Pros: Incredible price, no slouch on features. My board came flashed ready for the Ivy Bridge E CPU's. Extremely easy setup, built like a tank. Plenty of expansion. I was up and running in minutes, BIOS setup took about 5 minutes, memory setup was a breeze with XMP.

Cons: The only issue I've had with the board has to do with the SATA ports - the first two are SATA3 controlled by the X79 chipset, next 4 are SATA2 controlled by X79 and the last 2 are SATA3 controlled by the on-board Marvell controller... problem is, the X79 SATA3's do NOT show up in Windows as disc 0/1, but 2/3. The Marvell drives show up as 0/1. Keep this in mind when installing your OS! Other than that, really no major issues.

Overall Review: I haven't overclocked this system yet, but honestly, why bother? Complete stable, no issues at all almost a month in. This board will be a solid platform for me for MANY years to come - could NOT be happier with the purchase. Of all the boards out there, this is the one to get. Doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the high end Asus boards, but if you want a great, solid, no-nonsense X79 board - this is the one. Specs: Gigabyte GA-X79-UP4 Intel i7 4820K 32GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1866 Intel 120GB 520 SSD 1TB WD Black, 2TB Seagate EVGA GTX770 Corsair 750D Corsair AX860 Windows 8 Pro 3DMark Ice Storm: 139806 3DMark Cloud Gate: 20883 3DMark Fire Strike: 6822 Windows Rating of 8.2

Pros: Simply beautiful! Quality construction, impeccable layout & design. This thing has so many features and settings it took me back a bit. Overclocking is a breeze with plenty of fine tuning available.

Cons: Bottom PCIe slot is just a bit too low and pose an issue with the USB, sound and other connections at the bottom are plugged in with a bigger GPU wanting to use that slot. I didn't plan on using 4 GPUs anyway so not a big deal.

Overall Review: To be honest I can usually install a board and know inside and out within a few minutes in the BIOS. This board has so much to it I actually had to study the book a bit. I like the fact it has that many features and settings. On a side note; I like to do a mock support ticket in situations where I'm not use to a company. Their support is as amazing as the product.

Pros: Great board for the price! Great onboard components! Hackint0sh compatible! Although, I had many problems with this board; 1. There really isn't a better one for the price, and 2. Gigabyte's support is awesome! They always answer the phone, and call you back to follow up. I think the longest hold time I had was about 10 min. Those two facts alone are why I gave this product 4 stars, and will also keep me coming back to Gigabyte!

Cons: Like a previous reviewer stated, there are numerous BIOS issues. Some of which I wanted to shed some light on how to resolve. First off the F4 BIOS is NOT COMPATIBLE with a Radeon HD R7950 Graphics Card! You will get ZERO video output! Both the Final F2 and Beta F3t BIOS's are both compatible with the Radeon HD R7950. If you are using a 3.0 RADEON HD 7xxx Graphics Card, and your board ships with F2, DO NOT UPGRADE to F4! (F3t can only be obtained by calling Gigabyte Support). If your board ships with F4, you will have NO VIDEO OUTPUT, AT ALL! You will need to use a lower quality graphics card (I used a Radeon HD 3450) to get the system to boot. And here's the DOWNSIDE; you MUST downgrade the BIOS by using a CUSTOM version of atBIOS from Gigabyte Support, FROM WINDOWS. This is because F4 is a LOCKED BIOS, and can not be downgraded without specially modified atBIOS Utility! Q-Flash WILL NOT WORK. This means you will have to use a lower-end graphics card to install Windows FIRST! This has been a very time consuming project which has left me with a serious migraine! Hopefully my experience will help someone else! Read my Other thoughts on the BIOS Freeze issues.

Overall Review: How to get around the BIOS Freeze Issue (this is modified from another reviewer): This issue seems to only be related to the F4 BIOS, but others may have the same issue. Upon booting up, the motherboard would freeze at the BLUE UEFI BIOS Screen, right after the initial Post. You would get a Flashing Cursor, then a Mouse Cursor (you can move), and then it would lock up at the Blue UEFI BIOS Screen (Mouse & Keyboard stop responding). I tried several of the suggestions by another reviewer below, but nothing seemed to work...(solution at the bottom) "After much wasted time trying different things and researching I'm eventually able to get into the UEFI BIOS on one computer. I had to unplug everything but 1 DIMM, keyboard, mouse and move VGA to PCIe slot 2. Ok so the next time I try to enter the UEFI BIOS the system freezes again at initial bios screen. This time I discover that I have to unplug the mouse and it let me in the BIOS. 3rd time I try it the system locks up again. I try clearing the CMOS but not go. Then I move video card to PCIe slot 1 and it doesn't freeze. Oh and the mouse can be plugged in ??? VERY FRUSTRATING!! This is the story with both motherboards. They are extremely unreliable, flaky and unpredictable when it comes to trying to access UEFI BIOS. Once you finally get past the BIOS issue the system will load and run windows just fine. But if you every need to get into UEFI again. It's a huge frustrating ordeal of trial and error and to add insult to injury the Clear CMOS jumper doesn't work correctly. You have to pull the battery and wait about 5 minutes. But doing that doesn't really fix anything anyway." In addition to all the headache above, I also moved the single stick of memory to different slots (which didn't make any difference AT ALL). The one thing that DID WORK EVERY TIME, was to disconnect ALL of the SATA DRIVES! ALL = ALL (CD/DVD ROMs TOO)! This should allow you to get into the BIOS EVERY TIME! After which, you can configure it, reconnect your SATA Drives, and boot normally. Hopefully this saves someone's build from a crazy person with a Sledge Hammer. ;)

Pros: 6 internal and 2 external SATA-3 controllers, low power consumption, absence of fan on chipset, ultra-durable, looks very aesthetic

Cons: undocumented possible problems with Windows installation, first PCIe 16x slot is located very close to CPU, just 4 case fan connectors

Overall Review: 1. I connected two Samsung 840 Pro SSDs to Intel SATA-3 (6Gb/s) controllers (RAID 0), four 2Tb WD Red to Intel SATA-2 (3Gb/s) controllers (RAID 10) and Asus DVD drive to Marvel SATA-3 controller and started Windows 7 Pro 64 bit installation. Once the RAID drivers were installed Windows recognized all RAIDs. Partitioning and formatting went fine but Windows generated the error that "System cannot be installed on this drive". And this error was with every formatted drive. After 30 minutes search on forums I found that DVD drive should be attached to one of Intel (not Marvel!) SATA controllers. Once done, Windows installed without problems. 2. I installed the video card (Sapphire VAPOR-X RADEON HD 7970 6Gb) into first PCIe 16 x slot and found out that it's located very close to the CPU heatsink (Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO). For better heat distribution I decided to move the graphics card to the second PCIe 16x slot but I could not push on the card release lever without removing the CPU fan and heatsink. On my opinion the best configuration of PCIe slots would be 8x (closest to CPU), 16x, 8x, 16x (closest to the end of motherboard).

Pros: Very pleased with my purchase of this motherboard. I usually try to pick buy the most expensive, feature rich and well received board money can buy, but I've learned that the notion of keeping the board forever and upgrading individual components is pretty much obsolete. That said this board did not disappoint, instead it: * Has the aura of an much more expensive high quality board. * Surprisingly small (My 800D case makes this board look like a micro-ATX) but still roomy around the CPU despite 8 memory slots. * The socket and back-plate are very solid and I choose the stock setup over the optional back-plate included with my aftermarket HSF * The onboard fan/power/USB connectors are placed perfectly for easily routing my cables behind the motherboard.

Cons: It has been a while since I've made an upgrade, my old Q9550 was simply an amazing processor (still kicking in another build). That said, this new 3D graphical BIOS shenanigans is annoying and doesn't seem to add functionality. On the flip side of the coin, it doesn't seem to give up any functionality so perhaps I'm just adverse to change. Another minor quirk, the top PCIe slot layout on this board (and most other boards) seems to be very non-optimal. The top slot is very close to the memory, the next slot makes it difficult to access the SATAs. It is always nice when manufacturers leave a PCIe x1 at the top, for sound cards and a buffer between the CPU/Memory and the GPU. One more thing, DON'T EXPRESS INSTALL THE DRIVERS. Just click on individual installation and choose the ones you need.

Overall Review: Ultimately, there is a plethora of positive things I could say about this board. Any negative comments are mere quirks. This board surprised me as I was expecting to pay as much as double. This is the first time I will be running Gigabyte in my main system, though used them in systems for friends/"customers". This is one of the easiest boards I've worked with. For reference my setup is: Case: Corsair Obsidian 800D PSU: Corsair Gold 850W CPU: Intel i7-3820 Mobo: Gigabyte GA-X79-UP4 HSF: Xigmatech Dark Knight II "Nighthawk Edition" Ram: GSkill Ripjaws 8x8GB @1866 HDD: Seagate Momentus XT 500GB GPU: Sapphire 6970 2GB

Pros: This board has my 3930K stable @ 4.8GHz with 1.376V. It did however take some time getting used to the Bios as I came from Asus, but with time it was breeze. The features of this board are what most users will use. It's not bloated with a bunch of stuff that you don't. Was easy to set up everything. It has great memory read/write speeds as expected & it pushed my SSD as it should be. The board is very clean & well laid out. The USB 3.0 works great & Sata 6G in raid0 was very easy to setup. However for Windows 8, I advise you grab the drivers & burn them to disk/flash drive. I grabbed this for 244.99 somewhere else & it was worth every penny. This board is a steal!

Cons: Could get my Corsair Dominator stable over 2400MHz, my 3930K was stable on my RIVE @ 5.1GHz @ 1.435V & it took 1.470V on this board to do it.

Overall Review: This board would be the best X79 board out if power phase was a lil stronger, overall it is a must have board @ any level.

Pros: -This board runs cooler than my Rampage IV, and that was really surprising. -I heard complaints in reviews about it being hard to overclock. I set my 3930k to 4.5Ghz only using 3 settings and it is 100% stable on the first try. -It only requires two power inputs (atx and either a single 8-pin or 2-4pin connector). -NO PCH FAN. This was a major selling point for me. -10 sata ports, and 6 of them are 6GB/s. Much better than some other, more expensive, boards. -The optical output on the back supports coax. -A fan connector at every corner -Supports 4 graphics cards. The spacing works with dual slot gpus.

Cons: -Unless using XMP, it board forces my ram at 9-9-11-24 timings when it's 9-9-9-24. Even when set manually it doesn't fix it, that is until I used XMP. Then it was fine. -I noticed that plugging in one drive after setting the boot order seems to wipe out all boot order settings. -YOU CAN'T DO 4 WAY RAID AT 6 GB/s. A major selling point for me also was that both the description and manual made it look like the lowest 4 slots (2 vertical and 2 horizonal) can be raided together and they can't. If you want 4 way raid, you have to use the intel ports, of which only two are 6 GB/s. I was very disappointed to find this out, as the 4 bottom ports are grouped together when talking about raid. If you want to use them for raid, you have to make 2 separate sets. -I can't get the Easy Tune software to run at all, nor can I get the bios flashing software for windows to install. Neither of these accomplish something you can't do in the bios, but it may be worth noting. I'm using windows 8.

Overall Review: I went from a Rampage IV Extreme to this, and I don't regret it at all. It may not have the features of the other board, but I like simplicity. To me, the more simple a board is, the less features there are to malfunction. The price is right and this board as all of the features I can imagine anyone needing, though I do miss the diagnostic led readout and the on/off switches for the pci-e slots to diagnose problems. That being said this still worked perfectly on the first try, and I can't say that about the rampage. I didn't mention the features like USB 3.0 and some other features like other reviews, because that's part of the x79 spec and as far as I know, all boards of this chipset have them.

Pros: Small ATX form not E-ATX. Kinda worked for a while. Its black and grey.

Cons: Board out of the box had memory issues where XMP profiles wouldn't work and had to manually enter memory settings. Board would not overclock at all. And was a real pain to make 32gb or ram run at 1866mhz. Ran for over a year then the marvel sata controller started not recognizing drives and then a week later I started having huge stability issues with the board and microsluttering while playing games. After a year of messing around with this board I've given up and going to buy an evga dark board and sell this junk...

Overall Review: Gigabyte has always been a good standby but I'm very disappointed in this board. Should of spend the extra 100 bucks and bought an asus or evga board....