The time has finally come to replace my new/old Gigabyte Z68MA-D2H-B3 motherboard. I knew the time would come even when I bought it. It was one of the first Z68 motherboards in the market. It’s a micro ATX form factor so expandability is limited. It served me well and exceeded expectations. Alas, I have outgrown it. Say hello to my new ASUS P8Z68-V Pro motherboard.

This board is impressive. It has PCI-E slots (x1 – x16). It has a total of 8 SATA ports (4x SATA2 and 2x SATA3 – Intel and 2x SATA3 Marvell). I’m able to use 2x SSD RAID0 for my OS drive and 4x Seagate 500GB RAID5 for my data drive. I still have room for a WD 1TB Caviar Black and an LG bluray burner. There are plenty of fan plugs and I really like the TPU switch that easily overclocks my Intel i7 2600K to 4.4GHz and remains stable. My only headache is that I can’t use the Marvell raid controller for a RAID0 to install the OS on. Other than that, it’s a great board at an affordable price.