Gigabyte LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI SATA 6Gbps USB 3.0 Mini ITX DDR3 1600 Intel Motherboards GA-Z87N-WIFI

I am normally a full-sized ATX kind of guy. I've built them big, powerful, and expandable. I decided to challenge myself by building the something smaller. I could have gone as small as one of those shoebox cubes, but I still wanted a system that could be used for gaming with performance beyond "competent" while still being air-cooled.The Gigabyte Mini-ITX motherboard (paired with their 4GB nVidia 770 video card) was a key to that challenge. The motherboard worked as expected, was easy to use, easy to update, easy to tweak and OC, and the whole system performs magnificently. My only regret is that I cannot get more RAM onto these boards. I think my future builds may go this way instead of the larger form factors I've been accustomed to.

Hackintosh mavericks os x built was successfull.Maybe yosemite would run too, never tested.UPDATE DEC 2017: After barely working for couple years -- It died. Motherboard had issues from the beginning, only POSTed with RAM in SLOT B. Tried different brands, sticks, etc. Recently, stopped at failing in POSTing at all. Had a good run, I guess, but so much for "Ultra Durable". I have builds in circulation with older motherboards that are still rocking solid!

This is a good board for a miniITX case. I was able to get a i5 4670 and a EVGA GTX 780 on this thing in a Fractal Design Node 304. The board was able to overclock my board to 4.0 GHz with some tweaking no problem. However, if I was to up it to 4.2GHz it would start increasing the temp by 10C which I am not a fan of in a miniITX case. The big problem I have with this case is that at idle the motherboard temp is 45-48C which is pretty high to me (CPU averages around 30C and GPU around 28C). That said this has not caused any problems for the computer as a whole. Other than the slightly higher motherboard temp I like this motherboard a lot and it is one of the best builds I have ever had. For the cost compared to many other similar miniITX Z87 boards I would highly recommend this.

I've been using Gigabyte boards for all of my builds for the last 10 years or so and have never really had any major complaints with their build quality, however as of late their QC has been getting sloppy. This is a very good board for the form factor/price point (got high marks on a THG Z87 ITX shootout) but the first board I received had a fault with one of the two DIMM slots and would not POST with both slots occupied. Apparently this is a common problem with this board. I was able to get a replacement that worked as expected, however if you find your system not POSTing with both DIMMs occupied you probably have a defective board.

Before I start, here are my specs;GA-Z87N-WIFI motherboardIntel i7-4770kGeforce GTX 780HyperX 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 Desktop Memory XMPSeaSonic X Series X650 GoldEight months ago I purchased the GA-Z87N-WIFI board after watching a computer build on testeddotcom. I have always wanted to build my own PC and was very excited to have finally saved up enough and did plenty of research on what I needed to build a great gaming rig with a small footprint.I had the usual road bumps everyone seems to encounter when turning their system on for the first time. I installed Windows 7, my wifi driver, then let Windows install the 100+ updates it needed. I was getting a black screen with just my mouse pointer being visible for a while after I installed my GPU driver and after a series of restarts I simply unplugged my monitor (DVI cable) and once plugged back in my screen flickered and no more black screen, it seemed to work fine after that, still not sure why that happened...anyways, let's fast-forward 6 months.I started to noticed that when playing a game, checking email, browsing the web, my computer started to stutter, for example; I would go to open a new tab in my browser and nothing would happen so I would try to open it again and repeat, then all of a sudden I would have seven new tabs open. This delayed response seemed to get worse with time and then I started to get the infamous BSOD (blue screen of death), as my time on the computer became more and more limited I started troubleshooting as quickly as I could.I did a chkdsk on both my HDD and SSD, I booted in safe mode and did a full virus scan, I did a windows memory test, I tried memTest86, and tried a system scan (sfc /scannow), everything was coming back in good standing. I started taking out hardware and booting the system, the BSOD started getting more frequent, eventually I ruled everything out and narrowed it down to my GA-Z87N-WIFI board.I went on the Gigabyte website, dug for the RMA section, found a part of their site that looks 10 years old and attempted their RMA request process. Several days go by, I get the green light to send in my board, then several weeks go by and my reference number is updated with a description of "minor repair needed"..."completed". A couple more days go by and I have my motherboard back in a case with an "official" repair sticker on it, I open it up curious to find out what was wrong with it, there is zero information with the board, nothing inticating what needed to be fixed...being a little annoyed by this, I pick up my phone and give them a call.After I gave them my reference number the dialogue went something like this:Gigabyte: "Looks like you had three pins bent on your CPU socket"Me:"Really? how does something like that happen? would that explain it working for 6 months and then it suddenly BSODing on me after 30 mins or so of use?"Gigabyte: pause... "this kind of thing can happen for new builds"Me:"that doesn't really tell me anything..."And then I said goodbye and hung up, in hind sight I should have asked more questions but I didn't.Now that I have my repaired board, I re-build my PC rig and turn it on, viola, it works!One week later...BSOD.At this point I really don't want to go through another RMA process, I have put in hours upon hours debugging this thing, un-building it, rebuilding it, I"m done. I call Gigabyte back up.Me: "I just got back an RMA'd board and now a week later I"m seeing BSOD again, I would like to get a refund and move on"Gigabyte: "We don't do refunds, you'll have to talk to my manager"Me: "Okay"Manager: "We only do refunds under special circumstances after multiple back and fourths of equipment (meaning after multiple RMA's)"Me:"I'm not trying to give you guys a hard time, I want my board to work, I don't want to be having this conversation right now because my board should be working...but it's not. I have wasted far to much time debugging it only to figure out it's your product that is causing the issue and now that it's been repaired, I"m still having the same issue"Manager:"When you build your own PC it's a trial and error process, testing different components, what kind of memory are your using?"Me:"I think my situation is a bit different, I hope others don't spend weekends trying to debug their newly built system only to find that your product is the cause of their misery. I'm using KHX16C10B1K2/16X memory"He then verifies that the memory is compatible and suggest changing the setting in the BIOS from 1333 to 1600 XMP profile to which I inform him that I can not get into the BIOS because when I try it BSOD's but would try a little bit more debugging. After those attempts failed I called gigabyte back and got their voice mail, left a message and haven't heard from them since.What an AWESOME experience, am I right?! I'm never buying another Gigabyte product again.F#$& Gigabyte.

I've put a lot of computers together over the years, but this was my first miniITX build. Put in an i5-4570, 4GB Corsair RAM, and a Kingston 120GB SSD. Nothing fancy and no overclocking what is a work computer for my wife.The small size requires some extra planning before you assemble everything...but still an easy assembly. Booted right up, installed Windows7 quickly, and had a workable computer in about 2 hours.Just to note, the WiFI is actually AC compatable, not just b/g/n. and also seems to work well. I would definitely use this MB again.

Great board, but came with a bent hdmi input (the top one). Thankfully the board has two hdmi inputs so i used the bottom one, but it is still something that bothers me just knowing that there is something wrong with the board. I can't really send it back because i need this computer everyday, so i could not afford the time for RMA. Gigabyte makes great products, but this has definitely made me rethink their quality control.

Works great for hackintosh. If you want wifi to work right though on a hackintosh you will need to swap the wifi card with a wireless PCIe Card BGN AR5BHB92 AR9280 . When Gigabyte says ultra durable, they really mean it. Mine fell out of the box while moving it and landed about 3 feet and works fine.