Asus P8Z77-V LX Motherboard (Socket 1155, 32GB DDR3 Support, ATX, Intel Z77 Express, USB 3.0, CrossFireX Support, Dual Intelligent Processors 3)

Had this a few weeks, running a Core i5-3570K.

Physical installation is reasonably straightforward, my main complaint would be the board is slightly smaller than ATX, and so only uses 6 chassis screws. The front few cm of the board with the power, memory and SATA connectors are therefore on the unsupported section that extends beyond the front 3 chassis screws. This means it bent more than I'd've liked when inserting the modules / connectors, I supprted the free edge with a finger in the end.

Everything is well labelled, though routing all 6 SATA connectors and 3 USB2 headers to the same part of a case may prove a challenge if you do want all of them. Spec-wise it's fine, on the plus 6x HDD, 4x USB3 and 10x USB2 and more PCi connections than cheaper boards, on the negative only one full speed PCi 3.0 lane (limits cross-fire) and no IDE legacy support. There are no USB front or backplates bundled with the board so out of the box you only get 2x USB3 and 4x USB2, but you do get 2 SATA3 cables.

Driver installation was a pain hence the 4-stars. This was mainly due to poor CD design rather than the drivers themselves. You seem to have only 2 options, install everything including some Symantec bloatware or install drivers and applications one by one, which involves alot of reboots. The second route took far longer than it should, even on a system that can reboot to Windows in 30s. A few also gave the "This driver did not install corrrectly" error in Windows 7 x64 - which is a bit unforgiveable seeing as the OS pre-dates the board by at about 3 years.

In the end though, UEFI BIOS is a pleasure to use, and the Windows apps seem well featured.

Overall, a decent price and spec with some minor gripes about board layout and driver disks. To compare with other boards check Tom's Hardware, which reviewed it alongside boards costing at least £20+ extra and decided it came out only slightly behind them.

The P8Z77 V LX is an excellent choice for the price, perhaps there are more feature-rich boards for the same price out there (namely from Gigabyte and Asrock) but my previous phenomenal experience with Asus products and software support dictated this purchase. Board works as intended, also verified for Windows 8 (which I am currently running) and Asus delivered WHQL Win 8 drivers amazingly fast. Haven't had the chance to test lucid virtu in windows 8 environment yet as it is not supported at this time.

Offers great variety of settings in Bios, especially as far as overclocking and fan setup is concerned although users may want to invest in better cooling for their components and case if they decide to go that way, mainly CPU since the board lacks any sort of coolers on the capacitors like Asus's Stack Cool. Also lacking is IDE device support, so I had to throw my old DVD and floppy (!) drive (yes I still had them in my case), SLI (some paltry Crossfire support where slave card runs at 4x, NOT recommended for dual card setups) and eSata port, though you can always use USB to attach external interface combos.

All in all, a great board for the price intended for simple builds. People into overclocking looking for a mainstream board may want to check ou the P8Z77 M for better passive cooling capacity, if mATX is your thing that is.

If you need a decent Ivy Bridge board for a reasonable price this is the one you want. Some features and connections have been cut from the more expensive models but it still has more than enough to make this version great value. Third gen Intel Core i3/i5/i7 series CPUs are fully supported and will make the most of this board but Sandy Bridge CPUs are well supported. The new UEFI bios is nice to work with to, it functions more like an OS. If fiddling with the bios isnt your thing the auto setup is more than adequate, although if you want to make the most of things like the GPU acceleration and rapid start features you will need to adjust settings.

Fortunately the manual is also superb, 55 pages of detailed images, layouts and instructions for all the features.