ASRock X48TurboTwins LGA 775 Intel X48 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: *none - It's a motherboard that sorta works with a lot of tweeking

Cons: One nasty little board. The PCI slots are SO close together that if you have two double-wide cards, they just about touch each other (so much for heat dissipation). I have Vista 64 Ultimate with 4GB of RAM. The bios can see the 1066 DDR RAM just fine, but the OS only sees 3GB, no tech support response from ASRock (3 days). The configuration for where the power ports are located is a joke, just take a look at the pictures and scratch you head. The SATA ports are funky, in that you have to use very specific ports to get your hardware up and running. As of this writing, my CD/DVD is still not working. Jumper pins? OK, I've been building boards since the 386 chip, and perhaps there is not other way around this, but this is only a minor gripe.

Overall Review: Just stay away from this board. DDR3 memory has come down enough to get a nice X45 chipset that you don't need to mess with this kind of Frankinbase product anyway.

Pros: In order to utilize more than 4 gigs or ram and see it correctly with a 64bit OS you will need to enable the memory remapping feature on your motherboard as you would do with any other motherboard.

Cons: None

Overall Review: Don't be afraid to do a little reseach

Pros: Worked fine most of the time. Wasn't hard to install, or to set up. Placement of everything seemed fine.

Cons: Couldn't handle the heat from two un-powered (workstation) video cards I tried. Occasionally crashed even with a Radeon HD 3870 running on high for a while. In general, couldn't handle high loads, and overclocking anything made it crash, even using ASRock software.

Overall Review: Board eventually gave up the ghost when I was cleaning it with spray air (probably my fault) and the Gigabyte P45 replacement I bought is better and tougher. I actually had the wifi version of this board which is why it doesn't show me owning it. I couldn't get the wifi hub function to work. I should have had more fans, but the board should have been able to handle more power too; I mean what do they expect you to do with those PCIE slots if you can't get power to them.

Pros: Taught me the value of my time

Cons: I have the Wifi verison. I have spent a small amount of time everyday for the past two months trying to get this system to work. System will test out just fine through the usual tests (P95, CPU burn-in, memtest) run for maybe two days or so then BSOD. I've tested all other components on another machine and they run just fine. Stock speeds, overclocked, underclocked playing with the jumpers per manual, setting memory timing/voltage and enabling/disabling memory features in BIOS. Nothing seems to help. I can get it to run, but it will eventually crash. BIOs is inconsistent and intermittent as far as access to CPU voltage. BIOs had a minor crash where it deleted some internal files or something and I had to reload the MAC address and IDE address onto the board. Also has some inconsistent weird power issues where the unit won't power down which seems to be independent of OS and BIOs settings. Contacted tech support which helped me with the minor BIOs crash but haven't heard from them since

Overall Review: I don't like giving up on this sort of stuff especially when there's $$$ involved but I'm going to cut my losses here. I have a suspicion that the RAM I have is just not compatible with this mobo. My other system uses the same RAM so I am unable to test different RAM without spending more $$$ and have been unable to confirm whether it is compatible or not with their tech support since they won't return my emails and RAM compatibility is not listed on their website. RAM is not faulty since I've tested each stick individually with memtest and swapped them out with my other system and it works just fine. Memory support forum suggested raising voltage but this had no effect on stability. RAM is 4x2gb DDR3 GSkill (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16820231190)

Pros: Faster than fast board. The asrock software does the board no justice. I suggest a manual overclock. Running a Q9550 proc C1. 3.6ghz sustained for 24 hours running prime 95 on all cores. Won't recognize 4 gigs of ram but thats not the mobo's fault. Nice option for the DDR2/DDR3 upgrade path. Is capable of running the latest graphics cards at full tilt. Really a very very very capable budget board.

Cons: High temps but I've ran it for the better part of the year without a hitch. Cra*py layout of cables, especially the main power cable. Exteral Sata is actually internal sata routed to the back of the tower via the cables that your required to use. This also robs you of some of your internal sata ports. Kind of a cheat way of getting external sata connectivity on the box and looks cra*py but it is a budget board afterall. And it is capable.

Overall Review: Best board at the time for the money. I actually bought it for less almost a year ago with the wifi. Power without breaking the bank. I know there is newer tech out now but this board was a budget bada** for it's time.