We couldn’t simply find any negative point on this motherboard. If you are looking for the most high-end motherboard for your AMD system supporting CrossFireX – i.e. up to four video cards – for your “Spider” gaming system this is definitely the motherboard you should buy.
This board features only the cutting-edge technology: socket AM2+ (i.e. HyperTransport 3.0), four PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots, six SATA-300 ports, one eSATA port, two Firewire ports, Gigabit Ethernet, on-board optical and coaxial SPDIF connectors and, of course, its exclusive WiFi access point working under 802.11g or b, allowing you to create your own wireless network without needing a wireless broadband router. This means that building a system with this board you won’t need to upgrade your PC for several years. In fact, the only reason you may want to think about upgrading your system based on this motherboard is when socket AM3 CPUs are released, which will support DDR3 memories. Since in practical terms DDR3 does not bring higher performance compared to DDR2, even this upgrade is questionable if you think of it only for the memory reason ( maybe for having a CPU with a higher clock rate it will make sense).
The highlight of this motherboard is its memory passive cooling system, a feature available only with this board. According to ASUS this cooling system reduces memory temperature in 10º C, which should help you achieving a higher overclocking.
The quality of the on-board audio of this motherboard is also something we need to say: with over 100 dB signal-to-noise ratio on its output you get the same quality of good add-on sound cards. Its input signal-to-noise ratio, however, is low for today’s standards, with only 92 dB while it should have at least 95 dB. Even though this is enough for the regular user, if you are looking for a motherboard for professionally capturing and editing analog audio (converting LPs, VHS tapes, etc) you should look for a different motherboard or install a better add-on sound card on this board.
Also on the good side is the manufacturing quality of the board, with passive heatsinks that eliminate the noise produced by the motherboard, solid aluminum capacitors, which provides a higher life span compared to traditional electrolytic capacitors plus you won’t face the infamous capacitor leakage problem, and ferrite coils on the voltage regulator circuit, which provide a lower power loss.
Of course this isn’t the cheapest motherboard around, but for the ultimate gaming PC it provides a fair cost/benefit ratio.
The only real problem right now is availability. From the top computer on-line shops this board can only be found at ZipZoomfly, at USD 230.
