I brought this from ebuyer a few months back, for my new system build. I wanted a motherboard which had plenty of features/ports etc, without braking the bank, and this does just that. With 4 USB port, 7.1 surround soundaudio card, 4 rear USB ports + 2 headers, Printer Port, and even 2 PCI-E 16X for SLi and 2 PCI-E and 2 PCI card slots, which is a good use of the slots available, with the PCI-E sure to be used more in the future, with it's smaller and faster slot. So, after unpacking, I found there to be a lot of accessories with this board, keeping up to ASUS's standards. I applied the headers to the case and installed the motherboard easy enough, connected everything up etc. and it was up and running. After setting itself up, I was able to install the operating system. The board had no problem installing the Sata hard drive and disc drive. The chipset drivers and other software which comes with this board (Cool & quite and PC Probe 2), were all easy enough to install, and get going.
My first complaint about this board, is that it does take a bit of time to pass the BOIS post, much longer than most systems do. Still, it's livable with.
The board is pretty reliable, I haven't have many problems as of yet.
There should really be more settings in the BOIS really, some things I think should be there are not, it is a pretty basic BOIS, but this does seem to make it easier to use than most ones. I'm sure this could also be upgraded/flashed.
The M/B comes with 4 memory sockets, with dual channel, currently I have 2 X 1GB and 2X 512MB of 800mhz memory in it, which runs pretty well. The max system memory posible in this system is 8GB, with 4 X 2GB sticks. Should be plently for a few years at least, I don't think even Vista really needs 8GB, though you never know, it may do...
This has 4 Sata ports, and 4 IDE ports (2 slots, 2 devices on each). This should be sufficient for a while.
The board does tend to get a little on the hot side, currently at 31C, but can hit near the high end of 45/50C when playing intensive games.
Overall, this is a pretty good board, considering the price and what you get. I would definately recommend this board, it beats everything else currently in it's price range. I believe I paid about £40 or so for this from ebuyer.
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