Until our unfortunate house fire where we lost the 3 computers I had built with Soyo Motherboards, which I liked a lot, I had never tried an Asus Motherboard. My wife and I at that time had Slot 1 CPU's. We decided to upgrade Socket 370 PIII Chips. After doing some research and figuring out the board that would support the new parts we were planning on buying this was the only board at that time that would support everything we wanted to use. (ATA 100 Hardrive, 4X Video, PC133 SD Ram, etc.)

We looked at the CUSL2, which was pretty hard to find at the time, and was told what a good board it was by the dealer. After he told us he would take it back if we were not satisfied in 30 days I thought I would take a chance and buy 2 of them. I have never been happier with a board since I started building computers 4 years ago.

The board is kind of picky as to what type of Ram you use in it as it will not work with every brand of Ram. You have to have good quality Ram memory.

If you are planning on running the on-board video, sound or modem fine. If you want to run your own cards you will have to disable the on-board video, sound and/or modem or it will not work properly. You will have problems.

After getting it set-up I found that they were rock solid performers. I was also impressed with how incredibly fast they booted.

I did try to install Windows 98 with my particular system and it did not seem to perform as well as Windows ME. You also have to install drivers for your chip set in Windows 98 for the system to work properly. With Windows ME the drivers are already there so you don't have to go through all the hassle. So I decided that Windows ME would be the system of choice for both our computers. Windows ME has given me no problems with the motherboard.

Later on I installed my wife's HP Flatbed and Photo Scanners and found that the USB Ports were not working properly. We constantly had to unplug the cables and replug them to get it to work. After scanning 5-10 photos a window would come up saying that there was no scanner connected to the computer. After experiencing this I got on the Newsgroups and found that many others were having problems with their USB Ports. Some experienced no problems. My computer does not have any problems with the USB Ports. After more research I found that a Bios update could correct the problem. However these particular Motherboards are very touchy when flashing the Bios and you can easily end up with a dead board that won't boot or anything after flashing.

The manual on the motherboard is very thorough and complete. It is very easy to understand. In fact it is the best documentation that I have ever gotten with a motherboard.

It is jumperless which makes it very easy for a beginner building his first computer to put together. The ability to overclock on it is exceptional. Even though I don't overclock, if I wanted to I could do it with ease.

It is only capable of 512 Megs of Ram which I feel is adequate but would be nicer if it could use more. A lot of boards have the ability to use double that and more. This is due to the 815E chipset which only supports 512 Megs, but is a good chipset in my opinion.

On a scale of 1-10 I would rate this board a 9. It's a great performer and very versatile. I would not hesitate to buy another Asus in the future because of the quality of this board. There are boards with defects in every brand you buy.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 169.00