ASUS P5Q-EM LGA 775 Intel G45 HDMI Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Great board for the money. Very flexible with TONS of connections. Onboard HDMI with digital audio support. Seems very stable.

Cons: Putting ANYTHING into the PCIe x16 slot WILL DISABLE the DVI and HDMI. This INCLUDES a riser for a slim case. Avoid this board if you are planning on building a slim media center. or pick your case VERY carefully. This is the first time that I've been let down by an Asus board. Now I have a great media center with no tuner. Yes, even an Asus PCIe tuner in the x16 slot will disable the DVI and HDMI.

Overall Review: a different case would solve my problem, but I don't want a different one. Maybe Asus will release a BIOS update to correct this major oversight.

Pros: Able to get an E8600 72-hour prime stable at 4.2Ghz with the ram linked/syched. No problems with overclocking an eVGA GTX 280. I build custom systems and a customer asked specifically for this board (good thing I do Lan Boxes). I was a little doubtful it would work for such a high end build, but it has proven itself.

Cons: I couldn't get the FSB much higher than 420 without raising motherboard voltages higher than what I was comfortable with.

Overall Review: 4 of the 6 sata ports got covered by the GTX 280, I'm sure other long video cards will do the same thing. You can use up to 4 sata ports if you use right angle sata connectors for 2 of the connections under the graphics card (it will barely fit, but it works)

Pros: Onboard video supports H.264 decoding at high definition resolutions. 7.1 channel surround sound. HDMI. Rock solid performance. PCIe 2.0 16x is available for future upgrading if I need it.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: I was weary of using onboard Intel graphics for Blu Ray movies, but I have a Core 2 Duo E8500 plugged in and this this rocks! 4GB of DDR2 800 (PC6400) RAM with Windows Vista Ultimate x64. Much better than my previous HTPC which was using an Athlon XP 2600+ CPU and an ATi Radeon X1650 AGP 8x card. Much cooler running too, which was surprising. I don't overclock my machines and I try to stay within spec for RAM (G45 officially supports DDR2 800, not DDR2 1066 or higher). I don't really care for the Express Gate feature, nor the EPU software since I run SETI@Home and leave the system on 24/7. Overall, I'm very happy with this purchase.

Pros: Great HTPC board. HDMI, good energy saving features. Graphics chip plays HD video perfectly.

Cons: Motherboard temps approach 60 deg in my 2" HTPC case. Case off it still runs about 50, while my CPU is about 21 deg. Since I don't have room for another fan I'm not sure that this will be good in the long run, but it is running alright.

Overall Review: Everything works in Linux with 2.6.26 or newer kernel.

Pros: works great in a mythbuntu box. this is a good board for your linux media center. everything works out of the box including HDMI, and SPDIF. plenty of SATA connectors and a good overall layout.

Cons: as with all Intel chipsets if you plugin a external graphics card all onboad graphics are disabled, including HDMI.

Overall Review: have this in an Antec Fusion Remote case and couldn't be happier.

Pros: Good board.

Cons: See below.

Overall Review: I'd like to make a correction to my previous post regarding ram and onboard video. Onboard video from what I've gathered automatically disables when setting IGA to PEG/PCI. I'm not 100% sure on this though. Ram ratio can be set to 1:1 by using FSB Strap at 400 BUT with a 1333fsb and 1066mhz ram the board only allows 800mhz for ram. However if you have a 1066fsb chip setting FSB Strap to 400 will give you 1066mhz ram. The ram incompatability only pertains to 1333fsb chips from what I've gathered and it's what's said in the mobo manual. I would think this information is something customers would like to know before hand to avoid incompatibilities like I'm experiencing. Will 1066mhz ram work with 1333fsb on this board? Yes, but only by OCing the CPU and leaving FSB Strap at AUTO which eliminates 1:1 ratio. Right now I have mine at 3.1Ghz/1098mhz with Corsair Twin2x4096. Cs:s fps went from 264 to 306 in stress test after OC with gtx280. The only major problem I have w

Pros: Wow. I've never used a MATX board with this many features, specifically for overclocking. This is basically an Asus ATX board that's had the fat trimmed off. Nice and stable with a pretty good layout. Not a huge fan of the locations for the SATA drives, though, any larger video card is going to block a few.

Cons: SATA port placement isn't ideal, since a larger video card will block a few of them. Still, it's a small board, not many other places for it to go... Intel GMA video sucks for 3D, but seems adequate for everything else. 1080p upscaling onboard is nice.

Overall Review: 100% worth it for everything from a simple media center system to a high end MATX build. This is your board.

Pros: Very good integrated video chipset. Video playback is smooth, can do some light gaming. Played WoW at 1920x1200 resolution and all settings on low and maintained playable framerate. HD Audio is amazingly close to the quality of my X-Fi card, but not quite at the same level. Plenty of USB ports, 4 ram slots, pci-express 16 ver. 2

Cons: Came with a faulty pci-express slot. I spent the last 4 days troubleshooting this board. Tried memory tests, separate brand new power supplies, video cards, disabling onboard devices such as sound, new LAN card, XP and Vista, new and old drivers, BIOS updates, etc. Pretty much everything I could try, I tried. In the end, it was the faulty pci-express slot causing system lock-ups. Usually happens when trying to play a game and it locks up in a few seconds of playing. Had it lock up twice just while browsing web.

Overall Review: If you are looking for an integrated, all-in-one board, this is GREAT! If you are going to use this for a micro atx case, and plan to use it for heavy gaming, I would look elsewhere! Very frustrating experience. 4 long days of troubleshooting. Finally tried my buddy's micro board of a different brand, and everything has been running smoothly. Didn't have to reinstall Vista 64-bit either, thanks to Vista's amazing hardware compatibility. Just gave my friend the ASUS board since he only uses onboard video anyways. Was on the phone for 40 mins to talk to ASUS tech support and all they could tell me was that it was either a grounding issue or that I needed to send it in for an RMA. Complete waste of time. It was definitely not a grounding issue because it worked fine with onboard video.