You state in your conclusion that the board is mediocre yet give it an Approved award.
Makes no sense.
I doubt great audio on board would be one of the main buying decision points for anyone spending this amount of money on a motherboard.

supermuchurios

You state in your conclusion that the board is mediocre yet give it an Approved award.
Makes no sense.
I doubt great audio on board would be one of the main buying decision points for anyone spending this amount of money on a motherboard.

We said apart from the audio results it's mediocre, it's not mediocre in general - no board is perfect We have to consider users that would view the audio as important and may not be fussed by features such as overclocking/testing tools or on-board WiFi. In the same way, it's not as appealing or well-rounded as the Asus X99-Pro, for example, which scores better and gets a premium grade award, while costing the same.

These gaming 5 series motherboards enabled me to use onboard audio, as good as a good soundcard.

Combatus

We said apart from the audio results it's mediocre, it's not mediocre in general - no board is perfect

Maybe I am being over pedantic here but... if 'apart from the audio' all aspects of the motherboard are mediocre, how is that not mediocre in general? To then give it an Approved Award is to approve mediocrity.

Anyway, I am thoroughly bored sick of these super-high end X99 motherboard reviews. It seems forever since we saw anything else. I understand that no other new motherboard chipsets (or several other aspects of a PC for that matter) have been released recently but there is so much more that could be reviewed or articles written, especially for a modding site. Many of these articles/reviews now read like generic advertisements with a few facts and figures thrown in.

Oh well, it is what it is... but it has been a LONG time since I felt I learned anything from an article/review here on Bit-Tech.