Let me start by saying this motherboard is a beast. The moment I unboxed it, the sleek white/silver design stood out—perfect for my all-white build. The aesthetics are top-notch, especially with those fully covered MOSFET heatsinks.

Installation was smooth with my Ryzen 9950X. One-click EXPO got my RAM running at 6000MHz effortlessly. The BIOS updates were hassle-free, though navigating Gigabyte’s 'stylish' BIOS menus felt like solving a puzzle—TPM settings buried in submenus had me grinding my teeth during Windows 11 setup.

Performance-wise, the 16+2+2 phase VRM handles overclocking like a champ. But here’s the catch: those M.2 slots come with trade-offs. Populating more than two NVMe drives steals lanes from the GPU (dropping it to x8), which isn’t ideal for maxing out a Ryzen 9. The bottom PCIe 3.0 x2 slot? Basically a glorified sound card holder.

The Wi-Fi 7 and USB4 are fantastic for future-proofing, but I did face occasional USB dropouts—cue Windows’ disco-like reconnection sounds. And that flimsy antenna? It topples over if you sneeze nearby.

Verdict: Stellar for mid-range builds, but if you’re going all-out with a Ryzen 9, consider boards that better utilize those extra PCIe lanes (and maybe pack a sturdier antenna).