GIGABYTE X299 DESIGNARE EX (Intel LGA 2066 Core i9/ ATX /3*M.2 Thermal Guard/Front & Rear USB 3.1 gen 2 Type-C/ ALC1220/ RGB Fusion / Dual LAN/ Intel WIFI/3 Way SLI/ Motherboard)

I just bought an X299 AORUS Ultra Gaming motherboard with a Core i9-7920X CPU and on boot the CPU makes a fast high pitched beeping sound (CPU beeps not POST Beeps) and re-boots again. It does this three times before finally shutting down. I originally thought it was the CPU but I have exchanged it for a new one and the same thing is happening. According to the Gigabyte website CPU support list the Core i9-7920X CPU is supported by this motherboard.I have tried booting with just the CPU, memory and video card attached (no other components) and the same issue keeps happening. Also tried it without a video card just to see if it would at least POST but that did not work either.I also noticed when I examined the i9-7920X CPU notch to the FoxConn LGA 2066 socket alignment key. The ones on the left are not aligned. In all the years I have built PCs from scratch this is the first time I've seen this.I've posted on the Gigabyte X299 forums and opened a Gigabyte eSupport ticket about the issue. I'll have to wait till Monday to call Gigabyte support to find out more so I can have someone on the phone to discuss it.I'll update this review as I get more information but as of right now I can't recommend this motherboard.Update: 02/07/2018The issue was the CPU. Noticed that the CPU etching is labeled XEON E5-2683 (which is an LGA2011 socket I believe) instead of i9-7920X. I've since returned the CPU and bought a new CPU from NewEgg which arrived today. The new rig booted right away with no POST warnings and the motherboard recognized all of the memory and devices. I've changed the rating for the motherboard to 5 stars since I was mailed the wrong type of CPU.Amazon please check the contents for your Intel i9-7920X stock because the one I last returned was a XEON CPU. I'm willing to bet the first one I exchanged was also a XEON CPU.

This has been an outstanding board, with no issues as some have mentioned. I installed an Intel i7-7800x and overclocked using autotune to 4.2 GHZ successfully without any stabilization/heat problems. I would recommend using this board so long as you are using at least a 7800x to get full use of the 8 DIMM slots available rather than only 4 with the Kaby Lake X platform. The lighting zones are easy to setup and have several configuration settings both in BIOS as well as within windows.Con: The only problem I've had thus far is with the Bluetooth device, it seems to randomly work/not work and the drivers for the Bluetooth are not directly available on Gigabyte's website. I've reached out to them for the driver and/or assistance but have not heard anything. I don't think this one con is worth a star, as the Bluetooth is nice, but not necessary for my purposes.

THE MB Design is good ... The BIOS is F the MB BIOS after flashing to the latest version won't recognize intel i9-9980XE.The active core is 1 at any point the machine is almost frozen does not respond ... upon reset the Bios drops the boot record and ask for boot device or USB.

This board is really well-made. And it works great (although ASRock Taichi XE X299 that I finally decided to keep shows slightly better PC Mark score, especially, in RAM department). But unless you absolutely need to connect Thunderbolt monitors (that only Apple makes, as far as I know) and other Thunderbolt devices to it, there is no point in buying it. I paid $120 less for my ASRock Taichi XE X299.The first Designare that I ordered came with 2 bent and one twisted LGA socket pins, which resulted in two (out of 8) DDR4 slots not working. I RMA'd the board, but before the replacement arrived, I put in the ASRock Taichi XE X299 motherboard and installed and upgraded Windows and installed all drivers, which took me several hours. And since I got slightly better performance with the ASRock board that cost $120 less, I decided to keep that board.

I've had this board for about 2 weeks. I got it specifically because it has 2x 8-pin CPU power connectors, a heatsink design for the VRMs, plenty of m.2 slots and very high quality audio outputs for front and rear on-board audio. I don't care about LEDs or other 'gaming' features. Here are a few of my thoughts:Awesome:+ The on-board audio is the best I've ever heard from a motherboard. I'm not an extreme audiophile, but I like good sound. I will no longer be using my Fiio desktop amplifier with my Beyerdynamic dt880s and for the first time, my super sensitive cIEMs have no noise from a motherboard's audio. Fantastic!+ There is plenty of power for a 7900x at 4.9ghz. I have a custom loop water cooling loop for 7900x and Titan X Pascal. The onboard pump header and other water cooling features are pretty neat, though not necessary.+ Using der8auer's method for testing VRM cooling, I have not seen temperatures above 85c on the back of the board or 78c on the heatsink (temperature probe squeezed between heatsink and VRM and read on a multimeter.) There is minimal active cooling in my test bench. The only air moving over the VRMs is from 3 front Vardar Evo fans on a 360mm radiator. This is much better than others I have seen, but I might get another fan specifically for the VRMs after delidding the CPU.+ No memory compatibility problems with Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB dimms (64gb total.)+ Plenty of M.2 slots for NVMe SSDs, including a PCIe 4x to M.2 adapter card with a huge heatsink. Again, I have minimal airflow in this test bench, so a big M.2 heatsink is very helpful.Not so great:- The killer networking software is atrocious. Long story short, after installing the drivers and software, it ruined a bunch of stuff in Windows 10, including forced changes on my VPN network adapter, the Intel network adapter and made the networking statistics in task manager stop updating. I finally reinstalled the OS and only installed essential drivers for the killer network adapters. I really wish the wifi especially was Intel instead of Killer. Fortunately, the Intel i219 ethernet is great, and the only one I will use unless absolutely necessary.-Gigabyte's software bloat for using the overclocking tools, RGB fusion, and others is out of control. I don't need 2+ gigabytes of nonsense running in the background just to use these tools! I decided to just overclock and use the RBG settings in the bios instead of dealing with the bloatware. The creative audio bloat is also unnecessary if you don't want software interfering with the solid audio components. The Realtek audio manager has plenty of features including an equalizer, headphone impedance sensing and other headphone amplifier settings. I tried the creative sound blaster stuff, but uninstalled it. I don't need an FPS or MOBA mode for my headphones.- My motherboard has INSANE coil whine coming from the VRM area whenever the CPU draws over 190w. I have heard this type of noise from a GPU before, but this is easily twice as loud as the worst GPU I have heard. Fortunately, it only happens when pushing it to the limit, but then again...that's why I have this machine! Rendering 4k content, benchmarking, or other data work that stresses all your cores will cause awful noise every time. If this bugs you, check using something like Cinebench on all cores as soon as you get your build put together. It was audible but not awful when at stock settings, but the noise is really bad at 4.6ghz+ or more on 10 cores.- Compared to some other manufacturers, this bios is certainly not pretty and tough to find some settings. Not a deal breaker, but Asus does a much better job imo.Final thoughts:Given the price, features and noise I don't think I would use this board again. I should have found a cheaper board with at least an 8+4 pin CPU connector, use some active cooling on the VRMs and get an aftermarket sound card. $499 is a crazy price for a motherboard, and this one is mostly awesome, but still not worth it.