ASUS M5A88-M AM3+ AMD 880G HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Built-in video, all modern features supported

Cons: Died after 5.5 months of usage. One morning I found my desktop PC completely stopped. Few attempts to bring it alive failed. PSU clicked few times and nothing happens yet when trying to plug power cord and switch MB on.
After that somehow it back to live and worked another month without issues. Yesterday I found PC off again, after that I checked different PSUs and MB was dead with all of them. Then after smell appeared I've found burned components on MB - one small resistor. Now submitted request to their support - hope they will replace this with another model.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

We're sorry to hear about the resistor has failed on the motherboard. Please proceed with RMA. If you have any questions with repair or replacement, the motherboard, need additional support or service, please feel free to contact me below. Thank you.

For support information, please visit http://support.asus.com. For service, visit http://service.asus.com. For motherboard warranty, visit http://www.service.asus.com/warranty.aspx#!Motherboard%20Warranty/c1c20; Refurbished products/accessories: http://www.service.asus.com/warranty.aspx#!refurbished-warranty/c16us. For RMA status, visit: http://am.eservice.asus.com/rmaweb/search/rmCustomerQueryAction.do?.

Regards,
Benson
ASUS Customer Loyalty
cl-benson@asus.com

Pros: Contrary to what others say, I believe this board identifies most to all cpus. This board arrived with BIOS 1401, which was updated by Asus at the time of 9/11/2012. So, if your CPU entered the market before this time, it will run on this board.

I have an AMD FX-8120 Zambezi @ 3.1 ghz -- works great out of the box! In other words, I did not need to flash my bios.

Flashing bios is very easy with asus' easyflash. I put bios on usb, load easyflash, and flash. That's it -- no dos! I now have Bios 1601. Everything is rock stable.

Cons: Lan drivers work fine, but problem exists after disabling and re-enabling. Lan disables without problems, but after re-enable, lan status is stuck at "identifying," and I get no internet connection. I need to log off or restart computer to fix, so, this appears to be a driver problem. consequently, i tried to update my lan drivers manually (directly from Realtek), and I was successful. But this did not fix my problem. I contacted Asus and they told me to downgrade from Windows 8 to Windows 7; I am not happy.

Asus is also vague about their lan specifications. This may be an indicator that something is wrong.

Also, another disadvantage is this board takes about 8 seconds to boot to bios. I was told by a computer technician that this is normal for some boards. This is a minor problem.

Other Thoughts: Yes, all rumors are true: this board can max out at 32 GB of ram -- not 16 gb as described. I have 4 x 8 gb DDR3 1600 corsair vengeance. IMHO, this is a big win.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for your feedback on this motherboard. Regarding the LAN issue, it is likely to be driver / OS related. Please try uninstalling drivers, reboot, and reinstall the latest version. For faster boot, you may try disabling onboard devices that you don't use and change boot priority. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me below.

For support information, please visit http://support.asus.com. For service, visit http://service.asus.com. For motherboard warranty, visit http://www.service.asus.com/warranty.aspx#!Motherboard%20Warranty/c1c20; Refurbished products/accessories: http://www.service.asus.com/warranty.aspx#!refurbished-warranty/c16us. For RMA status, visit: http://am.eservice.asus.com/rmaweb/search/rmCustomerQueryAction.do?.

Regards
Benson
ASUS Customer Loyalty
cl-benson@asus.com

Pros: Fast onboard video. 4 memory slots. USB3. Six SATA ports. And ZERO electrolytic caps!!

Cons: None. Been really pleased with this board.

Pros: great board with great features, and has a great price. love the easy turbo boost settings and easy overclock management

Cons: none yet

Pros: Great motherboard overall. Solid stable and full of options.

Cons: Bios can be a bit confusing. Owners manual could rival some novels. If you don't know what you are doing, you could end up with one big headache. Remember, keep it simple and safe if your not one to have alot of overclocking experience.

Other Thoughts: If you really want to unlock this motherboards potential, you'll absolutely have to go big, SSD, 16 gigs of ram, 8-core processor, and a really big graphics card. Otherwise, you won't see the high benchmarks this board claims it can produce. Oh, and lots of fans. . .

Pros: easy install, great price, and great features!

HDMI onboard vid, sata 3 (6.0gb), and 2 usb 3.0 ports.

Cons: wish it didn't have ps/2 inputs. oh well.

Other Thoughts: used for a business pc desktop:

mini tower,
amd fx 6100 3.3 GHz 6-core,
asus m5a88-m w/HD RADEON 4250 video w/DVI and HDMI
8GB 2 x 4gb pny memory
320gb WD
22X DVD-RW
21" LED LCD Samsung monitor
WIN 7

cheap and quick build all parts via newegg!

Pros: USB 3.0, 6gb/s sata connections, and mAtx. This board does what I needed it to do. I'm not an overclocker and as of yet the board is running very solid.

(running Windows 8 and a Samsung 840 SSD just fine) I did update the Bios and drivers prior to putting to use.

Cons: Initially, an external Mediasonic Raid 5 USB 3.0 drive would repeatedly disconnect/reconnect to the bus, but after I updated the ACPI Driver and set the USB power to not cycle off (Windows 8 64bit) this issue seems to have gone away.

Pros: The board is somewhat small compared to some other boards

Cons: There is only one fan slot not including the CPU fan. Also there is no PCI express x8, but there is a PCI express x16.

Pros: No issues whatsoever, booted up first time with an AMD FX-6300 and 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair Vengeance Blue RAM. On-board VGA/DVI connectors worked great for my dual monitor setup. This isn't a gaming machine, just wanted a faster PC for music/video editing.

Seems to run cool with stock CPU fan but I haven't really pushed it to the limit yet. Time will tell when I start doing some video editing/encoding.

Cons: No IDE connectors but fortunately I had an extra SATA hard drive lying around.

Other Thoughts: I've got Asus mobo's in both of my home-built PCs and this board was replacing an Asus (nothing wrong with it, just 7 years old and in need of an update). I haven't tried any overclocking yet as it runs 10x faster than the old CPU/MB.

So far I'm not running any of my case fans and this hasn't been an issue but I'll monitor it once I put a serious load on it and see how hot it gets. I like how quiet it is without the case fans though!

Pros: Great board. I was worried with the DOA reviews and some horror stories, but I've been a loyal Asus customer and decided to stick with them. And I'm glad I did. Posted on first boot - absolutely no problems so far. Have only had it for about a month, but its just great. The on-board video isnt great for gaming, obviously, but if you're gaming, you're not using on-board video. It's plenty good for regular computing.

Cons: None so far!

Other Thoughts: Very happy with this purchase thus far. Posted first boot with an AMD FX 6100 Zambezi, proper clock speeds, memory runs at proper MHz and voltage - I couldn't be happier, especially for the price.