bit-tech Shopping: GigaByte GA-X38T-DQ6 Motherboard

Rating: 6

Time with product: 2 Months

Strengths: Beautiful board, the copper cooling really look great. Has every type of onboard connection you could ask for. Runs cool and is VERY fast.

Weaknesses: BIOS isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Summary: The specs on this board are amazing, and in practice it delivers. I?m not an overclocker, yet, but the ability to do it is there. Unfortunately I 'killed' TWO of them when I updated their BIOS' and did the 'Load Optimize Defaults' as Gigabyte RECOMMENDED be done after the update. Upon power-up, the machine would endlessly cycle on for 5-7 seconds, then off, then on, with no way to get to the BIOS. SO IF YOU GET THIS BOARD, whatever you do, don't 'Load Optimized Defaults', set everything yourself. I only gave this board 3 stars because of the several days of aggravation I went through thinking I could ?fix it?. I had my drives configured as RAID 10, don?t know if that had anything to do with it, but I couldn?t find anyone else who had this problem, and I had it twice. I decided for my 3rd board I would go with the Intel DX38BT, which has been working great for me. Regarding the returns, MWave is GREAT, I love these guys!

Rating: 10

Time with product: 1 Month

Strengths: Straightforward to install and configure. After fresh install of OS, booted system and have not had any problems.

Weaknesses: None identified so far.

Summary: I'm not an overclocker, so my comments refer to "nominal" use of the board. Running the Intel Quad Core chip with 4 GB memory. The $10 mWave testing option was worth the money to me.