GIGABYTE G1 Gaming G1.Assassin LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 XL ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Gigabyte has certainly done a very good job designing the Assassin. The board has been up and running rock solid for about four months now. I have not run into any problems pertaining to this motherboard. (except 1 minor, see cons) The board is larger than most XL certified cases. I implore you that you do your homework on this one. Gig's website has a list of compatible cases but this list is not entirely accurate. I have the Thermal-take level 10 GT snow; This board does not fit in that case. I am savvy and dismantled the PSU bracket in the case and rebuilt a custom one, took a few hours and some welding but the PSU and board fit nicely within the case now. This board stays elite cool. Keeps my gear icy which as you all know vastly increases the life of your precious hardware. Thank Gig for that double PCB and copper core! The extra power phase infuser (4 pin) is a nice touch. Rest assured your gear is receiving all the power it needs/wants. Good job Gig!

Cons: The Creative on board audio (as stated in many previous reviews), is/was problematic. I have resolved this issue however highly doubt many have the technical disposition for troubleshooting hardware issues of this magnitude. Gigabyte is a very strong competitor in the manufacturing of mobos and vid cards among other things. Because of this fact its unforgivable that Gigabyte release the Flagship with a known hardware issue (not a software conflict). The On-board audio suffers from electrical discharge/arcing with adjacent PCB conduits which causes the infamous audio crackling and horrible sound issues. Warning: electrical arcing if allowed to continue will most likely result in permanent damage to the motherboard. I installed a non-conductive shield plate over and around the arc site effectively neutralizing the issue. The sound is now perfect. I still got love Gigs but really?

Overall Review: This board is an enthusiast dream! It overclocks like a champ, unlocks every enthusiast potential I can think of. Rock stable and made of high durable components. Gigabyte made a killer board. In my opinion one of the best if not THE best X58 board. EVGA doesn't even compare in terms of quality, design, and raw power. It's functional, and lovely, mean, and lean. It destroys the competition. Regarding Gigabyte and their motherboards... I have been and long as they keep up the great work always shall be loyal. One more thing. Please don't make a design flaw as detrimental to the boards use and function as the audio problem is. This usually wouldn't be such an issue but for many enthusiasts... we bought this board BECAUSE of the integrated killer hardware. Its not so killer if the hardware is not functioning as it should. Still... I love my Assassin, it has done me proud.

Pros: This is a large board with plenty of cooling space between GPU slots. Sound card is amazing. The 6Gbs Sata3 ports are limited by the drivers at the Gigabyte website. I was running the Marvell driver offered from the Gigabyte website and was having some mixed ATTO read issues on a Kingston Hyperx 250Gb 6Gbs Sata3 drive writes were around 410MB/s and reads were off at 310MB/s. So I went to ASUS (of all places) downloaded the Marvell 91xx drivers and whalaa! Now ATTO writes 480MB/s Reads 532MB/s. I am dumping a Rampage3 Extreme for this board and happy to do so. Board runs a little warm and does need a large case with some air space. Runs 2xGTX580's in SLI no issues what so ever. Killer performance in MW3 and others. Strong board with ability to OC plenty. CPU i7 980X WEI 7.9 across the board OC'd to 4.6Ghz and stable. Great Motherboard.

Cons: I do have a little crackling noise at times from the sound card. Not too sure about that. Will update after some more testing.

Overall Review: No CMOS Clear button - back to the ol jumpers. :0

Pros: everything works outstanding, but theres one issue that on the board that has my complete attention!!

Cons: the Marvell 3gbs driver is NOT compatable to win 7 64, and dose "NOT" operate as advertised "SOOO NOT HAPPY ABOUT THAT!!", just to get it to load I had to find another Marvell Driver @ ASUS of all places to make it work. then it's NOT near as fast as the intel chipset thats on the board. I bought TWO Volociraptors @ 600 gig JUST for that Marvell feature. Now its all over your forum, and on many other forums that this Marvell driver is garbage, and everyone is going to a third party to try and make it work, someone at Gigabyte needs to put a foot on someone at Marvell and get a real honest to goodness whql driver. and yes I tried everything in the begining ie:used your m/b disk "didnt work, used your web sight, downloaded your latest drivers "DIDNT WORK", found them at a third party "support.com", and Asus.com. "I'm soooo not happy about paying for something that I cant use :(

Overall Review: other then that, awesome board still guys.

Pros: -It's purty. -The Bigfoot Networks LAN on the mobo, in my opinion, is better than my old EVGA Killer Xeno Pro, and the service doesn't get cut-off from my Virus Scanner. I haven't had any problems with it. -Onboard sound system is awesome. Personally, I think it's way better in sound quality than an HT Omega Claro Plus (I own one for my old rig). Think of an HT Omega Claro as a top quality, clear radio, and the onboard sound system on this board as an HT Omega Claro on steroids with all it's sound enhancements. -Onboard sound system doesn't require the use of a decoder like DTS or Dolby to operate. You can switch to either the sound card, DTS, or Dolby. Personally, not having the decoder on is better because the sound quality is just that good. -I had an E760 EVGA 3way SLI mobo, and this Giga Assassin was a lot better in many ways. Installation, first time use, etc... Had less complications with this mobo. My E760 had trouble reading all my memory, load times would change.

Cons: -I dislike the EasyTune6 setup when it comes to monitoring the temperatures of your cpu and other things. The EVGA Eleet is better, imo. In ET6, it's got these bars that tell you the CPU temperature, and I just prefer numbers over that. ET6 shows numbers, but I am kind of use to using EVGA Eleet and CPUz. -Onboard sound makes wierd interference or clicking noises randomly sometimes in Game Mode while watching a video, but when you play a game, it's gone. If you watch a video in Media Mode, the interference goes away.

Overall Review: For my tower, I have an Xclios 2000, and it's considered to have an ATX size up to an EATX. Since my old mobo is only an inch bigger in length, when I installed my mobo in my tower, it fit perfectly. The Xclios has like a 3.5" gap from the bottom to the area where the mobo rest. About an 1" of my mobo goes past the tray, but there's still a lot of space underneath. I think the only reason why my tower isnt' recommended for this mobo is because the mobo-tray wouldn't get the last 3 screw holes in the bottom. My mobo isnt shorting out, so it doesn't matter to me. It fits, my mobo works perfectly, so I am happy.

Pros: Very nice looking board, things are easy to get to. Had no problem getting it installed in my Cooler Master HAF X RC-942-KKN1 Tower. It actually looks kind of small in it. The extension piece for the front panel is pretty nice. I found the board looks very nice. The bridges and heat syncs are attractive. Havn’t played with the OC option but looking forward to it.

Cons: Was having significant problems with the onboard Bigfoot Network Killer Ethernet port. I was unable to Access most Secure websites, could not access ITUNES store, and, not that I use it normally, IE9 kept crashing. At first I did not expect the Ethernet, but then after performing a couple of ‘NETSH WINSOCK RESET’ s when I would reboot I would receive a ‘LSP not mapped correctly would you like to remap’ if you hit yes the problem would continue, if you hit no it went away. After some research I found that wireless versions of the BIGFOOT network cards have the same issue. It being a 1GPS card was a big selling point, but I just jacked my old expansion card out of my old computer (also 1gps). Oh and the stupid apps that come with the motherboard stink. Zynga is already uninstalled.

Overall Review: Really nice.

Pros: Tech Support Is FANTASTIC. I built my PC for multiple uses. these days media center more than for gaming. But i wanted it to preform great in all areas. 24gb ddr3 ram. I7-990x, 120gb SSD sata III, 8TB raid 5. this machine flys with out wings. I had a problem getting the Raid XHD controller to recognize HD's 3TB. It would only see them as 746GB. I reflashed the bios to F5A. And still had the same problem. Called tech support, Spoke to a very poor spoken chineese dude that spoke spanglish. BUT, the person i dealt with had me try a few things, that didnt work. and had me send him all the raid Rom V. 10 minutes after i sent them that he replied to me with "Well you need a custom bios version to work with the hard drives you are using, UMmmmm, I get back to you shortly" this was 8:00pm. I thought it would be weeks BUT, The next day 10ish am, I recieved an email with the updated Bios bin file. "here try this BETA" work great after downloading a new driver set.

Cons: Very nice lay out for a fat board. Takes even a fatter case to hold it all in. I made the mistake of trying to stuff this fat board into a skinny E-XL coolmaster case. I have a 1000w power supply. That Blocks the Lower 2 slots. Not really the boards fault.

Overall Review: The LED layout on the board just Awsome. KillerNetwork app crashes IE9 constantly. even when disabled. Fresh load of win7 works fine until update to IE9. or works fine with IE9 installed untill I load the KillerNetwork software.

Pros: by far imo the best X58 MB extremely OC friendly loaded with features gamers like myself love, great BIOS, solid feel no cheap components

Cons: it didn't come out sooner, issues with IE9 but I use firefox

Overall Review: X58 chip-set is all but dead but still very solid and better then the new X68 imo, pair this with an i7 960 or 970 and u wont b disappointed, running sli with evga gtx 470 12gb of 1600 ram 2 TB WD hardrives 6GB sata in raid 0 couldn't b happier my 3rd broad from gigabtye, just remember u need a big case for this monster, go to gigabtye site for list of some cases it can fit to, I have it in a HAF X

Pros: This board is a builder's dream. Plenty of room to get around, ultra cool heatsinks, slots and more slots. 5 separate fan headers.......a modder's dream. Easy to clock with the Bios and the separate software. It is a little pricey, but well worth it in my opinion.

Cons: I own 2 of these boards, and the only negative that I have found so far is that the Bigfoot Killer Lan chip as shipped, will not support Windows 7 (64 Bit) with IE9. You get the dreaded BEX64 error. The simple fix is to download the newest updated driver and install it as opposed to the one shipped with the board. The new updates not only have different software manager, but also reflash the chip itself. Al in all, it takes about 10 minutes and solves all of the issues with IE9. Firefox and Google Chrome work great with the original software.

Overall Review: A couple of thoughts: 1) Perhaps adding firewire support. Not really that important to me, but others may have Firewire devices that won't connect to this board. 2) The green LEDs on the heatsink are awesome if you have a case with that scheme, but making them more readily accesible for modding would be even nicer. 3) As mentioned, perhaps either updating the Bigfoot Lan drivers, or documentation to do so would be helpful. I am a longtime Gigabyte fan and build exclusively with them. These are some of the best boards on the market and well worth the cost if you are serious about the backbone of your system. Add to that the service and support of NewEgg, and you definitely have a winner.