Intel Strawberry Mount LGA1155 Motherboard (Q67 UATX, 1 PCIE x16, 2 SATA, USB 3.0, DDR3)

I was building a new computer, and specifically chose this board for its virtualization support and built in VNC, which I haven't actually even used yet..

For my use, I needed a few work arounds to get what *I* wanted, but all in all, it is serving me well, and is running great so far.

The main "issues" with this board are:

a) If you use the Intel HD Graphics built into your CPU, you are limited to only 2 of the 3 video connections at one time.. The board has 2 DVI connectors, and 1 DisplayPort.. But you can only use 2 of them at any one time.. That's just how Intel HD Graphics works, no matter which motherboard you buy. If you need more than 2 display devices at once, you need to buy a discrete graphics card from AMD(ATi) or nVidia.
b) Straight up, you only have access to analog audio output or audio out over HDMI. However, if you use the HDMI audio option, that uses one of your 2 displays.. The long story below is my learning experience with the audio-out on this board..

For business purposes, this isn't a problem. This is technically a business-oriented board. For gaming or HTPC-type usage, it might be frustrating to you, if you want to have a minimalist system, but you also want the full suite of virtualization and Intel vPro capabilities, etc.

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One quick note: I recently updated the BIOS, and afterward my computer seemed to stop working.. I figured I messed up the BIOS update, and wound up putting back the older BIOS version, but my computer STILL didn't want to work.. Well, it was a dumb problem.. My boot drive was formatted with an EFI system partition (does Windows 7 force this? I don't know.. I sure didn't remember doing this), and the BIOS defaults to not booting to such devices. Once I figured that out, I reinstalled the newest BIOS version and set the BIOS correctly, and it is working fine again. Just as an FYI here is what I needed to change: In the BIOS, under the BOOT menu, I needed to set "UEFI Boot" to "enable".

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Now, for my experiences with this motherboard..

First off, I am running an i5-2400 processor on the board, in an Antec NSK-3480. The board does not support the CPU overclocking available on the K series processors, and those processors also don't support the same virtualization capabilities of the non K i5's and i7's, so no need for it for me.. (and I don't care about overclocking the CPU..)

I wanted to build an HTPC + general-purpose computing computer, and figured this motherboard would work fine..

There are no fancy CPU overclocking options on the board, as I mentioned above (and that's fine by me..), but you can overclock the graphics processor, and you can adjust the RAM voltage.. I have not messed with graphics overclocking, but I did *lower* the RAM voltage, and that worked fine. You can't seem to change any other settings about the RAM.. At least not in the BIOS.. This board does support UEFI, which allows you to changes settings from within Windows..? I think so.. And it supports memory profiles, so you might be able to change other aspects of the RAM through that, but I have no experience with this..

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Okay, this is the blah blah boring boring part, unless you are trying to get fancy-pants audio to your receiver and getting frustrated. : D

My main issue with this board (which was more of a learning experience..) was with its audio-out options.. I wanted this to be my HTPC, with my plan to have it connected to a projector and my receiver.. Normally this wouldn't be a problem. Using the built in (into the processor) Intel HD Graphics, this board has 2 DVI connectors and 1 DisplayPort adapter. The one limitation, though, is Intel HD Graphics only supports 2 devices at once.. so you can't use both DVI connections AND the displayport connection at the same time.. Normally, you would run the DisplayPort to HDMI and connect that to the receiver, and then the receiver to the projector with HDMI. There's connection 1 and it takes care of getting audio to your receiver.. Then plug your monitor in for the second connection..

However, there are a couple cases where this doesn't work: your receiver doesn't have HDMI, or you have 2 displays and they don't have HDMI.. OR if you just want to separate the audio from the video..

My case was a bit of both. Before buying the board, my plan was to run the DVI connectors to projector and monitor, and the displayport->HDMI to my receiver.. Buttt, little did I know, HD Graphics only supports 2 devices at once, so I needed to disable the monitor when I am running the projector and sending audio over HDMI.. This caused me to ponder other audio options..

On the back panel of this board, there are only 3 audio jacks.. And they are all analog audio jacks.. There are also headers on the board to plug in front audio jacks built into your case.. These are also analog jacks.. I, however, wanted to pass a DIGITAL signal from my computer to my receiver... which requires an S/PDIF connector (either coax or optical..). This board has this connector, but it's just a header/connector on the motherboard, and not an actual coax or optical plug on the back panel.. Which required me to buy or build an S/PDIF adapter/dongle, essentially.. I happened to have some parts floating around, so I was able to solder an RCA plug to an S/PDIF cable that came with a cd-drive I got yeeears ago to make a coax connector..

Well, that worked great! I didn't have to buy anything extra, phew! But annoying none the less.. And most of the other consumer boards just come with this connector right there on the back panel.. That's what I get for buying a business-oriented one..

But then I realized this wasn't even what I wanted.. Coax and optical connections don't have the bandwidth to transmit the HD audio signals on Blu-ray discs.. It sends Dolby Digital and DTS from a dvd no problem, but Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD? Forget it.. You can only get that to a receiver 2 ways: a) via HDMI audio or b) analog outputs from the computer to the analog inputs on a receiver.

Back to the drawing board.. My problem is that I am actually running 2 projectors at the same time.. So I can't "give up", and just route the HDMI to the receiver to the projector.. I need two DVI signals to two projectors..

That left me with a) getting a new graphics card (I didn't want to do this) which supports 3 video devices at once, or perhaps using the analog out from my computer to the 8 channel analog input on my receiver.. This motherboards has RealTek ALC888 audio, which supports 8 channel audio output.. Except this particular board isn't wired for it.. The 3 analog plugs on the back panel support only 6 channhel analog output. The plugs on the front of the computer case cannot be "repurposed" to supply the last 2 channels..

I didn't really want to use analog connections, anyway.. But that sent me looking for a new sound card with an HDMI-out, so I could just go back to using HDMI, and forget about it. The cheapest card I could find was some 100$+ card that wasn't even available anymore.. Yikes.. Forget that!

Then I thought maybe I could just drop in a cheap video card with HDMI and use that as my "sound card".. The only thing I was worried about was if I could use that card AND the Intel HD Graphics at the same time.. From what I had read, it sounded like it should work, but I didn't know for sure. I picked up an MSI brand Radeon HD 4350 "silent" card with HDMI out. The 4350 series of cards use the least power of all the modern graphics cards out there, and it's dirt cheap. I didn't really care about its video performance since I planned to keep using the Intel HD Graphics for the dual projectors (which work great!), so no worries that it's two generations old. After installing it, and getting the right drivers for it (I needed to get a specific ATI HDMI audio driver from RealTek's website), all is working correctly! Both video cards are running at the same time, the Intel HD Graphics doing the projectors, and the Radeon HD 4350 sending the 7.1 audio channel over HDMI. Perfect. It just took a while (and a new card..).

I bought this motherboard from Amazon to build my own fast workstation not for the gaming purposes. The goal was to avoid using an external video card and rely on the integrated graphics support in combination with the GPU in i7-2600K. Another requirement was to have support for the 2560x1600 resolution, and that is why a DisplayPort was needed.
This motherboard was delivered in the original Intel-sealed packaging and worked just out of the box. Two minor issues I had with this motherboard you may want to be aware of:
- Fedora 14 (and earlier Fedora releases) cannot be installed with this motherboard, there are no video and LAN drivers in Fedora 14 for this motherboard (which is understandable given the release dates of these two products); Fedora 15 does have all necessary drivers in its standard distribution for this board.
- I installed it in an Antec Sonata III case, and there was a connection issue with the internal speaker. 'onnectors in the Antec case and on the motherboard do not fit. The case uses a 4-pin connector with two outermost wired pins whereas a connector on the board uses two innermost pins. This is not a big deal though.
For folks who do not assembly PCs every day I would recommend to download Intel's Product Guide in PDF from their web site, which has additional useful details which are absent in the original doc that comes with the motherboard.
By and large, I think it is a solid motherboard for professional and business PCs.

I was disappointed that someone down-rated this board because of a bad warranty experience. The board itself is FANTASTIC, and if I could easily swap my own current ASUS motherboard for this one, I would (I used this board for my brother's machine):

I stumbled across this board because I was looking for something that would let me leverage Intel's on-board graphics and avoid the need for a video card. I also needed dual-monitor capability for a business machine. This one has dual DVI ports and supports built-in graphics, so it was a clear front-runner for me.

But when I built the resulting machine, what blew me away was the speed: With proper bios options in place, this machine goes from power on to login prompt in about 18 seconds--by far the fastest booting machine I have ever built. (You can even customize the motherboard's boot-up "splash" screen using available Intel utilities. Cool!)

Additionally, this board comes with a bright, clear, fold-out assembly guide, supports anywhere from 2GB to 32GB, contains USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0 Gb/s (two each), has IEEE 1394a, built-in gigabit LAN support, and dual DVI ports (DVI-I/DVI-D). It also supports RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 with Intel's Rapid Storage Technology built in, supports memory with voltage requirements from 1.2V to 1.8V and even has a Trusted Platform Module if you need that. It also comes with a year's license for ESET Smart Security anti-virus (so far, so good) and a handy LapLink "PC Mover" program to transfer your data from your old computer (didn't try it, but it seems handy). It even has a DisplayPort connection, if you need that. It's got about everything you could possibly need.

Possible limitations of this board would be that it sports only one PCIe 2.0 x 16 slot (for an external video card, for example), so it won't suit hard-core gamers that want two of those, and it has only three audio jacks so you don't have surround-sound capabilities out of the box. It's clearly aimed at the desktop, not gamer or HTPC market, and for me, that's exactly what I needed.

So don't let the bad review worry you. The truth is that warranty returns are *always* a hassle (you ever try returning your car battery?), so the main thing you need to consider is simply whether the board itself is what you need. If you're looking for a full-featured motherboard to build a fast desktop machine at a great price, look no further. Your only problem will be the envy of your friends after you show them how fast it boots.