Hey all, hope you all had a nice new year, with all 10 fingers intact!
As I mentioned before, my good ol' desktop computer got a new motherboard quite a long time ago, but I never managed to get time for a short review.. Until now that is 
The reason why I got this motherboard is simply caused by 1600MHz DDR3 RAM trouble with the old one. It was a pain getting it to work stable - especially with the OCZ RAM I had at the time.
If you cannot wait to hear my thoughts about this motherboard, you can find them in the end of this post. If you need any other information about this motherboard, just ask me and I'll be happy to help :)
Here I've got the new motherboard in all its glory. There's nothing like getting new hardware, eh 
. The only fail thing about this picture, is the very VERY white box *shivers*. This should definitely have been a deadly, black color and everything would be just perfect..
There wasn't alot of acessories included in the box, mainly because this was quite a cheap motherboard. One thing, that really interested me about this motherboard, was the new USB 3.0(ish) controller. I might not need this yet, but this is definitely a good way to make the motherboard ready for the BLAZING FAST FUTURE!
There is not alot to mention about the motherboard itself. It have got the typical Gigabyte blue coloured PCB w/ (baby) blue & white PCI/PCI-E slots.. I am not amused about these colours, but it could be so much worse. Just look at this motherboard from colourblind AsRock. As you might have recognized, the GFX card im currently using is the (old) Zotac 8800GTS 512MB. Yes, I know.. I definitely need a new graphics card VERY soon but to be honest, I would rather wait untill I build my next desktop computer. This graphics card is (still) powerful enough for the games I play, yet more silent than most of the graphics card on the market. Besides I dont have the money for a new one, but that is a different story 
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There was no major problems making the parts fit together at all - after all I've built quite a few desktop computers before. The only problems were the HUGE CPU cooler being in the way for the RAM slots. Therefore it was quite difficult removing and inserting the RAM without removing the fan first.
Before I even bothered tweaking, I started out with updating the BIOS to the newest available from Gigabyte. Afterwards I made sure the computer was running stable by using MemTest and Prime95. It is completely pointless trying to tweak/overclock your computer, before you are sure you are running with the newest BIOS.If THATS not working out, then its usually a good idea downgrading to an earlier released BIOS. One thing I really noticed about this motherboard, was the pretty advanced BIOS. Almost every voltage or timing is possible to change on this board, which is a great thing in my opinion!
My conclusion about this "beast" of a motherboard? Well it is definitely a great way to give your "old" LGA775 based computer a new life without spending a fortune. There werent alot of trouble making all the parts work together, and it was nowhere as difficult as with the ASUS motherboard. I did, however, end up using kingston RAM instead, and these were even easier using with this board.
Another thing that never worked with my old ASUS motherboard, was the S3 Standby feature. My computer would always sleep, and then instantly resume again OR sleep and then BSOD when I woke it up again with the keyboard. In the beginning, this feature didnt work out either on this new motherboard. The computer would either hang when resuming or not resume at all, and therefore need a hardreset. I solved this problem by downloading the newest BIOS (Version F4) from Gigabyte.
I have not yet tried to overclock with this motherboard, since the most important thing for me was to get my desktop PC working again.
I hope this werent the case, but If all I wrote was "tl;dr", heres a cooked-down version of my "review" 
PROS:
- BIOS
- Compatibility with older/newer hardware (especially the RAM)
- USB 3.0
- Good, durable components and capacitors
- Misc. powersaving / ezOverclocking tools
- Future friendly
- Cheap!
CONS:
Hope you enjoyed reading this, see you again soon!
//KillerBee out
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