Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The ASUS Z170-A is one fine motherboard with a great UEFI BIOS. It automatically overclocked my i5-6600 K chip from 3.5GHz to 4.6GHz, and aside from one very annoying factor, it is an easy BIOS to use. I used the Antec Kuhler 1250 water cooler, and it paired nicely with this board and the Antec Eleven Hundred V2 case. However, when you hook up the Antec 1250 to the Z170-A dedicated water cooler header (instead of the CPU fan header), on first boot you get a message to disable the fan speed in Q-fan control in the BIOS. Naturally, you go to the Q-fan control page, which is easy to find. It even has manual settings for each individual fan. But you can search until your whiskers grow long and you will not find any disabling feature. If you cannot get beyond the error message, you cannot install your operating system, so I called ASUS tech support. Long story short: after 50 minutes on the phone the tech could not solve the problem either. He told me to update my BIOS because my BIOS probably did not support that feature. I did, but that was not the problem. The control is located in another area of the BIOS. Go into the Advanced BIOS (not EZ BIOS) and look under the Monitor Tab (the tech thought it was under the Power Tab, but there is no Power Tab). There, you will find a way to turn off the fan setting. ASUS, you have a wonderful product. Why not put all the Q-fan controls within the Q-fan control area, (or at least show a link to the disable control). Nobody, including your own tech reps, will think to look under Monitor when you have your fan controls consolidated elsewhere. When people read Monitor, they will probably think you are talking about a display. Your ads claim you have an intuitive BIOS, MAKE IT SO! And by the way, your tech-support email form, which requires you to fill out every last bit of information about your system and wants to know when you last visited your dentist, would not send an email. I finally gave up after a half-hour of trial and error attempts. It needs simplification too.