. I wished Newegg kept a record of RMAs for potential customers to see on various products to get some kind of idea on error rates on these boards. I am sure this board ranks as one of the highest error rates for a Z68 board.

Pros: Easy install. Recognized memory and all installed devices. Not overclocked yet but performance is good.

Cons: Only the problem mentioned below.

Overall Review: One minor problem. I have the screen saver set for 6 minutes and standby on the monitor set for 30 minutes. When the monitor goes into standby, I get the Windows device connect/ device disconnect sounds. This occurs every 3 or 4 minutes, unless I actually power off the monitor (which also makes the device disconnect sound). The monitor (Acer 22") is plugged into the DVI port on the motherboard since I haven't decided on a video card yet. I updated all of the drivers to the latest on the ASRock site. Not sure if this is something in Windows or the BIOS. No problem using the monitor on other computers. Z68 Extreme 4 Intel i7 2600k G.Skill 2x4GB LG Blu-ray burner Plextor DVD burner Hitachi 500GB SATA2 Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

Pros: Very stable. Good UEFI. Good overclocking options. Works fine from first boot. Supports socket 775 cpu coolers - great if you water cooling. Lucid Virtue disconnects discrete GPUs when needed. Very easy UEFI update.

Cons: Don't choose "Install all" option from driver CD. Just load what you need. Make sure you load Virtue driver last.

Overall Review: i7 2600K @4.8 8 GB Corsair Vengeance 1866 2x GTX 480 Vanilla SLi Auzentech Forte 7.1 PSU BFG 1200 EX Windows 7 x64 SP1