Pros: We have built many State of the Art computers using Asus, EVGA, Intel and other manufacturers’ motherboards; however, this is the most stable motherboard we have ever had! Everything works exactly like it is supposed to. It has 7 fan leads and three main power supply lines; the two extra power lines are there to supply extra power to overclocked systems (one for the CPU and one to provide extra power to the graphic cards). Though we use this computer primarily as a business machine running Adobe CS5.5 Master Collection for publishing high end photographic and video products; the system is sweet for down time gaming. Our system’s stats: CPU: Intel 970 (overclocked slightly), Primary drive: 240GB OCZ Vertex 3 SSD, Date drive: 4 X 2TB Hitachi HDD in Raid 10, Graphics card: EVGA GTX 580. This machine is the first one we’ve built that maxes out the Windows 7 base score at: “7.9”.

Cons: Though this is not really a con, the board has only two SATA 3 ports; the other 6 SATA ports are SATA 2. It would be nice if they could find a way to provide more of the SATA 3 ports. However, though we have not yet added a dedicated RAID card to get the desired SATA 3 ports; we have read many reports that indicate that as the best way to go. We usually run both a Blue Ray and a DVD burner but ran out of SATA ports to handle our system but we ran out of SATA ports so we had to run the DVD as an IDE drive.

Overall Review: This was also the first system we built using the same manufacturer (EVGA) for both the Motherboard and the Graphics cards. We used to use ASUS motherboards regularly; however after having several failures with them, we have now switched to EVGA for both our Motherboards and our Graphics cards. We use the Nvidia cards because of their enhanced performance qualities when running Adobe's CS5.5 Master Collection software.

Pros: -EVGA Customer Service and Forum Support -Awesome Red and Black color theme -USB 3.0 / SATA 3 -X58 Chipset -Support of Intel Xeon X5000 series CPU's "out the box" -Stable -VREG Temp's are acceptable for air cooling -Quality construction -Placement of onboard devices and interfaces -Supports 3X SLI -Dual SLI spacing of video cards is excellent My specs: -Intel Xeon X5650 (6-core) 22x Turbo Multi, 4.40GHz -EVGA Classified 3 -Corsair H70 w/120mmx38mm (2750rpm) fan and stock 120mmx25mm (2000 rpm) fan -Dual MSI NGTX460's, Cyclone, in SLI (256bit version) 915MHz core clock -Coolermaster Silent Pro, 1000 watt PSU -Corsair, 6GB DDR3, 2000MHz, 9-9-9-24. Had to set the memory to 1600MHz and 7-8-7-20 timings for stability (7.9 rank in Windows) -Silverstone Raven RV01 (RED LED MOD) -Lamptron, FC5-Version2, Fan Controller -2, Western Digital HDD's, 7200RPM, 1TB -Logisys RED Cold Cathodes -ASUS Bluray Drive

Cons: -My onboard audo stopped working in a few hours; however, EVGA support was outstanding. They were [unbelievablly] fast and effective at troubleshooting the issue. They were ready to RMA the board, but I decided to purchase a $30 RF soundcard from BB and all is well now.

Overall Review: Unlike the Intel Core i7 980X and 970; overclocking the Xeon CPU's takes a bit more patience. EVGA's forum was totally awesome in helping me OC the X5650. Took me several hours, but we finally got it from 3.6GHz to 4.4GHz. I think I can go a bit higher, but my temps are a little concerning. 70C with Prime95. I'm not here to bash other motherboard manufacturers, as I own the ASUS R3E, Maximus Formula, and Gigabyte X58A-UD5 and UD7. Let me tell you, while these are all first class boards that I truly enjoy, when I've encountered issues, EVGA is light years ahead in "service." That's why I purchased this board and am glad I did.

Pros: Best motherboard I've used so far. if you're doing 3 way SLI and still want a dedicated sound card this is one of the very few boards out there that has the right order and spacing of PCIe slots to do it (you can even add a dedicated physx card if you have a case with 8+ expansion slots too!). On-board power, reset , and clear cmos, switches are extremely useful if you are benching with this board and you even have an error code / cpu temp led readout. The bios is one of the friendliest I've used in a long while especially if you are doing any overclocking (it does the calculations for you as to your target clock and such). and to top it all off the aesthetics of this board are beautiful, the north bridge heat-sink has an EVGA "E" logo on it that pulses like a heartbeat with a red LED to go along with the red and black of the board. Honestly this is THE most stable motherboard I've used in years. Also EVGA's customer service is SECOND TO NONE....I never had any other company stand

Cons: There is a fan that is put on the north bridge heat sink that blocks you from putting a sound card in that PCIEx1 slot, however with proper airflow and the right case you won't need the little fan (I took mine off). The only other thing I can think of is that the audio header is up near the PCIEx16 slots and your case connection will be mashed down by your graphics cards (if you have a sound card with a header connection on it use that instead).

Overall Review: you get 8 profiles for your clocking, save your defaults in one of them and remember where you put it so you can always go back to it if needed. EVGA has a huge and extremely helpful forum community....if you run into questions or problems just head over to the forums.

Pros: EVERYTHING!.... This board overclocks very easy and im not and avid overclocker, looks amazing in my white phantom, stable and quiet the life time warrantee was a huge factor for me, evga's customer service is amazing!

Cons: None

Overall Review: Had a slight problem with the sata 3 controller and my ssd, called evga and they helped me fix it with ease! My build: MOBO - This one! CPU - i7 950 oc'd 3.9 ghz GPU - Evga gtx 470 MEM - Corsair Dominator 1600 6GB SSD - Crucial REALssd 128GB (programs) HDD - WD 2TB (data) Cooling - Corsair H50 Push pull Setup (idle 16 load 36) Case - Nzxt Phantom White (bleeping Aazing)

Pros: So far so good with this MB. It performed well right away on the first powerup. It idetified my processor correctly but didn't set my RAM up (set it to lower freq)... No big deal this, this is to be expected. Once I entered in the values and saved, this took it.

Cons: PCIe clip release next to NB cooler is very hard to reach if you need to remove your videocard. You'll need a pencil or something to stick in between the card and the cooler to push the release clip in. SATA III controller takes about 3 seconds to ID my single SDD during a reboot. Onboard sound didn't work out of the box with my 7.1 speakers. I had to re-assign the audio outputs to get 5.1 sound. Still working on getting 7.1 up. Realtek software isn't the best...English translations in the software are...odd.

Overall Review: Make sure you update the BIOS !! Versions prior to v.82 have a bug that will power off the machine when doing a soft reboot if HT is enabled. MB does have a CMOS clear button on the board. Had to use this once because I was experimenting with a QPI setting. Well, ahem,... My setting was wrong it left me with a machine that would not POST. Opened my case, hit the button, powered up - she POSTed fine and re-entered my CMOS settings. Nice to have this. I did have to make contact with EVGA support once so far. I had a reply solving my issue within 24 hours. Good customer support is hard to get nowadays, so I'm happy to maybe pay a little more for this.

Pros: Well I cannot say what has not been said. The board is clean! I love the "e" on the northbridge that pulses red like a heart. This is the kind of motherboard to have inside a case with a window (haf here!) -- Just an all around great board.

Cons: Man I hate to knock off 1 star for this but I must... But I believe my DIMM slot 3 is dead. I kept getting the whole "Windows has 24 GB of Ram Installed but only (16 Usable) -- I try to put a stick in slot 1, cool, try in slot 1 and 2, still 4gb of ram (even tho windows sees it installed) Now this isnt a huge deal, I just happened to be the guy who lived in Hollywood and likes to do video stuff in very high resolution. BUT WAIT EVGA Customer Support is awesome.. so far.. getting it RMA and so far they been very cool. (hopefully they see this and approve it ha) -- Actually one time out of the 6 times I have called for basic questions while figuring out the dead DIMM they were busy, so I hit a few buttons and they called me back 5 min later. How cool?

Overall Review: I bought my GTX580 from EVGA and this Motherboard - Never bought any products from them, but I am impressed with this order

Pros: Easy install. No issues.

Cons: North bridge cooler was alittle high for my Noctua NH-D14, but I made it work.

Overall Review: The north bridge has a red light that constantly flashes - even when shut down.

Pros: Rebuilt my computer about a month ago, I was going to go with the x58 Classified till I saw this came out well worth the little bit for sata 6gb and USB 3.0. Fit into my Thermaltake Armor case with ease and overclocking was as easy as ever! I managed to get in I7 930 up to 4.4 ghz on the first boot and it passed all stress tests! Thank you EVGA for another great board!

Cons: Not really a con but there is a tiny fan on the southbridge cooler. I ended up having to remove it so I could get my sound card and all three watercooled 5870's in. Other than that, perfect so far. It have taken everything I've thrown at it without even flinching