SPCR

Thanks for the review/warning, Lawrence. It's disappointing to see Gigabyte shipping nigh-defective hardware. Even the Gaming-5 seems to have a big "asterisk" along with its recommendation.

I get the feeling that hardware manufacturers rarely have a culture of software excellence. I used to begrudgingly use Gigabyte's OC_GURU video card overclocking app until I noticed one day that its total CPU time was measured in hours, even when idle and minimized. With several manufacturers now producing devices with adequate fan control, software is something I care about when choosing hardware, so I'm glad to hear your thoughts on it.

Board manufacturers should work with Alfredo Milani Comparetti, developer of SpeedFan, to make sure they have support soon after launch. I'd rather use that program, with its established reliability, than the manufacturer's own software.

on that note, how cool would it be to be able to buy a mobo/GPU with "works with speedfan" as a selling point?!

Speedfan support is my number one feature. If i want to buy a mobo and it doesn't work with speedfan ----> instant ignore.

My asus z97-a has 5 (five) headers that work with speedfan, PWM or DC! I don't think something beating this exists. Pure heaven!

For me it's whether or not it works well with Linux. Speedfan is good but it's for Windows which I no longer use. I have a non reporting fan speed at the moment in lmsensors but no doubt it can be resolved somehow.

Thank you very much for this!

I was about to buy the wifi version due to the dual Intel nics, which is very, very rare. Having the same model and driver for the nics is very useful for teaming.
But now I'll have to wait.

I wish someone would make a 2 pci-e slot ITX mb like Shuttle does, so I could add my own dual or quad port nic. I would even buy a Shuttle, but their support for updates is horrible.

I also don't understand the boot time of these newer motherboards. I have an older Gigabyte ITX for Ivy bridge and passing the BIOS takes about 2 seconds, I see the loading Windows at 3 seconds, and I'm on the desktop fully loaded by 7. Things must be going backwards if it's taking 18 seconds to get past the BIOS. In fact if it took 18 seconds on any laptop at work, I would think something is really wrong.