This motherboard is absolutely amazing. So many fan headers! This has always been my biggest issue with other motherboards, often times topping out at 4 or less fan headers. This thing has fan-headers for days! It even has a Dedicated Water Pump header, as well as 2 dedicated CPU fan headers. On top of 2 chassis fan headers and what they refer to as an "Assistant" fan header (probably for more fan direction). and these are just the ones at the top of the motherboard by the socket. I haven't even found the rest of them yet :P. The best, though, is that EVERY single fan header is a 4-pin PWM capable pinout. Means TOTAL control if you get the right fans.
Socket space was a bit concerning, there are some VRM's rather close to the socket that almost interfered with mounting the cooler I chose, but they were just barely short enough to make it work. So keep that in mind if you wanna use a beefy air cooler or a special water block that extends farther out than normal.
Installation was easy, if you've ever installed a motherboard before. straightforward, no special screws needed or whatever. The cover over the rear io-panel has cutouts that make any screw perfectly functional for the purpose of fastening the mobo to the case.
My one and only qualm about this mobo (and this will likely only affect a minute portion of the users) is that it only has 2 traditional Video Output ports, even though the graphics chipset can support up to 4 (I believe, 3 at the least). I know in the near future, and even now, the USB type C can be used as a third monitor output if need be, but I find that somewhat inconvenient, as I was hopin gat least for a third port, be it a second HDMI or even a VGA output would have been fine.
The XMP option on this motherboard worked seamlessly with the crucial RAM I bought, and even with a non-k i5-6500 processor, I was able to squeeze a small 15% (self-advertised, says so on the splash screen when I boot it up) overclock, so that's a neat little feature. Had no problem installing and booting to the M.2 using an NVMe Samsung SM951, and God damn is this thing fast. It boots up in under 7 seconds from off, Including the amount of time it takes me to activate numlock and type in my pin. Absolutly fantastic.
I'm very excited for the future of this build, as I'll be doing some expanding once the GTX 1080 has a White Aftermarket shroud option.
Very satisfied with this build, and this motherboard made it all possible.
| RAM | DDR4 |
|---|---|
| Memory Speed | 2133 MHz |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 4 |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 2 |
