Took away 1 star because I experienced a combination CPU/motherboard failure 3 weeks after I got my machine running. That said, Asrock was speedy with their RMA and replacement - just wish they told me what was wrong with my old board, and whether the CPU killed the board, or the board killed my CPU. I love the m2 on this, and its been great to overclock (got almost another 33% out of my chip). Altogether, really happy with it, from functionality to aesthetics to support and even packaging.
Got lots of deals/rebates on parts, principally the 5820K CPU and ASRock Extreme4 motherboard from Micro Center. Extreme4 in particular was phenomenal deal when compared to the cost of many other boards for x99 chipset. So many people spending $400 for Asus Deluxe--I felt compelled to do the same, but luckily kept researching and landed on ASRock. WHY the draw to ridiculously priced boards, people??? Extreme4 does everything I need. No, it doesn't have 2 Ethernet ports, or built in bluetooth/wifi, but is that really worth $200+?? Some of the pricier boards have 10+ USB, but I have that many, too, once coupled with case. Me thinks Asus and others have good marketing or zombie consumers.
Impressive with NVMe. No need any setup for running Ubuntu .
Lots of power headers , so no issue on using this.
Supports 4G decoding over PCIe, So XEON Phi can be attached.
Just awesome for the price. The BIOS is very easy to use and overclocking is literally as easy as going to the OC tuner and setting the OC to whatever you want. It also has a ton of RAM slots if you're into that sort of thing...