ASRock ConRoeXFire-eSATA2 LGA 775 Intel 945P ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: IEEE-1394 (Firewire), PCI-E gigabit LAN, dual graphics including Crossfire, Conroe support, 4 DDR2 RAM slots, and on-board 7.1 audio for under $100? Sign me up! Has a 20-pin ATX power connector and 4-pin auxiliary ATX power connector, so you can use an older power supply that doesn't have the more modern 24-pin and/or 8-pin connectors.

Cons: AMI BIOS is terrible; offers few configurable options and very poor overclocking support. You can't adjust your Vcore at *all*. Spotty documentation doesn't have any descriptions of BIOS settings, but lots of info on setting up RAID. Has hard 300 MHz FSB wall, so a terrible overclocking board. Review at vr-zone.com has more details, but what they *don't* tell you is that for CPUs reporting 133 MHz (e.g. the very popular Pentium 805 D) this wall pops up at a mere 150 MHz FSB! Definitely not the board for anyone looking to overclock an 805 D. No rear IEEE-1394 port; you need to use a bracket in a PCI slot. (Not an issue for me since I'm not using the second PCI-E slot.)

Overall Review: Fantastic feature set and price point for anyone looking to run at stock speeds or a mild overclock. Most definitely not an overclocker's board due to low FSB overclock capabilities.

Pros: Outstanding feature set, RAID, external SATA, firewire, fairly hassle free layout.

Cons: Board had trouble posting from day one. There might be something to the presence of so many DOA reports here?

Overall Review: From moment one, I Had to perform a little voodoo on it (cycling power at the power supply, hitting reset a few times, etc.) in order to get it to properly POST, other wise it would spin up its fans but produce no video signal. After running ok for a week, I powered it off for the night, came back, powered it on and same result as before - fans spinning up, no BIOS beep codes, and no POST or video signal.

I build computers as a side business, so I have lots of spare boards on my build bench as well as power supplies, video cards etc. so I was able to swap out every conceivalbe component and after systematically isolating every possible fail point, I was left with nothing but the motherboard as the culprit.

It's really too bad, because the board seemed to possess the features my client wanted at the price he was aiming for. Maybe this was just bad luck, but with so many others complaining of DOA, I maybe should have paid better attention.