MSI Z690 Force WiFi Gaming Motherboard

Let me begin by saying that the prime day deal on this excellent, especially for what one gets with this board.I've been building gaming PCs since my late teens and do have some experience in this area, though I haven't built one for a very long time. However, with prices coming down a bit, I thought it was time to reengage in my hobby.From my personal experiences, I've always found the motherboard to be the most important component, if only because it's the unit most difficult to troubleshoot, hassle to RMA and literally controls everything, from each part on the system, power flow and how they all communicate. Towards that end, after deciding on the new Intel i5 12600KF (that Prime Deal was something!), I started looking for a motherboard and decided on this one. Some of the reasons for my choice: 1) from my research, it appears this one was spared many of the "early adopter" issues hampering some of their peers: 2) LED debug; 3) fully attached IO shield; and, 4) power phases & number of M.2 slots.Of course, as with anyone whose engaged in this hobby for any amount of time, there's always the possibility of receiving DOA or potentially defective components. Fortunately, thus far, my board has not only worked as advertised but exceeded my expectations. Upon receiving the board, I perused the board, power phases and components. And, it appears to me, MSI opted for quality components here for the entire build. One can see why this retailed at around $400.For my purposes, the board fit very well in my case and fired up each of my components after assembly with the LED lights checking the process from CPU, RAM, VGA and Boot drive. Pressing delete easily allowed access to the Bios where I used their M-Flash feature to update to the most current Bios before installing Win 11. This process was easy, intuitive, and compared to the old days, idiot proof. There is also a feature to update the bios sans CPU/Ram but wasn't necessary for my CPU.Entering the UEFI, the board offered a choice between an easy or advanced setup interface. Initially, I just opted for the EZ stuff, turned on XMP and played around with the "game boost" to test and ensure the system's stable under after installing Windows. From a force of habit, ran memory, CPU and GPU stress tests, and once everything passed, decided to turn off the EZ stuff and start exploring where this board really shines--the suite of options to manually tinker with enhancing performance.I've used Asus, Gigabyte and ASRock boards for builds in the past but never had a chance until now to try MSI. I've been missing out! These guys are serious about performance! Thus far, I'm pretty impressed with the features, build quality (the components they used aren't cheap), and suite of options to tinker with performance parameters. For me, part of the reason why I've enjoyed building my own PCs is because of a natural inclination to push the envelope of performance, not unlike racing cars where the enticement to go faster is always calling ultimately becoming irresistible. I sense these guys share that same passion, and it shows on this board! From the stickers, the looks of the board and presentation, one gets the feeling they aspire to be the Ferrari of motherboards.Now, for the cons. While I don't have many complaints, the only ones I can think of are 1) no power button near the LED debug, and 2) no bios reset button, which is incredibly handy for those who like to tinker with their systems. However, for the price I paid, I can't really fault them for not including those features, especially with the quality of components they've chosen for this board.For the price, I can't recommend this enough. It's a great board at an excellent price, and you'll realize it once you start putting your system together.