ASUS P8Z77-V LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Using this motherboard was a pleasure as I had no issues at all. I have built many desktops in my day and this was by far the most trouble free. Love the new BIOS and Windows 8 loaded and found all of the hardware and installed all of the default drivers. Nice...
This is my 3rd Asus MB and after doing some research I decided on this one. If your on the fence about a quality Z77 board this is the way to go. Has lots of SATA ports and setup was breeze. Like previous posters said make sure you assemble the WIFI before installing the MB into the case! My only complaint is I was not able to flash the bios using Flashback, the light flashed for 5 seconds then went solid which indicated there was some issue. I was able to flash it in the bios before installing windows. The BIOS is great, this is my first UEFI and it's so much better. I used the turbo mode to get a safe 4.1ghz OC. I also went with a Samsung 830 256gb SSD and if you have been waiting to switch from mechanical drives it will blow your mind! Anyway, this is a solid board with some great features and you won't be disappointed!
I haven't fully switched over to this board yet, but I've been testing it with the Windows 8 customer preview. It works well with everything so far. The USB3 speed is very fast and the integrated nic is also pretty quick, sometimes I'm able to hit 60MBS on Gigabit LAN. No problems with installation on 8 or 7. Pretty solid product so far.
This board for me has been typical for Asus quality, rock solid. I have had no major issues with the motherboard. I'm running a Core i5 3570k at 4.7 Ghz with 16 gigs of Corsair Vengeance 1600 ram. This board comes with several great features I really enjoy. The easy BIOS update is great, update from windows with Asus update or from a USB flash drive. The UEFI Bios makes tweaking a breeze. This board boots very quickly, sometimes I don't have enough time to hit the delete button. The integrated WiFi works flawlessly. Basically, this board has every feature I could possibly need, which is why I didn't opt for a more expensive model. The Asus utility suite has some pros and cons. The auto tuning feature worked well for me, but further teaking from the app didn't go so well. Here's my major gripe, the tuning app set my vcore to 1.5v without my input. OC profiles wouldn't save so evey time I reboot the PC I'd have to reapply my settings. I ended up doing my overclocking directly from the BIOS and I've had no problems since. My other gripe is in the windows app you can set your vcore with a slider bar, in the bios you can either go full manual or offset mode. I don't find trying to manipulate the vcore offset to be as user friendly as sliding a bar to your desired max vcore. Also, I haven't been able to get consistent results out of the offset settings. I'm running +.080 to get my desired 1.28 vcore which seems to be counter intuitive to everything I've read (vcore - desired vcore = negative offset). As of this date I'm running the most recent BIOS, maybe in the future the vcore adjustment could be a little easier.
Putting my little issues aside, I would buy this motherboard again and I will continue to buy Asus in the future.
I really love this board! The design is great and very sleek especially after my old P55 board. I'm running a brand new i7 3770K and a gtx 670 in it with 8GB of G-Skill RipJaws DDR3 1600mhz RAM (which it recognized imediately and set correct speed/timmings#. The UEFI is a breeze to navigate through with a lot of good features.
There really isn't much to differentiate between motherboards nowadays, so I chose ASUS for their great AI Suite utilities. The Wifi-GO of Asus is really quite cool and I can stream my desktop to my ipad2 and other compatible wifi devices around the house. There is also a great OC utility that you can run from windows which will find and optimize the near best OC for you #have a look at the PC Prespective live review of ASUS Z77 overclock on youtube#.
I went with the V over the V-Pro because I really didn't need more mobo Fan headers/or the bluetooth, and saved a decent amount. One thing I ahve to point out to new builders is to enable RAID mode over AHCI in the UEFI before installing for the first time. I installed windows onto a new Samsung 830 128gb SSD in AHCI mode and later couldn't set up RAID my 2x 500gb raid 0 drives w/o re-installing/restoring windows. There are NO drawbacks to enabling RAID #non-raided drives run in AHCI) but at least it gives you the option to create a new array later on.
I would have given this mobo 5/5 stars hands down except my top 2 USB3.0 ports (the ones on the mobo itself) don't work. They don't provide any power and don't recognize any peripherals connected. I have scoured the UEFI for a setting to enable/disable but haven't found any. It's a shame really because this is a great producd. Anyway, well done to ASUS, I'll update this review if somehow the USB's come to life.
Edit:
The usb problem was caused by driver problems. I recently downloaded a new batch of usb 3 drivers from ASUS and voila, they started working!!! I then re-installed the old drivers to be sure of the cause of the error and again, they stopped working..
System Specs:
ASUS P8Z77-V mobo
Intel i7 3770K OC 4.5ghz w/ Scythe Ninja 3
16GB G-Skil RipJaws 1600
EVGA GTX 670 + 470 for Physx
256GB Samsung 830 6gb/s SSD - Primary OS
2x500GB WD Raid 0 - Secondary Instals
4x 2TB WD - Tertiary Storage
Coolermaster HAF 932
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