Gigabyte GA-Z97X-GAMING 3 LGA 1150 Z97 Gaming Audio and Networking ATX Motherboard

Had no problems with this motherboard. I got this motherboard with an Intel Core i5-4670K because I just couldn't wait for the 4690K (was the weekend before release :P) Before I had this motherboard, I had an AMD Athlon X4 750K with a Gigabyte GA-F2A75M-HD2. I had exactly no problems with that board, either. Every Gigabyte board I've owned so far haven't failed me (I've owned the two mentioned). In fact, the GA-F2A75M-HD2 currently lives in my brother's rig and gives him no problems. The onboard audio is also good. I got HD 558s, plugged them into the onboard audio, and no problems whatsoever. No distortion, nothing. There is nothing I would change about this board. I will never 3-Way or 4-Way SLI so I wouldn't need the extra bandwidth and another PCI-E slot. You can even run the Intel iGP with (a) dedicated GPU(s). I like this feature because it lets me run my second monitor on my iGP which would otherwise sit there doing nothing. The overclocking on this board is solid. I haven't seen the max you could go, but I'm not planning on going as far as I can. It's fairly straightforward. You can change the multiplier by just entering a number. I haven't completely fine tuned my overclock because of temperatures. As of now my 4670K gets to 70 Celsius @ Max with F@H (which heats up your CPU more than anything). I guess I'll keep this overclock and I'll have my own winter overclock. I got the CPU to 4.5 GHz with 1.35V and the max temps were 78 Celsius+. But that's my chip's fault, nothing to do with this great motherboard with ease of use.My rig :Intel Core i5-4670K @ 4.0 GHz (1.15V)Cooler Master Hyper 212 EvoGigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 3 (in case you hadn't guessed)Kingston HyperX 8 GB (2x4GB)2x Kingston SSDNow V+200 in Raid0, Seagate Barracuda 1 TBNVIDIA Asus GeForce GTX 580/NVIDIA PNY GeForce GT 620 (folding)/Intel HD Graphics 4600 (second monitor)Corsair CX600MNZXT Source 220

I paid $80 for this mobo refurbished. i am shocked at the price now as i am getting ready to upgrade mobo and cpu this year. you could pay less for an i9 and a nice 300s mobo than this mobo and a cpu. even the i5 4690k and i7 4790k that fit this board are outrageous for how old this tech is now. BUT i have had no issues with this board. easy install, the refurb came with no IO shield for the back of the case and 0 drivers. had to download the drives via mobile phone and pull them manually from it to the pc. still cant believe this pricing right now 300????

There's not really a lot to say about motherboards. You put things in them and they work. I particularly like this motherboard because it supports color-coded LED cables for your case. The bigger reason I bought it, though, was because it had everything I needed for a pretty good price. Again, there's not a lot to say about motherboards.So why am I giving this 3 stars? The software included with this motherboard is garbage. At first glance, it may appear to be pretty good; it allows you to fine-tune the RPM of all your fans, even 3 pin case fans, just by connecting them to the motherboard. There's also a hardware monitoring tool that can provide an extremely wide array of information, even allowing you to record it! These were the defining features for me, but the rest of the "app center" as it is called is pretty mediocre; a bios flasher, fast booter, overclock stuff, faster charger for apple products, a usb blocker and a couple of other things. They were either occasionally of use or not at all.However, problems start to show up when you become more experienced with it. The utility called @BIOS is highly unstable and unreliable; so much so that many would recommend you simply NEVER use it because of how risky it is... That's pretty terrible. Gigabyte couldn't even get a utility for flashing their own mobo's bios right. The fast booter also causes stability issues and doesn't even boot the machine that much faster. Everything else is fine; the faster charger and usb blocker would be about as useful as you would expect them to be, but they aren't unstable or anything... sort of.You see, all of these programs run off of the "app center." It's not just a name for Gigabyte's utilities, they actually use the program as a hub. The problem with this lies in the fact that the app center uses a file known as gdrv.sys to operate, and that file is known to cause RAM data corruption.Yup. You read that right. Just using the app center will corrupt your RAM's data. I was having issues (BSoD) with waking my computer up from sleep mode and wondered why. After some diagnostic legwork, I soon found out that gdrv.sys was the culprit. So all of these utilities and the app center would have to go if I was planning on using my PC... which they did.Dang, Gigabyte. You make hardware and your own utilities for your own mobo corrupt the system's RAM. That's pretty terrible... Terrible enough that I would never buy another Gigabyte motherboard again if I did not have previous experience with them and knew that the software isn't always this bad.You can still install all of the necessary drivers to make the motherboard function normally, but unless you want a bug-ridden experience, say goodbye to any software utilities you would usually get with a motherboard. To be honest, I would rather not even have access to the app center at all; that way, I wouldn't have had to go through the headache of diagnosing and solving all the problems I've been having.In conclusion, the utilities that come with the motherboard are garbage and you shouldn't use them, ESPECIALLY @BIOS, but the motherboard works perfectly fine without them.Buyer beware, I guess.

I bought this mobo for the PC I bult. Its great! Gigabyte makes great stuff. The board was super easy to install everything i needed and the bois is great and user friendly! The board has a cool red light that goes around the whole board, but cant really see it when its in the case. Overall this board has worked great and all of the USB ports are great as well!

I ordered this for my new cpu, 4790k.I was quite surprised and impressed with the built in options for over clocking.I had issues with a USB device in the first week but it turned out to be a bent pin on the cable. The board is fine and device works properly with new cable.I removed 1 star because I do think they give too many options for bios/uefi. I think I counted different screens, all with the same information but each one growing more complex and confusing.Also because I'm not a fan of the short atx board. I'd prefer if the width of the board went full size and allowed the board to be supported by the 3rd row of stands.I use the standard bios/uefi and it's been perfect.TLDR : good board. Good default bios uefi. Good port/plug placement. Too many uefi screens. Wish it was wider.