admittedly , it is a nice looking motherboard. However , I have divorced Gigabyte a decade ago in favor to Asus. ( msi can be that thing that I like to ride , but don't dare )

Eeewww...red & white, very tacky and cheap looking. ..but the pair of black & gold look nice.

The "black & gold" edition looks like an Asus to me 🙂

The "black & gold" edition looks like an Asus to me 🙂

Looks more like an Asrock if you ask me. Specifically Z68 Extreme3 gen3 which I own. But admittedly Asrock have gone towards blue lately.

Looks like their 2 top tier mbs have soundblaster z integrated in them. Wonder how they would compare to a normal one.

If the preamp is decent it could make a difference in recording. I doubt there will be a big difference in audio playback.

Eeewww...red & white, very tacky and cheap looking.

also the audio isolation and maybe the top left gb logo rear leds seem to be yellow. now why in the world would you do that? if there's a color that doesn't go with this scheme.. its freaking yellow

Now Gigabyte have a little more style,white-red-black. I dont like all black,you dont see nothing on that: slot memory black,pciex black,sata black,usb black,what a heck GA-Z170X-UD3. Love the old days when mb had blue colors.

admittedly , it is a nice looking motherboard. However , I have divorced Gigabyte a decade ago in favor to Asus. ( msi can be that thing that I like to ride , but don't dare )

same, had issue's with 2 gigabyte boards (sniper M5 Z87 and Gaming G1 Z97) switched over to asus because everybody appears to be quite pleased with them. i dare say they are the inverted version of gigabyte in my experience. gigabyte for me = hardware issue's but pretty good software asus so far atleast = perfectly working hardware, the software for windows 8.1 is a buggy mostly non working mess >< ai suite has never worked, gamefirst has caused bsod's (so has ai suite). if gigabyte embrace the black/green from the Z87 sniper M5 some time in the future i might just hop back and hope they got there hardware sorted out.

I like my Gigabyte boards. Had issues with Asus ones. But really nice looking boards 😀 I just go for what seems to be getting best reviews for the time I am buying something. Because I've experienced mb's breaking down from pretty much all brands.

also the audio isolation and maybe the top left gb logo rear leds seem to be yellow. now why in the world would you do that? if there's a color that doesn't go with this scheme.. its freaking yellow

I would say the yellow should suggest to the high-end, as yellow is to be found on the high-end cards.. Lightning.. no, wait, those cards come from MSI xD :banana: