how good are asus motherboards?

Hi there: Your question is like asking " is Toyota a good car" or is "whirlpool a good appliance" etc. The answer, is yes, no, yes, no, etc. since there are thousands of ASUS boards, just like any huge manufacturer, and it usually takes about 6 months of actual use by thousands of really determined, experienced users, before you actually know if that particular Mother Board is a gem or a complete mistake. I have worked with thousands of motherboards over the years, and EVERY mother board manufacturer has released a motherboard that is absolutely garbage to use, to maintain, etc. ASUS, not too long ago, put their LABEL, clearly printed on a motherboard I was working on, that appeared IDENTICAL to 3 others that WERE LISTED, but ASUS denied that they made it. It used a chipset - the ATI SB400 - and the MB was for ONLY Hewlett-Packard. In order to remove 8000, Megabytes of Spam ware, Add ons, Pop-ups, Trial ware, Add Ware and garbage that HP loaded on the harddrive, and shipped to "customers", you would have to re-load a "real" version of XP. However, ASUS refused to supply the DRIVERS for the MB, denying that they made it. If you went to the chipset manufacturer, again, ATI clearly had its logo on the chips, but denied that they made the chips! HP refused to supply the individual drivers needed to get the Motherboard working without ERRORS in the CONTROL PANEL, SYSTEM DEVICES, so that the ONLY way to install ALL the drivers was to load 2 entire DVD's filled with advertisements and garbage, onto the harddrive... It amounts to a dirty trick played on consumers, and it was the 2nd time I found an HP computer with this deliberate sabotage... So, is ASUS any good? Since I have been working on motherboards for 25 years, I would say that, ON THE AVERAGE, I would not hesitate to buy any ASUS board - AFTER it has been released for about 6 months, so that I can read the reviews on the internet done by hundreds of computer testing experts, who really test every aspect of the "new" board, and let you know if there are any problems.... Asus has, yes, released some terrible boards or packages, like the two HP boards from hell that I mentioned, and way, way back in the early days of 186's and 286's and 386's etc, there were the occasional boards that had all sorts of problems- in those days it was usually because NEW standards, NEW features, NEW card slots, NEW peripheral connections were just being released, and if any company released a board with these "new, untested" standards, they would likely run into problems, since no one, anywhere, had experience.... Car manufacturers are the same, as are TV or Radio, or appliance manufacturers - if you review cars, Toyota put out some really BAD designs, as did General Motors, Ford, etc. etc. and it is a live and learn sort of thing - if you are building a million units a month, and the designs are changing every week, there are bound to be errors, mistakes, and problems- some do not show for months, --- Other than the deliberate dirty tricks of hiding drivers and denying that they made a board that clearly has their name printed in big letters on it, ASUS, has, generally, in the last decade become really professional in the "hardware" end of things, and you generally " GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR" - that is, if you get a stripped down, cheap, ALL-In-ONE ASUS board, you are only going to get the minimum features, the minimum ports, the minimum upgrade slots, the minimum chipsets etc., but if you work with computers at all, you already know this in advance - it is reliable, cheap, fast to put together ( everything is already ON the motherboard except ram ), and that is what you are paying (little ) for... If you buy the newest, biggest, most professional board, you pay a LOT more, and you may find new ports, new "features" , new "BIOS" functions, etc. and many of these would be largely untested- so YOU would be the guinea pig who gets to see if they work as well as expected.... Generally, again, ASUS has a large team of experts who do test and design things fairly well - usually and "new and improved" motherboards from ASUS that have problems with New chips, or NEW plug in USB devices etc., are FIXED, by simply FLASHING the BIOS with a new revision.... So, in general, ASUS is about as good as any huge motherboard company, but I would suggest waiting a few months for reviews on ANY "NEW" motherboard, before you lay out your cold cash! ( Note : I get strange, difficult, rare, really bad motherboards more than most people, since I work with used, thrown out, trashed, abandoned, older junk for my website, kidbots.com - if you want to USE an older computer instead of grinding it up for metals and parts, see kidbots! The REASON that many older computers are thrown out is BECAUSE there are problems, no drivers, proprietary slots, proprietary connections, etc, and no one can figure them out at all - that's where I "start" to figure them out, and get them running again! )

I personally like ASRock more, but I think Asus is really good also.

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