ASUS M4N78 Pro AM3/AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 8300 HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: great setup for beginner builders like myself. this is my first build. never bought a store bought pc. was taught how to build this with help from a family member who is very experienced in computers. was a great choice for my budget at the time 2 years ago. still runs fine. upgrading it with some faster parts now that i know more about it.

Cons: the only con i can think of is that personally id rather it have been a ddr3 ram board instead of ddr2. if you are looking on newegg for a high amount of ram for this board such as 8 or 16 GB the only speed i found was 800. there are higher speeds but less ram.

Pros: Good feature set (for it's day)
Well priced

Cons: Always gave little indications of problems.
Several behavioral bugs.

Other Thoughts: This morning I awoke to discover that whole set motherboard features had died including SATA controller and LAN.

I was able to shove a PCI-E SATA Controller in to restore disk access and a PCI Lan card for network access.

Windows 7 predictably required I re-activate - fortunately that worked without the drama of calling into their telephone punishment line.

ASUS makes generally good products but I think their M4(anything) line is suspect - this was not my first problem with a board of this series.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Sorry to hear about the issues. You are eligible for an RMA if the board no longer works.

Regards
ASUS Customer Support

Pros: Running Phenom 9850 Quad at 3.4GHz, 8Gb RAM, GeForce 8800 GS (waiting on the GTX 465 to come in..) and Windows 7 Pro x64 works fine.

Runs 24/7 and has never shut down or blue screened.
AM3 compatible.

Cons: Only one PCI-E slot, but honestly, what did you expect? Coming from an 8800 GS SLI build this sucked a bit, but the increased RAM and CPU horsepower more than made the difference. I do not miss SLI, and I don't foresee going back honestly.

Other Thoughts: The people complaining about this motherboard either had a DOA (get over it people, it happens..), fried it by doing something dumb (I am guilty of this, but I don't try to blame it on the manufacturer), or are running inferior operating systems.

Windows XP (any version?) lulz. Ubuntu? Why are you trying to use these fossils on recent hardware and expecting it to all work perfectly?

I've never used the on board 8300, but I will run hybrid SLI when my GTX-465 comes in for PhysX.

I was a big fan of SLI back in the 7800 GTX days when it made a real discernible difference but after completing Crysis 2 with medium quality at high resolution on my old 8800, I don't see the necessity for it anymore.

Use this for what it was made for, realize that XP is ancient, and that there is always a margin for error on the assembly line. You'll be fine.

Pros: Was priced decently

Cons: Lasted only 8 months before giving up the ghost and no help from ASUS customer support. I had to replace this board after it decided to quit booting after I replace a DVD burner. Nothing would make it work and ASUS tech support said I had to have caused the problem with a static discharge while replacing the burner. This regardless of the fact that they had documented that there was a problem with the board booting from day one. It took 5 calls to tech support to get the board to start booting.

Other Thoughts: I have been builiding or upgrading systems for over 10 years and have never caused a static discharge as I am very careful about discharging and grounding, so I know there was no static discharge involved. This was my first ASUS purchase and it will definately be my last. I will say that newegg has always been a pleasure to deal with and their custormer service has never been less than excellent. In fact I purchased the replacement board (ECS) from newegg and it booted first try and has performed flawlessly for over 6 weeks currently.

Pros: Ordered Monday and got to me Wednesday. First time NewEgg buyer and am very pleased. Cheaper than the M4N-82. Overclocks the 9950 BE with less voltage than the M4N-72E. Has ACC Unleashing mode (Unlocking Phenom II Dual Cores). Doesn't turn on and turn off then on again randomly like the M4N72-E.

Cons: Con's would be no extra sli spot, although a 9800 GX2 is in there right now theres my SLI. Takes 768 megs of ram for the integrated GPU (To Hybrid SLI is you wanted) to work. And when using that feature 4 gigs of ram are installed and it takes it from 3 gig's in Windows XP 32bit. Meaning you are left with a little over 2.2 gig's to play with in Windows. It should take the gig not used and let the 3 gigs for windows.

Other Thoughts: Well as a DDR2 board it is rock solid. Less voltage to overclock is a plus. The 9950 BE used to be a good chip now am going to scrap and get the 555 BE Dual Core and have the board unlock the other 2. That's an awesome feature for ASUS to pass onto us little guys. Thanks.

Pros: Great looking fairly good layout, good overclocking features. The onboard video easily handles the dual monitors that I use. The onboard graphics will handle anything except serious gaming. I didn't check the HDMI because of the sound problem see cons.

Cons: The onboard sound was not recognized by Windows XP or Linux Ubuntu 9.10. after trying other drivers I was able to get sound in only windows. However the noise to sound ratio was to great to be able to use it for Dragon Speaking naturally. I gave up and installed a sound card because I can't afford to have my comp-uter down waiting for an exchange.

Other Thoughts: I would buy another ASUS motherboard as long as it has another sound chip. I chose the nvidia onboard graphic chip because I wanted to try Mythbuntu, I am disapointed because of the sound not working with linux. Others have said that it worked for them, but not for me.

Pros: none

Cons: 1st one i got was doa sent it back second one was doa. DO NOT ORDER THIS BOARD. asus should recall this board.

Pros: I really like this board, I don't use the inter graded graphics card I put a xfxgeforce gts 250 on this board and man this computer runs smooth oooo and the prossecer helps to amd phenom 2x4 . I hope you all can get good results from this bord

Cons: dont have any yet

Pros: None

Cons: Dead on arrival. Second, Dead on arrival.

Other Thoughts: Asus sure dropped the QC on this product. Wow, usually they have decent stuff. Well, can't trust them again, so off to another brand. Too bad as I liked asus.

Pros: Runs a AMD Phenom x4 940 CPU Perfectly!
Great Memory Capability up to 1066MHz!
Runs stable w/o overclocking

Cons: Tried to overclock but it goes unstable.
RMA once cuz PCIe x16 went bad (extremely disappointed).
NIC can not run at 1000Mbps even though its suppose to.
Northbridge runs hot and it hurt performance if no fan is installed.
Can not run memory O.C. at 1200 MHz no option for it (BIOS UPDATED and bought 1066MHz memory).
On board video may be interfering w/ my GT 240 sum game lag.

Other Thoughts: Overall a 4/10 the board runs but parts of it have issues and im not impressed. I am think of buying a new board from MSI when I get the money. I think if Nvidia got a new driver out this board would prob run better but the newest driver is rily old.