For you guys that build your own systems. Which mobo do you prefer and why?
 
I will probably be building a new one soon primarily for Sonar and just curious what other people are using. I'm not stuck on any one brand, but was fond of Abit for a while. Since they're gone I've bounced around between Asus and Biostar.

Asus has a good motherboard. They seem to have a fairly large following. I just installed an ASRock board which I'm very happy with so far. My last motherboard was a Gigabyte and it is still going strong after 5 plus years.....that speaks for itself.
 
All of them have a certain percentage of DOA's . People who get a DOA usually aren't as enthusiastic about their motherboard, yet they all have a percentage of failures no matter what you choose.
 
Bios and I/O layout are very important. The hard drives, memory and cpu are more important than the MOBO IMHO. The higher ended motherboards have things like wifi and plenty of room for massive video cards..mainly catering to gamers. If you're using the computer for recording a mobo with extended onboard sound is probably overkill since you will likely be using an outboard recording interface for recording and playback.
 
 
 
 

+1 for ASRock motherboards.
 
When I built my rig (about 2 years ago), I also looked at ASUS & Gigabyte as they were the leading brands at the time and I almost got an ASUS board. Since I was interested in features/bang for the buck, the ASRock board had what the higher end ASUS & GB boards had.  
 
My system (built for DAW + gaming) has been nothing but excellent performance-wise/stability. Of course I'm bias towards ASRock since that's what I have, but it's good to read all the reviews/benchmarks on all the types of boards you're interested in and make a decision from there.   

I always read reviews, but I know going in most of those people are gamers. I don't do a lot of gaming anymore so the machine I build will be strictly audio/video.
 
That's really why I asked that here. Just curious. I haven't had any problems at all with the current setup I have, which has a biostar board. I just build new ones every couple of years and pass the older one on.

+1 ASRock
I've been using them for years now and they have just been destroying the competition. Asus is their parent company but Asus themselves have been having quality control issues the past few years and ASRock has surpassed them in my opinion.
 
Gaming boards are not a bad thing to use. The thing to consider is that gamers want high performance boards... so do people who work with audio. It kind of goes hand in hand. What's more is that gaming boards are highly customizable and ready to be overclocked if you so desire. When using high resource plugins like Serum or Omnisphere, that can come in handy.
 
This is what I'm building right now. Only missing a couple pieces I'll pick up this weekend like fans.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Y8hNt6

I currently have two desktops with ASRock Z77 motherboards.  Previously I had a Gigabyte Z77 but the first one failed and was replaced under warranty, the replacement started acting up and I had enough so I dumped it for the ASRock, which I had on hand.   I had another with an ASUS Z77 motherboard but it developed problems and I dumped it for an ASRock.  Both are "rock" solid.

TerraSin
 
This is what I'm building right now. Only missing a couple pieces I'll pick up this weekend like fans.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Y8hNt6

Wow Terra, that's a very nice machine......I didn't know they had 16GB RAM sticks available and you're getting 64GB's? (you can throw anything/everything into this DAW) Nice!! :)) 
 
The only thing that concerned me was if that mid tower case was big enough for the NH-D14 (I have this as well and have a full tower to house it), but I see that it's under the "compatible parts" list. It still might be a tight fit.......I didn't have much room in my Rosewill Thor V2 after installing that cooler (very close to the RAM slots). Excellent cooler BTW.
 
Pcpartpicker.com is a great site for DIY's.
 

Mesh

TerraSin
 
This is what I'm building right now. Only missing a couple pieces I'll pick up this weekend like fans.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Y8hNt6

Wow Terra, that's a very nice machine......I didn't know they had 16GB RAM sticks available and you're getting 64GB's? (you can throw anything/everything into this DAW) Nice!! :)) 
 
The only thing that concerned me was if that mid tower case was big enough for the NH-D14 (I have this as well and have a full tower to house it), but I see that it's under the "compatible parts" list. It still might be a tight fit.......I didn't have much room in my Rosewill Thor V2 after installing that cooler (very close to the RAM slots). Excellent cooler BTW.
 
Pcpartpicker.com is a great site for DIY's.

I wanted to go 128GB because of the amount of sampled tracks I use at times to keep it from bottlenecking but sadly there is no support on Skylake for over 64 so it will do for now. I still feel like I'm going to be freezing a lot of tracks without running a slave. There are only a few companies that make 16GB sticks so I'm crossing my fingers as I've never used Corsair's RAM before.
 
I had the same concern. I have this case on the existing PC already and am getting a second cause I like it so much so I took the CPU fan out of the box and hovered it inside the case. It's huge but it does fit. Also saw through comments on NewEgg that others have put it in so I'm hopeful. I thought about getting the slightly larger Fractal Design R5 but there are some issues I have with that case. The corsair has been a really good case.

That'll certainly looks to be one Super Daw!! (just compare that to the 4GB max RAM in an XP machine....lol).
You've got some serious sampling going on here......you should post some of your music in the songs forum.

That looks like a nice build. I am wondering about all of those fans though? Not sure about the Corsair case, but my case  has two fans and the temp in the case never  gets close to  critical. 
After my build you can  almost drive a small car into the case. Great for cooling though since there is plenty of room for things to breathe. 
The Noctua  offers push pull cooling . You can add an additional fan, but most say it isn't an extreme difference.
I can lay my hand on the cooler with one fan and it isn't even warm to the touch.
 
If you want to go with 128gb look at the mobo in my sig. Can't use that cpu though and video is modular. Not a bad thing if you wanted two monitors with the same connection anyways.