Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsIt's fiddly, but fine once stable
Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2023
This board has given me fits. It wouldn't recognize the boot drive as a boot drive until I turned off Fast Boot in the BIOS, yet insisted that three different data drives - a 2.5" SATA, a 3.5" SATA, and an m.2 stick - were boot drives despite having no operating system on them. Even after booting up successfully from the *actual* boot drive, reattaching any of these data drives caused the motherboard to lose its mind. (Eventually had to take them out, boot up, then migrate all files off these drives using external enclosures.)
Once I sorted out the drive and BIOS issues, I found this motherboard to be a great match for the i7 11700KF and Radeon 6750XT that I installed in it. As a bonus, it's the only board where I've ever had Corsair Vengeance LPX RAM be stable at it's listed speed.
The long and the short of it is that this board is finicky as hell, but worth it once it's set up. It's also touchy enough that I don't even want to think about ever upgrading anything on this build ever again, lest The Great Gundam decides to disapprove of the change. (Maybe Gundam is angry that we hid all those graphics in a plain black, windowless case.)
EDIT: I've knocked an extra star off, as mine did not arrive with the expected WiFi antenna and, instead of sending an antenna, they want to advance RMA an entire unit with a credit card hold of nearly triple what I paid for the original board. Absolutely unnecessary and too much of a risk for me that something goes wrong along the way.
