Added some water to my loop and ran it at 5Ghz for a while using the default settings provided by Gigabyte. Saw some scary high voltages, so I will work on that, but at least I know it can do it. Temperatures were fine and under a bench the voltage drooped a lot. So there will be some LLC to fiddle with. Makes it difficult to determine the proper voltage range.
In a limited way I compared them. Since the primary use for that system is gaming it doesn't take much. A more basic board would have worked, but I do like to build for reliability.
I wanted it to be black/white as I had several components going into it that were black with white LED accents. XSPC Razor block, black radiators, apogee XL CPU block, H-240X reservoir lights up white, some white blade fans, white tubing, and my yet to be ordered white cable kit and it would look pretty neat. (I didn't get around to uploading all the pictures and build log)
ASUS ROG/Strix boards have gone for a neutral gray, so they were out of the running. Also a lot of problems reported with the Hero VIII, so I was suspicious of the Hero IX, which I normally would have gone with.
ASUS Prime probably would have been adequate, but it has a few things I don't need like Thunderbolt. I took a look at the physical components arrayed around the CPU. Gigabyte Gaming 5 seemed to have decent components. The more expensive motherboards out there didn't seem like they offered anything in particular that I wanted.
Gaming 5 has the following high level features:
PCIe M.2 x2, U.2, Optane support, SLI support, RGB Lighting, PWM fan/pump headers, dual BIOS, dual ethernet, USB 3.1, slightly premium audio with replaceable op-amps.
ASUS Prime PCIe M.2 x2, U.2, Optane support, SLI support, RGB Lighting, PWM fan/pump headers, USB Front PaneL header (meaning that I would need a case with 3.1 rather than having a useable port)
Strix E was WiFi, which I don't need. Some of the other Strix boards would be okay, but they are a little too dark for my build. Haven't had any other motherboard brands in recent years aside from ASUS and Gigabyte. Long ago I had some issues with MSI, but that was back in the days of electrolytic capacitors everywhere. I've had a lot of ASUS boards and GPUs, the occasional Gigabyte GPU, and recently EVGA for their wonderful warranty policies (water cooling approved, just return it as you got it) (I was tempted to look at EVGA FTW boards, but decided against the extra expense.