Afaic, I consider myself spoilt to have over the years had some great ABit mobos with all the glory that went along with it.
*cough* excuse the sentimentality *cough*
Being serious tho, in conjunction with the uGuru, their mobos, as far back as the amd k6 afaik, have allowed u to manipulate ALL of the 3 pin fan headers on the mobos against either cpu/sys and latterly pwm avg/pwm max also.
Now from an enthusiast pov, in particular - mine, this breaks open so many options in terms of pc cooling, that sure can be covered by purchasing overpriced fan controllers. But put on top of that, the ability to quieten the pc to absolute silence when ur not using it fully.
To give an example of Abit's last carnation, although it's true for the 35/38/48:
Invariably 6x 3 pin headers (1 being 4 on the cpu designated).
Each of them can select a low voltage % or volt, also the high.
Couple with that, the option of the low/high temps to span this over.
Then the option to change each of the 6 to compare the temps of cpu/pwmAV/pwmMax/sys.
(further changes, level wize, can be made by FanEQ in uGuru)
(another +ve is that it doesn't make fan control windows specific, as u dont have to rely on the mobo manufacturers util prog to control it)
This means u can have the fan on ur drives quiet as they only spin faster if,e.g., the SYS temp rises.
The cpu fan, or fans (ofc u can turn the likes of a ninja into a 2 fan-ed device with this mobo) varying with the cpu temp.
Ram cooler, notoriously winey small noises, but not when u vary it's speed with the pc's temp.
Additionally, as on my 38 & 48, u can have a tiny fan on ur pwm/nb/sb that varies similary.
This being said. At the end of the day u can have 6 sets of fans in ur case and not have all of them sounding like tornados. It kinda negates some of the cooling things other case or mobo manufacturers add to their setups in terms of quiet-cooling cos u can stick with the age-old fan system without being noisy.
I don't know that ASUS/MSI/DFI/etc dont do something exactly the same, as tbh I've not been interest whilst ABit were at the fore-front, but looking to the future I will have to make some decisions on who to pip for. To this point the Gigabyte P35-DS4 covers everything I need, except for the fan options above. I believe it does standard cpu control and something else. Outside of that it is a very capable mobo. Overclocking on it was a 3 step process of crazy simplicity.
(Only other issue with the mobo is that it wont boot past the cpu post, kinda hangs displaying the 2nd "M" of "memory", if I have a mouse plugged in the usb port of the Apple aluminum keyboard - not a fault I imagine)
. The BIOS is pretty easy to use as with all Gigabyte boards but as with the EXTREME, scrolling through the BIOS is jerky. Not an issue if you only use it once or twice but it can become irratating if your constantly using it.
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