Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsBuyer Beware: This is not the board you're looking for : (
Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2018
If I wasn't a Microsoft Certified Systems engineer with PC considerable build expertise going back some 18 years, I would have listened to all the warnings about this board. But I knew if anyone can get it to work, I could, and in order to reap the rewards of the extreme beauty of this board and everything promised, I was willing to do whatever it takes, and wait as long as is necessary to hold Gigabyte to their promises. It's the last of my cash they will ever see. Snap out of it, because I know what you're thinking. It can't POSSIBLY be that bad, they are Titans of industry, I HAVE to have this board, because nothing else is like it, youtube has these awesome reviews, and it's the best of the best. NO! No it's not! They are just SAYING it is. It's literally a huge sad lie. Read their forums on their own website! Nothing works, and they have no defense! Consider the most basic thing you can't get wrong: LED. A grade schooler can do it, I've done it, but it doesn't work! I'm talking the true orange preset is flat out yellow, yellow is flat out green, the modes don't work, and all the LEDs on the board are different hues. So if you set it to white, some of the same parts of the component will be blue-ish, others greenish, others, yellowish, and purpleish, for any part that shows any white. It's a joke. A lot of what you do looks like trash. Brightness? Lie. Independent zones? Lie. Wave? Lie. Random? Lie! None of the advanced stuff works either. In contrast, I have an ROG crosshair hero IV build that knocks all of that out of the park. All of it. Everything works, looks great, and is easy to use. My Trident Z RGB's work flawlessly on the other boards, but goes dark on this one. Now take that dynamic and roll it out to everything on the board from it not running
ANY brand of RAM at advertised speeds no matter what you do, to the soundblaster stuff spitting out static like a volcano, or the mic jack not working at all. But on the other builds it's fine. My favorite? NO WAY TO UPDATE THE BIOS online, it fails every time. You wouldn't believe what I had to do to figure out how to do it on my own with a jump drive, it's ridiculous how there is literally ZERO, or completely wrong support. Their minimal flash bios instructions are just simply wrong! For once, every bad review I've seen on this product is true. I'm on my 3rd board, and each one has some huge issue. Focus on Gigabyte's responses to all the issues: "Contact us for an RMA" is all you will find: That means: "We didn't do or try anything! We have no defense. This customer is right, but we promise to let them start all over with another board! Not a *NEW* board. PEOPLE: THEY DON'T SEAL THESE. I refused to believe it. I had to go to Fry's, and Microcenter before I would accept it. Nothing in stock is sealed. I bought from amazon, and it's not sealed. Gigabyte seals other boards, but not these! Some had a little protective film on the armor, but not others. That means bad production runs. People send back their bad boards, Gigabyte at best makes sure it lights up or posts, then puts it right back into circulation with new bags and nice fresh boxes with sealed cables and a new manual. The boards I've seen look used. Some have issues with residues, chipped or scratched heat sinks, crooked caps along the heatsinks, it's bizzare. It's time for consumers to stop permitting this as the new norm, so that once GREAT companies like Gigabyte can do a cash grab. On top of all this is the worst imaginable support. Now listen carefully: I've always sworn by Gigabyte, I still have 2 boards that are simply a dream. Not even close to showing signs of wear and tear, never a single glitch, after over 10 years now, and they have no signs of slowing down. They are just butt ugly. Every color of the rainbow is on the board, it's hideous to behold. I have been playing every title you can imagine, and currently Legion content for WOW, current Guild Wars, etc. Deus Ex, video editing, red book standard recording, you name it. Throughout many many upgrades, it has been literally plug and play the whole time until I reached the cap of what the board can support. It's seriously that different an era of manufacture and quality control. Now what you have, is a fail company, leveraging this past legendary reputation to peddle spectacularly beautiful MANEUR onto innocent, unsuspecting consumers, who simply don't have time to fight them and demand what they paid for. So people have to either try to pawn it off on someone else on ebay, return it and go with a different brand built on actual performance, or just cut their loses completely and game on a console. This is a permanent scar on Gigabyte. This allegedly flagship level product is riddled with issues that would make your jaw drop and your head spin, and the list is so long and has such glaring, obvious issues so frequently reported, that there is simply NO WAY they don't know very very well what they are up to.... This is NOT the board you're looking for, because it's not a company you want to do business with anymore. DRUM ROLL PLEASE, as Gigabyte queues up their "Please contact us for an RMA" canned response to show their * Support *
