BenjaminC

EK throws a lot of money at aesthetics and advertising, the rest of the brands listed hardly advertise at all. For a lot of people, EK is the only brand they know or pay attention to, so they think it's the best quality without considering any other brand.

Alex,
 
People have repeatedly told you that you need to go through each products spec sheet and choose which boards options you will like more. Everyone is going to have different opinions about companies products based on their experiences with those products they have actually used and maybe had to RMA (which is why people have also mentioned he support problems they have run into with Asus for example. 
 
But it in this forum we don't generally get into pissing contests about products. We try and be as helpful and supportive as we can without any ketchup or mustard to pile on top. 
 
That  being said, if you are just building a gaming rig, most of us are going to tell you the truth, X99 is a waste for gaming, Z170 is all you need. Even with dx12 and Vulkan coming, there is more than enough power on Skylake. 
 
If you are wanting X99 to brag or for aesthetic reasons, then I would simply choose whatever is going to make you happy on how it looks. Ed10 does have a lot of RGB and colored stickers so you get a lot of aesthetic options. Probably the most of any board.
 
If you are going to be seriously overclocking this chip, you probably want to go with the Ed10 because Asus's high end boards are traditionally  known for helping achieve higher stable overclocks. But keep in mind you're still at the mercy of the silicon lottery and no board can make a bad overclocker magically become a good one.
 
It comes down to this, you can get a good solid sports car that's still high end and still flashy (like the Gigabyte) or you can go over the top and get a Ferarri with all the extra flashy and blingy stuff. Ultimately it's your decision, nobody needs a Ferarri, but some people can afford them and buy them. 
 
So ya just gotta choose what you want and can afford. If money might run out, buy the Gigabyte and put the rest towards another gpu or a better monitor or a Vive or a gaming chair or something. If money isn't an option, get the Asus and start looking at peripherals and VR and stuff.

Rampage V Extreme from a technical standpoint.
 
Not very nice on your wallet though.

thanks for the feedback - will arrange that and offer it accordingly!

Well it uses Frontside Bus rather than base clock. It is a bit different. It will impact RAM speed and such but a good P45 or X48 board will do >500 (stock 266) FSB. 
 
@ op you should try for a P5Q(3) Pro Turbo or Gigabyte EP45(T) DS3P
 
3/T mean DDR2, non 3/T variants are DDR2.

Reading this on their Kickstarter:
 
"Any game that supports either Directinput (Gamepad) or Xinput (Xbox controller) will also support analog control with the Wooting one."
 
They say 'or' so maybe that means compatibility for this keyboard should be pretty decent.
 

h100iGTX, h110iGTX, or kraken X61
 
but the most reliable is a heatsink

None that you'll be able to overclock, only intel option is a G3258 for less but it's a dual core and you have to disable the igpu to overclock it

I don't recommend a 120gb SSD but this build I agree with. 

*cough* Ethereum *cough*

H170 boards can't overclock. I'd spend the extra $20 or so for a Z170 board. 
Not sure what your budget situation is but I'd also highly recommend going with a fully modular power supply as it's loads easier to cable manage. Semi modular certainly isn't bad but there are fully modular units for the same price. 

I wouldn't recommend it. Painting them will most likely cause the rubber to degrade and very quickly turn to mush. Your dominator platinums and thermal armor are perfectly fine to paint, just be sure to take the memory apart and the thermal armor off the mobo very carefully. 
 
If you can wait a bit, noctua periodically sells sets of 16 chromax corners good for two fans each on their amazon storefront for $6.90 per kit. According to your estimate you have five fans, so that would be $20.70 with enough corner pieces left over for a sixth fan, and it would be a MUCH better solution all around.
 
Noctua's amazon storefront  is called Noctua Cooling Solutions, here's a link to it: Noctua Cooling Solutions

the static electricity from touching a large metal object like a case is dissipated enough that the potential difference between you/the case and the components is not dangerous
thats why you need to touch a large metal object, a small metal object isnt enough
 
what a metal object does is facilitate transfer of charge between you and the world around you
its not that easy for an electron to transfer from your body to the air, but its easier for it to transfer to a metal object like a case, then from the case to the air
 
thats what "grounding" is
basically a large metal object or wire that transfers electricity to the earth

At the end of the day as slim as the chance is whats the problem with just taking precautions anyway? Its not like some huge effort or something  

Did you misinterpret my post as me promoting not taking precautions or something?  I'm lost. 

That motherboard looks good. Honestly I don't think there's ever a perfect choice of board for your first build. You might get it and find something you don't like and there's no avoiding that. 
 
It has M.2 and space for 2 GPUs so it ticks all the boxes. Solid price as well. AsRock uses some of the same manufacturers as Asus if I remember correctly. 

He said people should do it

no
buy an air cooler

i dont think having a dead AiO and potentially a leak that kills all your PC parts is "fun"
either buy a good quality AiO or dont buy one at all

Honestly it was all the money I had at the time. Made sure I had a cpu that was decent and motherboard that was capable of handling some major hardware upgrades that didn't cost an arm and a leg like the rog series (m.2, oc'ing,etc) I'm hoping to transplant this cpu in another comp down the road for a family members computer.

Inno3d is the tackiest

I can usually slump back and let my eyes glass over watching videos like this, but this one put the rub on me.  
  Maybe it's because the pro's and cons of these two have been discussed ad nauseam.  Or it could be the 1070 around the corner.  The 970 mini is over a year old, at release it was ~$350, it is still ~$350. Nano ~$500.  At this point I would hope your (well informed by ltt) audience knows the basic traits of the cards ... faster card = more money, more power use, more heat.  I don't need a graph to understand that and no amount of comically applied gaff tape will make air flow testing more interesting.
 
  But since you bore me with poorly scripted data spew I will put a spin on it.  The load wattage difference between the 970(234w) and Nano(290w) was ~60 watts which is coincidentally about the same amount between the Nano and the Fury(354w). The in game performance difference between the Fury(32fps) and Nano(31fps) is only 1 fps on  average.  In my opinion cutting 60 watts of power use yet only 1 fps on average is impressive.  I did a bit of math too, based on your graphs total system power with the Nano equates to 9.4 watts/frame whereas the 970 uses 10.2 watts/frame, making the Nano a more power efficient albeit more power hungry card. 
 
  This video may have been a nice companion piece to the Fallout build.  I begrudgingly look forward to the rehash of this sff debate with the next generation of gpus.

You'd imagine someone utilizing a Nano would consider and budget appropriately for a good case with reasonable airflow.  In the end the Node needed to be taped up to create a "restricted airflow situation."  Out of curiosity... what cases would fit into this category?  

In that case, the Thermalright Silver Arrow Extreme is red which fits the theme and is slightly better than the NH-D14 while not being as quiet should fit. 

NF-F12 <--- if you are going to control your fan
Silent wings 2 <--- if you are not going to control your fans