Well, can't speak for Gigabyte boards, but ever since I got my ASUS I've never had a problem. I started with a Soyo Dragon, and that was a nightmare.

I now have all my USB2 ports connected, firewire via back panel expansion slot, 3 hard disks and DVD+RW drive running on IDE, and one hard disk on SATA. I've never had a problem that was a result of the motherboard its self.
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Matt