When Intel launched the Broadwell-E platform earlier this year, Intel’s X99 chipset saw a surge in interest as many users became interested in upgrading their systems which required a suitable motherboard to match. Today we have an X99 platform motherboard that sits at below the $250 pricepoint and has the features to keep up with most users needs.

Today we’ll be reviewing the Gigabyte X99P SLI which is a motherboard that falls into the $200 range with a fairly extensive list of features making it quite competitive on paper.

The original X99 SLI motherboard from Gigabyte was priced at the $200 price point but [...]

EVGA is a company known for selling top-notch enthusiast hardware such as graphics cards, power supplies, and motherboards. The subject of this review is centered around one of its top motherboard branded under the ‘FTW’ moniker. The ‘FTW’ branding stands for “For The Win”, which our young whipper-snappers would tell you symbolizes a nod of approval on the internet. More than just an internet slang, EVGA’s FTW branding is part of EVGA’s penultimate performance tier, of which the Classified brand reigns supreme.

Despite such a winner’s naming scheme, the EVGA X99 FTW actually represents the [...]

A couple months ago, we were fortunate enough to be one of the first tech review sites to get the opportunity to review the MSI Z97 Gaming 7 motherboard which we felt was one of the best all-around sub-$200 gaming motherboards. It was rock solid, had a fantastic layout, and a premium feature-set well worth its pricetag.

At the time of the review of the Gaming 7, MSI had already planned to release an even more premium gaming motherboard, the Z97 Gaming 9 AC, but it was still under wraps at the time. We were told however, that the MSI Z97 Gaming 9AC would be a wireless model and have a significantly upgraded audio system that would really [...]

For those who’ve been closely following the Z97 launch these past couple weeks, you’ll know that it hasn’t been anywhere near the smoothest chipset launch in Intel history. Despite Intel’s NDA set for May 11, we’ve literally known practically everything about Z97 for months and almost every motherboard maker has been either leaking their own products or breaking some sort of NDA to get their products some early media coverage.

With Intel’s NDA now expired and Z97 chipset based motherboards now rolling out at major retailers (with Intel’s new Haswell Refresh CPUs following suit), today we’ll [...]

With the release of Intel’s latest Z87 chipset and their accompanying Haswell parts, many motherboard manufacturers are scurrying to put out their latest generation of motherboards and with some of the features we’ve seen from various vendors this generation, competition is fiercer than ever. Now when it comes to the enthusiast market, I think each motherboard manufacturer’s $150, $200, and flagship motherboards are arguably the most important of the bunch.

The $150 price category is particularly important because price conscious enthusiasts want a board that has a certain set of base features, but [...]

With Intel’s focus shifting towards power efficiency rather than maximum performance at all costs, it’s becoming increasingly unnecessary for gamers and enthusiasts to purchase bulky and cumbersome giant cases with giant motherboards with tons of cooling capacity. This is why over the past couple generations of Intel CPUs, a number of motherboard manufacturers have begun embracing the mITX formfactor, which has traditionally been reserved for low power systems.

With that said, today we’ll be reviewing out the ASRock Z87E-ITX motherboard, which as you may expect is a mITX formfactor motherboard based off Intel’s [...]

With the introduction of the Intel’s Z77 chipset, Gigabyte has made many big improvements to their motherboard line and overall, we’ve been quite pleased with what they’ve done. A couple of weeks ago, we took a look at the Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H. While it wasn’t the top of the line Gigabyte product by any means, we were definitely impressed with what it had to offer for the price. Sporting tons of features, high quality materials, excellent looks and a more than reasonable asking price, it was easily able to snag our highest recommendations.

With that said, today we’re back with a review of another Gigabyte board and [...]

Only introduced a couple of months ago, Z77 boards have become all the hype these days. Sporting all the features of the Z68 chipset and a bit more, the Z77 chipset is looking to kick things up a notch with native USB3.0 support (up to 4) , Rapid Start for faster boot times, Smart Connect to keep web pages refreshed while your computer sleeps, and more. Of course, for many of these features such as native USB 3.0 support, an Ivy Bridge processor is required; however, Z77 motherboards will have full support for any LGA 1155 CPU, so both Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge processors will apply.

Today we’ll be doing reviewing Gigabyte’s [...]

It’s been a long wait here at Custom PC Review, but we finally have Intel’s top of the line LGA 2011 processor, the Intel Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition along with ASRock’s newest X79 board.

So, for those of you who haven’t been keeping up with Intel’s enthusiast class gear, the last time Intel announced a high end platform was way back in November 2008 when the socket LGA 1366 along with the Intel X58 chipset was born. At the time, it was the high end enthusiast class product providing support for triple channel DDR3 memory and up to 40 PCIe lanes.

Of course, 3 years is [...]