ASUS M4A88TD-M/USB3 AM3 AMD 880G SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Great value, bought with as a "Shell Shocker" buy.

Cons: All is OK with the motherboard. This is a great board. Most of the neg posts are because the bios was not updated to the most recent or the had the wrong voltage settings for the RAM.

Overall Review: Check the voltage of your RAM. I bought RAM with package from Newegg /OCZ and had to Set DRAM Voltage to 1.65 volts. Default settings gave errors when installing Windows. Allways check with RAM mfg and set to their recommendations (sometimes this is on the label on the RAM). Had I known this I would have saved hours in trying to install properly. Not a fault of ASUS, just a heads up for you.

Pros: Im not taxing it, but it works well. Hybrid Crossfire works well with Powercolor 5450. Good options in BIOS to tweak with. Stable thus far. No driver issues. NB runs cool with HS. Like that it has 2 PCIEx1 slots (TV Tuner slots). Installing in SFF case breeze. No issue with layout in my case, all fit and did not create any headache.

Cons: Core unlocker did not work for me, but not a con. The IDE controller is third party chip so there is extended pre-os loads (non issue unless you had PATA hardware). EPU software sucks, I dont recommend it (caused issues with stuttering on 5450 playing HD TV due to "power saving" features, did not supply enough V to where it was needed I think). Cant use HDMI and DVI at same time for integrated graphics (no issue for me since I have external graphics too).

Overall Review: Windows 7 32 Bit. Athlon II x3 2.9GHz, 2GB Crucial RAM. It looks like it has good debugging options...but I did not need it thus can not comment on it. Manual is standard Asus manual. It lists all the features/setting and where they are, but not necessarily what the features do (just that you can turn it on/off - although to most users, best to leave defaults).

Pros: I have built two computers with this board last year and both are as stable as a rock. One system is totally stock and unremarkable but the other is in a low-volume server role with multiple disk drives, has a special serial port card, and Kingston ECC memory. No hardware-related issues to date. All features that I've used/tweaked work as advertised.

Cons: None that I know of.

Overall Review: Planning on building a third system with this board in the next few weeks.

Pros: Great Board

Cons: Comes with a factory defect easy to fix

Overall Review: I bought 6 of these, returned one until I figured it out, but I was able to fix the other 5 for less than $2. The plastic holders on the video card heat sink is a factory defect. In a very short time, 3 days on one board, and the paste will give up. The spring held plastic screws are not tight enough and the video card will over heat and scramble on you. Some have come lose just on the ruff shipping. An easy fix is to pop it off, use decent heat paste and use nuts and screws to hold the heat sink down properly without getting it too tight. Shame on Asus for being rather cheap on this type of mounting on such a great board. I am sure the complaints will come in as they keep using these cheap plastic spring mounts for heat sinks.

Pros: Fast, easy installation, price Works great with Linux openSuse11.3 and 11.4 Has everything I needed… runs cool and very stable ( though I don’t do any of the over clocking stuff) Using it with the WD5002AALX 6.0Gb/s and Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333

Cons: none

Overall Review: Shipped fast from Newegg (as usual)

Pros: Lot of connectors for USB and SATA. Probably more than any case in this form factor would need. Passive cooled chipset great for quiet HTPC setups. HDMI video works great with my TV. Note that HDMI audio is only stereo.

Cons: No USB 3.0 header. I have a case with these ports so it would have been nice. HDMI audio works but supports stereo only. Use the optical.

Pros: In the low 7's on the WEI with DDR3 1600 and a Athlon II X4 620. Built in graphics with the ability to upgrade later is great. I cannot say much on the SATA 6Gb and USB 3.0 because I don't own any other hardware to utilize it, but the SATA down grades very nicely. I would recommend this board to anyone.

Cons: The first one died in about 20 minutes of use. I would rather it fail then a week after the warranty expires. Got it RMA'd and the second one has been running constantly for months with no problems.

Overall Review: I still gave it 5 eggs because you cannot fault the entire product because of one faulty board. New Egg corrected the problem right away so I cannot complain.

Pros: Documentation is good, works sort of well.

Cons: Ethernet port did not work after first putting together the computer, sound stopped working randomly after a week but then started working again after reinstalling drivers but now the sound has stopped working again and no amount of reinstalling audio drivers can get it to work.