ASUS P8Z68-V PRO ATX Intel Motherboard

Comment:
Got this with the 2600K , G.SKILL Ripjaws X F3-12800CL8D-8GBXM 8GB, after plugging everything in pushed the power button and nothing but a perfect first boot. was very happy that it worked first try. loaded windows 7 and everything seems to run fine.on board video is a great addition since i am waiting on my video card still but for now i can get the rest of the pc going.

Comment:
I bought this board a few weeks back along with an i5-2500k to replace my socket 1366/i7-920 system... it was a drop -in replacement with no reinstall of windows necessary, as is typical when switching from one intel-based board to another. I know I know, you're thinking "why upgrade from an i7 to an i5?"... I decided to go for the 2500K because it overclocks better, and the only difference between the i5-2500K and the i7-2600k is basically hyperthreading. Most apps wont even make use of four cores let alone the virtualized 8 so what's the point? Most sites online would agree with that assertion. The performance increase was immediate. I wasn't expecting such a difference because I thought this would be a marginal increase if any over my current i7. I didn't even overclock the 2500k or anything and it was noticably faster when launching applications and doing common desktop tasks. I havent really tested it for graphics performance yet, but since the PCI Express lanes go directly to the CPU now, I think there should be some performance boost.I also like the Lucid Logix Virtu controller and software application which allows me to plug into the graphics port on the board and only make use of my dedicated video card when I need it. This saves alot of power and is good for a greener environment. When I launch a 3d application, Virtu will automatically turn on the GPU and start using it to process the information instead, and still route it through the integrated port. I think thats some awesome sauce. The SSD caching features do work, but I prefer to just use my SSD on it's own and use a HDD for my unimportant data storage and as a backup location for the SSD. Windows 7 performs nightly backups of my critical information from the SSD to the HDD. This board does work great and I don't want to scare anybody off but it was not compatible with my Netgear GS608 8-port switch. In case anyone else has this problem and switch, I will document that the connection would drop  about 40% of packets and generate multiple link down/link up events per minute. When plugged into another switch or link, it works fine. It seems specific to Netgear switches, or even the GS608 specifically.

Comment:
Installed and ran stably. Easy overclock settings work like a charm, and there seems to be a minimal amount of bloatware with the default drivers. Got return from sleep to work after disabling the PLL Overdrive function. (tip via Googling for Asus P67 issues)