ASUS M5A97 LE R2.0 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

Pros: Looks good

Cons: Fresh out of the box and its missing a SATA port. Lucky for me there are 5 others. I dont want to have to wait 2 weeks for Newegg RMA to get me a new one so I will just deal with it. Not satisfied with newegg at all.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Sorry to hear that you received a board with the SATA port missing. You should definitely call newegg and have them replace the board for you because if you want to send the unit in for service in the future, Asus will see this as damage that you caused and your warranty will be voided.

Please take photos of the damaged port and call newegg for a replacement because you are still under their return policy.

If you have any questions or comments you can email me at cl-jeffrey@asus.com which I reside in the U.S

ASUS strives to meet and exceeds our customer expectations within our warranty policy.

Regards,

Jeffrey
ASUS Customer Loyalty

Pros: Fast and easy install, Bios has simple and advanced tuning which makes overclocking extremely easy. Boots very quickly with my hardware.

Cons: I give this board four and a half eggs because it is the best board I've had so far. I have deducted maybe half an egg because while the board supports USB 3.0, there are no USB 3.0 headers on the board itself only 2 ports on the back. If you have front panel usb3.0 you can't use it but you can plug in three usb 2.0 ports on the board. If you plug in a 3.0 into a 2.0 header you will fry the board.

The board also seems a bit cramped, most of the panel connections, sata ports, usb headers and PCI ports are all at the very bottom. I have big hands and it was a challenge to get everything plugged in.

Other Thoughts: like some people have stated be careful while plugging in the power supply, the board doesn't have any supports under that section and it can bend quite a bit.

Pros: Installation was easy. It came with everything neatly packaged. It has a pretty LED light that turns on when it has power.

Cons: I spent four full days trying everything I could think of to get windows loaded, but it was never successful. Different hard drives, disc drives, three versions of windows. I tried booting from USB, checked hardware, cables, played with my bios settings. Asus support basically said, "that sounds bad". After days of failed installation, I just threw in an old motherboard and successfully loaded windows within minutes.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Sorry to hear that you had troubles trying to get windows loaded into your hard drive. Please make sure that you select the correct SATA mode for the hard drive being used. Once you have selected AHCI or IDE, restart your computer and press ESC. There you will be able to choose which drive to boot from such as USB or optical drive.

What you can try is load windows with your old MB to the hard drive and take that hard drive and install onto the ASUS board. If you are able to get into windows, then it may have just been a setting you needed to change in the bios to be able to load the O/S.

I hope you have everything working properly so you can enjoy your unit.

If you have any questions or comments you can email me at cl-jeffrey@asus.com which I reside in the U.S

ASUS strives to meet and exceeds our customer expectations within our warranty policy.

Regards,

Jeffrey

Pros: None

Cons: Doesn't Post. Nothing shows up. Checked all components (CPU, RAM, GPU, PSU) with other computer and they are all fine. Very disappointing.

Other Thoughts: Will go with AsRock mobos from now on, they have never given me any problems.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Sorry to hear that the unit was unable to post for you. Please make sure you clear the CMOS and that you update the bios to make sure it's compatible with the CPU being used.

Here is the link below.

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/M5A97_LE_R20/#support

Thank you for choosing ASUS as one of your motherboard brand.

If you have any questions or comments you can email me again at cl-jeffrey@asus.com which I reside in the U.S

ASUS strives to meet and exceeds our customer expectations within our warranty policy.

Regards,

Jeffrey

Pros: None that I can see

Cons: Just got my 3rd copy of this motherboard, as far as I can tell it just will not work with my hardware. Freezes during post. If you can get it to post it will freeze randomly some time not more than 20 minutes later. Trying to debug this problem has been an exercise in frustration.

Other Thoughts: Newegg has been great through the process as usual

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Sorry to hear that it would not post. Have you tried clearing the CMOS to see if that will resolve your issue. Also please try updating the bios as sometimes the bios just needs to be updated to be compatible with the CPU being used. Here is the link below. Just select which O/S you are using.

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/M5A97_LE_R20/#support

I hope that the replacement unit from newegg is working properly and you are able to use the motherboard to it's full potential.

If you have any questions or comments you can email me again at cl-jeffrey@asus.com which I reside in the U.S

ASUS strives to meet and exceeds our customer expectations within our warranty policy.

Regards,

Jeffrey

Pros: Works and does everything as described. UEFI bios is fun to tweek.

Cons: The faceplate appears to be made for another MB or something. It's ever so slightly off center with the MB. I installed correctly and I didn't like over compress the MB standoffs or anything. Case isn't bent so IDK. Had to bend the case a little to make it fit actually. Strange. Never seen anything like it.

Pros: good looking board
top mounting sata slots vs side mounts
UEFI bios is awesome and easy to use
incuded utilites are very nice for a change especially for OC

Cons: barely comes with any cables, infact 2 sata/6 cables were the only things in the box besides back plate and cd. If you do not have extra sata cables laying around will need to purchase more. This resulted in the lost egg.
this board is narrow, the of the board where the main power plug and memory go in are between the last to standoffs so there is no support. Either put them in before hand or try to support it from the edge.
no fan plug for the front mount fan. The only fan plugs are on the top of the board (2 fan and cpu fan are all together right above the cpu) and one between the cpu and the back plate. Only a big deal really if you like to monitor the rpms of you fan.
does not include usb panel slot for additional usbs for the back. I had one from previous mb's so was not a big deal for me but other buyers might like one.

Other Thoughts: overall this is a nice MB for people that build them alot and have parts laying around. For a 1st time builder this will be hard to work with due to lack of included items like sata cables and power cords.

Pros: none

Cons: Has never post booted

Other Thoughts: It is not Newggs falt I got a bad board but this has cost me a lot of time

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Sorry to hear that you received a board that didn't work right out of the box. Please make sure to clear CMOS as well as update the bios to see if that will resolve your issue in the future.

I hope the replacement board that you receive is working properly and you are able to use the motherboard to it's full potential.

If you have any questions or comments you can email me again at cl-jeffrey@asus.com which I reside in the U.S

ASUS strives to meet and exceeds our customer expectations within our warranty policy.

Regards,

Jeffrey

Pros: So, I used this board in my first build. Setup was easy and fine, came with 2 SATA cables, one has a "L" connector. The MOBO is very nice and the new UEFI Bios rocks. The boot order on the bottom only shows drives with an OS installed, not everything connected. Took me a minute to realize I could click on boot order and select my flash drive to install windows. That is a minor gripe though. I decided to download CPU-Z and check some stuff out. This MOBO automatically OC'd my ram to 2033mhz. I love it

Cons: UEFI is kinda weird for new users. Got it squared away though!

Other Thoughts: First build and got ASUS. Will put ASUS boards in other machines i make in the future. Great work guys!

Pros: As is typical with Asus, this board is solid. Extremely "self aware" BIOS. Absolutely no heat issues compared to other AMD chipset boards. No clock cycling that makes games hiccup. No issues with varying CPU's; including two Black Box PhIIx4's, an AIIx3, even a slow PhIx4.

Cons: The default UEFI boot device settings made installing a factory business pre-load Win7 a bit difficult, but it's easily disabled.

Other Thoughts: So far, I've used 5 of these M5A series boards, and all of them run perfectly smooth. The MemOK! feature would be very handy for those that get nonstandard memory; I usually match up a set of G.Skill RipJaws for my own builds.