ASUS puts out a board

Author's Rating:

Pros: ASUS Honors 2yr WARRANTY (fan failure) RUNS WELL WITH UBUNTU 7.04

Cons: Fans may fail

The Bottom Line: 
Put more case fans in; put in an external LCD temperature gauge and monitor your fans often.

Author's Review
This board has real good capabilities and on-board sound like you wouldn't believe. DVD playback is good. Music sounds great and is surround sound capable.

The sound auto senses in WIN XP which is nice. I am running 1gb memory; AMD 64 bit 3000 running at 1.8ghz. It runs everyday tasks very well. It has ran for about 1 1/2 years and then the fan died; Asus honored an RMA on the board and the machine is back up and running again. I have not used it for gaming but it handles multimedia applications well.

The jumper pins front usb, HDD LED, speaker etc... are all brightly colored on the board which make installation easier. I have noticed that the board runs best in XP when with the windows recommended drivers as opposed to the latest Nvidia drivers or the drivers tha come on ASUS's CD.

All other parts of the board are fairly easy to read. I utilized one of the pcie slots for an ATI 300SE graphics card. Without taking advantage of the SLI capabilities; I purchased a $3 DVI - VGA adapter and run dual monitors via the one card. I have had no issues with video like some other boards I have had in the past.

However,

I have had problems with the chip FAN as well as a CPU fan Failing. -- Buying a 3rd party fan with better air flow (for inside the case) before the fans fail; is the only way to keep this board in operation for 2 years. Adding an aftermarket fan may void the warranty.

The best way to prevent the fan from failing is taking precautions; ie..

Try not to smoke around your pc if you smoke (it damages components faster than you think).

Regular air cleaning (at least monthly; weekly in areas that may seam dusty) will help keep yourfans clear of debris and dirt that can harm the bearings or even the fan blades causing friction on the fan which sometimes results in annoying sounds coming from the fan once dirty.
(FAN FAILURE DESCRIBED)

It is a good board to have other than these issues. The chip fan can be seen in the picture; chrome in color it doesn't have much room for air to pass through which causes this fan to fail over time.

You will know a fan has failed when you hear a very un mistakable sound (when booting up) "... dee dee deet deet deet" ..this is followed by a message saying ".. Chip fan fail or speed too slow..." When you reboot the machine you notice this BIOS error has not cleared (and will not clear the error until you bypass the error (not recommended) or replace the fan). In most cases ASUS will ship you a new board (RMA) if you are under 2 years of the purchase date. Baby these fans and you will have a smooth ride.

The CPU fan fail message is similar but not the same as the "... dee dee deet deet deet" SOME PEOPLE WHO are familiar with ASUS error codes would recognize this sound in a heart-beat. This board supports dual video as well as stated in the specs. If you run dual graphics cards I highly recommend putting a couple more case fans in. ASUS did everything right with the exception to this (RMA) MAYHEM (due to the fans).

I did some research online and took a look at some of the later model ASUS boards. They all are fan less now for the most part and have a copper tubing that runs past heat sinks to draw out the heat. I have not heard any feedback from anyone who has purchased one. This copper tubing may be a step in a good direction for ASUS.

ALL IN ALL; I believe I got my monies worth. This is still a really great board for the money.

*BONUS*
I WANTED TO get rid of this board when the fan failed but ran the OS UBUNTU on it and install was flawless. ASUS loads good in UBUNTU at least on this model. NOW IT RUNS UBUNTU STUDIO and WIN XP OS via GRUB MENU LOADER.