CURRENT state of Asus Motherboards?

A

Angus66

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 22, 2008
Messages
487
My current pc is pretty dated (Socket 754 Athlon/AGP 8x/DDR), so I'm building a new one from scratch. Back when I built this pc, Asus was a well-respected mfg that produced quality/stable mb's that performed very well. Bios/Driver updates were posted regularly on their site & tech support was OK. aBit had gone downhill & was just the opposite at the time.

That was almost 4 years ago though, and I've searched numerous forums & review sites and it would appear that Asus has slipped quite a bit the last few years.
(HERE is a good example of what I'm referring to right from [H]. )
I also see a lot of "open-box" Asus boards listed on Newegg, which probably isn't a good thing. :eek:

So, is it a fair/accurate statement that Asus mb's are not what they used to be or are their simply more complaints online due to more beginners building their own pc's these days?

If it makes a difference, I'm going to be going with either a P45 or X48 mb this time around and my pc hardware experience/knowledge level is probably "intermediate".

I'm also not going to be doing any overclocking with this pc, although I did quite a bit of it in the past. ;)

Any insight/experiences/advice would be appreciated!
 
ASUS has a very large market share, so there will be complaints.
People post on forums when they have a problem, but rarely when their PC is working fine!

That said, I have just spent the weekend with a P5Q-Deluxe and an E6600, and had issues and incompatibilities with a simple test-bed setup. It wouldn't see either of my 150GB WD Raptors. The BIOS saw them, but VISTA 32 did not see them as available to install to. Trying with VISTA 64 to confirm.

No reason to call WD about the Raptors. I checked WD's knowledgebase, and they do not offer motherboard specific support. They refer you to the motherboard manufacturer, so it would be back to ASUS. Maybe I will call them?

Some of their boards have become a pain, this P5Q-Deluxe has a lot of things that can be on AUTO, but also a lot of things that need to be set correctly. There is a little too much tweaking needed with this board, in my opinion, but I also like a lot about it.

I wish it would see the Raptors.
 
1st of all - thanks for the reply & detailing your specific problem(s). I had seen other posts (I forget which board(s) at the moment) that mentioned similar problems with WD Raptors so you're obviously not alone.

aamsel said:
ASUS has a very large market share, so there will be complaints.
People post on forums when they have a problem, but rarely when their PC is working fine!
Click to expand...

That was one of the things I was thinking when I posted this thread. ;)

I'm employed in a (technical) service industry myself, and I've read more than one report that states that customers are anywhere from 10 - 20 times more likely to share a negative experience than a positive one (they'll also remember the negative experience MUCH longer).

With that said, I'm still trying to get a feel if I'll be working an an Asus board for an entire weekend (as you were) just to get common/mainstream hardware working.

I'm getting old and my patience isn't what it used to be. :p

My current sytem still functions fine though, so I'll have that available during the build to search for work-arounds/fixes/patches/etc if everything doesn't go smoothly.

Thanks again. :cool:
 
You need to load the sata/raid driver during Vista setup.

aamsel said:
That said, I have just spent the weekend with a P5Q-Deluxe and an E6600, and had issues and incompatibilities with a simple test-bed setup. It wouldn't see either of my 150GB WD Raptors. The BIOS saw them, but VISTA 32 did not see them as available to install to. Trying with VISTA 64 to confirm.

I wish it would see the Raptors.
Click to expand...
 
I think ASUS puts out new BIOSes pretty slowly due to the fact that they have about 8 models of any given motherboard.

However, their support can't be any worse than Gigabyte's. 4-6 weeks for an RMA, ouch!
 
ScretHate said:
However, their support can't be any worse than Gigabyte's. 4-6 weeks for an RMA, ouch!
Click to expand...

+1 to that...my gigabyte P35 board has gone bye-bye for 4-6 weeks thanks to a corrupt BIOS and it has been RMAd.

I just bought the ASUS P5E Deluxe from Newegg. Can't wait to get it. I was in the same boat as you when choosing a new MB. I think what makes these new ones different from the boards of old are all of the switches a tweaks that are in the BIOS now. The best recommendation I can give you is to read the manual BEFORE you buy your new board. Get aquainted with it so you know what to expect when you get it. I always had great experiences with ASUS boards. <knock on wood>
 
Vote for ASUS here. Tried every other 790FX board when they were hitting the streets and this ASUS I am running makes them all look like shite in comparison. Especially the Gigabyte.
 
I run an Asus Rampage and it works like a charm. Few OCing problems but hey, that's not their fault ;)
 
I had a socket AM2 ASUS board and loved the heck out of it. However, my friend and I tried to use their Nvidia 780i board and it just sucked, badly. For the user with problems getting your system set up with raptors, you need to load the drivers from your install disk that came with the motherboard for your sata controller. This should cure your ills.
 
I placed the SATA drivers for the ASUS P5E-VM HDMI on a USB thumb drive and kept hitting F6 until acknowledged by Vista Ultimate 64. Both SATA recognized by Windows.
 
I just built a new system around a P5E Deluxe and everything worked marvelously out of the box. (E8400, ASUS 4850s in CF, 4gb G.SKILL DDR2 1000, Vista 64 Home Premium, WD 640GB SATA2 HDD, XIGMATEK HDT-S1283, Corsair 650W PSU). I haven't overclocked anything since my last system (AMD 64 3200+) several years ago, and easily got the E8400 o/ced to 4 ghz just by changing a few settings.

It is an attractive board, as well.
 
I like Asus boards too... had a few over the years with good results.

Stick those raptors in another computer, intilalise and format them there?
 
Angus66 said:
My current pc is pretty dated (Socket 754 Athlon/AGP 8x/DDR), so I'm building a new one from scratch. Back when I built this pc, Asus was a well-respected mfg that produced quality/stable mb's that performed very well. Bios/Driver updates were posted regularly on their site & tech support was OK. aBit had gone downhill & was just the opposite at the time.

That was almost 4 years ago though, and I've searched numerous forums & review sites and it would appear that Asus has slipped quite a bit the last few years.
(HERE is a good example of what I'm referring to right from [H]. )
I also see a lot of "open-box" Asus boards listed on Newegg, which probably isn't a good thing. :eek:

So, is it a fair/accurate statement that Asus mb's are not what they used to be or are their simply more complaints online due to more beginners building their own pc's these days?

If it makes a difference, I'm going to be going with either a P45 or X48 mb this time around and my pc hardware experience/knowledge level is probably "intermediate".

I'm also not going to be doing any overclocking with this pc, although I did quite a bit of it in the past. ;)

Any insight/experiences/advice would be appreciated!
Click to expand...

ASUS is still a pretty good manufacturer. I don't think they've slipped very much if at all. I've had few problems with any of them I've worked with and I work with a ton of their boards. The thing about the P5N-T is that its' an NVIDIA 780i SLI chipset based board. All the 780i SLI boards put out by ASUS were bad for some reason. However their 680i SLI boards weren't all that great either. I've yet to work with the Striker II Extreme but for the price, it can never be a winner in my book. $400+ for a desktop board is outrageous. This isn't necessarily ASUS' fault but that's what Newegg and other sites are charging for them which is out of the bounds of reasonable. If I am going to spend that kind of coin on a motherboard the damn thing better have more than one processor socket.

I've had relatively good experiences with ASUS boards over the years and I've continued to do so even recently. However I think that because there are more of their boards out there than anything else that you will hear more complaints simply because its' human nature to go out of our way to talk about the negative experiences in our lives more than the positive ones. Or at the very least it is in our nature to remember the negative experiences over the positive ones. Due to the sheer number of boards out there you'll hear more complaints about ASUS boards than you will about anything else. Still I'd wager that most people don't generally have any major issues with their boards.
 
I got this board
ASUS P5K-E/WIFI-AP

Motherboard works fine. I did run into memory issue though. Despite my dominators being on the approved memory list, my computer kept restarting. I had to go into the bios and force the settings to my memory (1066mhz). I hear that this problem may have been resolved with a new bios and on newer revisions.

my brother got
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131277

Absolutely no problems there.
 
Two bad experiences with Asus in a row for me. A P5Q Pro was unstable as all hell with the very same parts I'm using now (and OCing the hell out of), and the P5N-D I bought to trouble shoot the P5Q Pro would not even POST. An Intel P35 board, and my current eVGA 750i FTW work flawless with the same parts. So I have to eat the 15% restock and return shipping, thanks Asus.

I would just like to add, that the 3 AsRock (Asus "low-end" brand) builds I sold last year, all worked flawlessly....go figure.
 
I appreciate all the feedback & input. :cool:

Looks like I'll keep Asus on my (short) list with Gigabyte.
 
Concerning the 780i chipset based boards. I have read VERY FEW positive reviews about them regardlesss of the manufacturer of the board. I believe that chipset just has issues....period! Those that can get it to work, are considered lucky. At least, that's what I've heard.

But trying to decide between Gigabyte and ASUS was one of the hardest decisions I've made. Plunking down $200 + for a board was a tough decision for me. In the last 8 years, my choices have always flip flopped. gigabyte, asus, gigabyte, asus, gigabyte, and now asus again. There was an Abit board in there somewhere that I bought back in 2000. The intel 850 chipset using RAMBUS memory. Still using it in my backup PC and love it!!
 
SuperSaiyan said:
Concerning the 780i chipset based boards. I have read VERY FEW positive reviews about them regardlesss of the manufacturer of the board. I believe that chipset just has issues....period! Those that can get it to work, are considered lucky. At least, that's what I've heard.

But trying to decide between Gigabyte and ASUS was one of the hardest decisions I've made. Plunking down $200 + for a board was a tough decision for me. In the last 8 years, my choices have always flip flopped. gigabyte, asus, gigabyte, asus, gigabyte, and now asus again. There was an Abit board in there somewhere that I bought back in 2000. The intel 850 chipset using RAMBUS memory. Still using it in my backup PC and love it!!
Click to expand...

Well the 780i SLI chipset is nothing more than the 680i SLI MCP and SPP's with a third chip that translates, and provides PCI-Express 2.0 support along with some additional PCI-Express lanes. The 680i SLI was a pain to deal with and wasn't very reliable. Adding a third chip to the mix and calling it something new didn't help.
 
I've never had a problem with an Asus Intel board using an Intel chipset. Rock solid and OC'd well.
 
Asus' RoG boards are well worth the money for quad core overclocking. RoG = Republic of Gamers = the weird named boards like Maximus xxx/Striker xxx/etc. boards that arent simple model numbers like P5Q. they generally offer higher quality PWMs, better cooling, and overall a better experience if you're looking to push your chip as far as it will go (especially quads).

dual cores dont require near as high quality components and i dont think RoG would be worth the money unless you're going extreme OCing with phase/peltier/LN/etc.

it took a solid week of tweaking to get my quad 100% stable at 3.6ghz but in the end it's 18hrs occt stable w/ great temps, rails, and performance.

dont count out DFI, though. their mid-ranged x38 board was very slow to market but is a fantastic board as well. i also hear great things about the evga 750i SLI FTW.
 
Somnambulator said:
Asus' RoG boards are well worth the money for quad core overclocking. RoG = Republic of Gamers = the weird named boards like Maximus xxx/Striker xxx/etc. boards that arent simple model numbers like P5Q. they generally offer higher quality PWMs, better cooling, and overall a better experience if you're looking to push your chip as far as it will go (especially quads).

it took a solid week of tweaking to get my quad 100% stable at 3.6ghz but in the end it's 18hrs occt stable w/ great temps, rails, and performance.

dont count out DFI, though. their mid-ranged x38 board was very slow to market but is a fantastic board as well. i also hear great things about the evga 750i SLI FTW.
Click to expand...

I totally agree about the Republic of Gamers boards....but man....I couldn't afford that kind $$$$ just for a motherboard! But they are...definitely the cream of the crop!

As far as DFI, yes..good boards, but based on what I've read, not for the OC noob ... like me! :p
 
Thanks for the input everyone. :cool:

I've narrowed my mb choices down to:

Asus P5E Deluxe
($220 + shipping @ Newegg)

Gigabyte GA-X48-DS4
($225 + shipping @ Newegg)

Since I'm not 100% sure I'll ever run Crossfire, these are my two alternate mb options:

Asus P5Q Deluxe
($210 + shipping @ Newegg)

Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS4P
($190 + shipping @ Newegg)

Both these P45 mb's obviously lose the dual PCI-E 16x slots when running crossfire, but the Asus P45 gains eSata that's absent of the X48 version.

Any (additional) thoughts on these four mb's???
 
Angus66 said:
Thanks for the input everyone. :cool:

I've narrowed my mb choices down to:

Asus P5E Deluxe
($220 + shipping @ Newegg)

Gigabyte GA-X48-DS4
($225 + shipping @ Newegg)

Since I'm not 100% sure I'll ever run Crossfire, these are my two alternate mb options:

Asus P5Q Deluxe
($210 + shipping @ Newegg)

Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS4P
($190 + shipping @ Newegg)

Both these P45 mb's obviously lose the dual PCI-E 16x slots when running crossfire, but the Asus P45 gains eSata that's absent of the X48 version.

Any (additional) thoughts on these four mb's???
Click to expand...


WOW....De je Vu all over again! The first two boards were my two final picks also! I decided against the P45 because of the PCi-E bandwidth limitations of the P45 ... if I ever decide to do Crossfire ... plus, the prices were about the same and I'll never use eSATA.

My choice was ASUS!
 
105843672_1dfe6cbaac.jpg
 
im kinda in the same boat. im stuck between those 4 motherboards haha.

I read that the asus deluxe has WiFi-AP@n. http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=548&pgno=0

so that means it has wifi? do the other mobos have build in wifi????

also the deluxe has this built in SSD with linux i think that takes 5 secs to boot:
"ASUS Express Gate SSD
5 Secs Bootup to online
Taking only 5 seconds to go online from bootup, Express Gate is the one-stop gateway to instant fun! It´s a unique motherboard built-in OS. You can utilize the most popular Instant Messengers (IM) like MSN, Skype, Google talk, QQ, and Yahoo! Messenger to keep in touch with friends, or quickly check on the weather and e-mails just before leaving your house. What´s more, the user-friendly picture manager lets you view your pictures without entering Windows at anytime!"
 
The quality control with Abit, Asus and DFI is low IME........period. It's on coinsidence that you read about so many f'in rma's nowdays(factoring in incompitence of course.....lol). Cheap chinese build quality.........period. Made in Taiwan='s quality for many moons. Made in China ='s good luck.
 
my commando board's memory controller took a crap on me last week. asus took delivery of it yesterday and i expect a replacement from them sometime next week. i've never had a bad experience with asus tech support ot rma department. in the meantime, i've ordered a maximus II fornula and radeon 4850 from newegg. i've used boards from asus, gigabyte, dfi, epox, msi, and abit thru the years. the only ones i've been completely happy with are asus and dfi.
 
Cork1 said:
The quality control with Abit, Asus and DFI is low IME........period. It's on coinsidence that you read about so many f'in rma's nowdays(factoring in incompitence of course.....lol). Cheap chinese build quality.........period. Made in Taiwan='s quality for many moons. Made in China ='s good luck.
Click to expand...

Huh? :eek:

Those three brands get the most respect on this forum. Obviously no company is perfect, but who would you place above ABIT, ASUS and DFI?
 
I have also had good experiences with Asus boards. I have used numerous as well and found what others are saying correct. Asus and Gigabyte being the top choices. Abit tried to get their act together with the newest boards but I have heard more complaints than compliments about them.
I am not a fan of DFI and MSI boards due to problems I have had with them and slow customer service.
The 6 and 7 series chipsets have been problematic with all companies while the Intel chipsets have been showing good results.

I had a problem with an Asus Crosshair board last year. I had no problem with the customer service and the RMA time. I had a new board in a week.
I would say they have a good amount of BIOS updates available in a timely manner. I have found the other drivers for the Asus boards like the sata and raid controllers are usually not the most up-to-date on their site.
The only thing that bothers me about Asus is their website. It is ALWAYS slow. I usually have to use the Europe or Global site instead of the US one. Oh and their Asus update utility most of the time can not connect to check if there are any new BIOS updates.
 
I've used Asus boards for for my last 3 builds and they were all rock solid. I'm really impressed with my newest build that uses the Rampage Formula.
 
Well, for those that are ragging on ASUS boards (or really any other major mainstream board for that matter), how many boards do you think they manufacture per year? For arguments sake, let say 1 million per year taking into account ALL model numbers for ALL the different chipsets. If you are only seeing 100-500 people complain about quality, defects and poor design (in the case of the 680i/780I), then I would say that's pretty darn good. That would be under 5% of the ASUS global market that had an issue. Now, if still believe that is too much, then you show me a manufacturer that makes a PERFECT product all of the time and I'll eat my words.

Even hand built car manufacturers that build...say 5 cars per day....have some kind of quality control issues and manufacturer defects. It's the nature of manufactured goods, everyone is going to get a bad product at some time in their life.
 
And BTW, I should be getting my P5E Deluxe board along with my 4GB of 1066 Corsair Dominator memory today. It should be on the doorstep waiting for me when I get home!

Ooooo, I cannot wait! It's like Christmas!
 
Cork1 said:
The quality control with Abit, Asus and DFI is low IME........period. It's on coinsidence that you read about so many f'in rma's nowdays(factoring in incompitence of course.....lol). Cheap chinese build quality.........period. Made in Taiwan='s quality for many moons. Made in China ='s good luck.
Click to expand...

Are you kidding me? The reason you read about so many defective boards and RMA's has to do with the sheer number of boards out there from these companies. No one makes as many boards as ASUS does. As a result you'll hear more complaints about there boards than you will out of anyone else. It is a simple numbers game.

Personally I've owned a TON of ASUS boards I've never once had a defective board. To date I've only had one ASUS board die on me however it took more than a year for that to happen.

I've owned:

P2L97
P2B
P3B-F
CUBX
A7V-133A
P3C-2000
P4B
P4B-266
P4B-533
P4B-533-E
P4P-800 Deluxe
P4P-800-E Deluxe
P4C-800 Deluxe
A8N-SLI Deluxe
P5W DH Deluxe
Striker Extreme
Striker II Formula

I've probably owned more ASUS boards than that but I can't think of anymore right now. Out of all those the only one to really give me any problems is the Striker Extreme. It took just over a year but it finally died. I've also reviewed a number of ASUS motherboards and I've built a ton of computers for friends and professionally and I have never once had an ASUS board die on me. I've experienced the gamut of cheaper ASUS boards, as well as the high end ones supporting every processor and memory type since the Pentium II days and I've never had any significant problems out of any of them.

Only one other manufacturer comes close to my positive experiences with ASUS and that's Intel. I've had a ton of their boards and still do. Granted I've not owned as many Intel boards as I have ASUS, but they've all been perfect. Not a one of them has ever died and any system I've ever built around them has never BSOD'ed on me and any lockups I've ever had on those systems had problems tracable to other components and or software.

I've had pretty poor experiences with abit motherboards that were AMD processor compatible. For example the KT7 RAID and KT7-A RAID were both crap. However their Intel processor compatible boards were always solid for me. I've had the BH6, BE6, BX6 Revision 2, AA8XE (non-Fatal1ty) and probably a few more I've forgotten about. All of those were solid. The worst abit board that was Intel processor compatible in my experience was the AB9 Pro which I didn't give a very positive review to. However it wasn't THAT bad. Just not great for the money considering the great ASUS options available at the time.

I've had poor experiences with DFI's AMD processor compatible boards for the most part, but their Intel processor compatible motherboards have worked well for me. They've been a challenge to stabalize sometimes and they are picky in some other instances but they've been fairly solid.
 
To expand on the last posters comments....the only board that I've had better luck with than ASUS and Gigabyte would be SuperMicro. I've not owned any Intel boards so I can't comment on that, but I have owned more SuperMicro boards than I have ASUS and not ONE has ever given an issue.

You just don't hear much about them anymore and because of their lack of exposure/features, they are just not considered as much...at least not by me anymore.
 
Among my Asus boards, I currently own:
P2B-DS
3x A8N-SLI Premium
P1-AH1

And I have a P5Q Premium on the way. I had a A8N-SLI Deluxe given to me by a friend, but it fried about a week later. I'm pretty sure it was the friend's fault, the board smelled fishy. Literally. He's big into fishtanks. But other than that, all the others are still alive and kicking. I've had Abit, MSI, Soyo, Gigabyte, Asus, Tyan, and Intel, and I consider Asus to be well designed and excellent quality, nearly that of Tyan and Intel. The only thing I can fault Asus for is maybe their support isn't enterprise-class, only consumer-class.
 
SuperSaiyan said:
To expand on the last posters comments....the only board that I've had better luck with than ASUS and Gigabyte would be SuperMicro. I've not owned any Intel boards so I can't comment on that, but I have owned more SuperMicro boards than I have ASUS and not ONE has ever given an issue.

You just don't hear much about them anymore and because of their lack of exposure/features, they are just not considered as much...at least not by me anymore.
Click to expand...

Well Supermicro isn't very competitive in the desktop market. Their workstation and server boards are excellent and they are among my first choices for machines of that type.

alcuin said:
Among my Asus boards, I currently own:
P2B-DS
3x A8N-SLI Premium
P1-AH1

And I have a P5Q Premium on the way. I had a A8N-SLI Deluxe given to me by a friend, but it fried about a week later. I'm pretty sure it was the friend's fault, the board smelled fishy. Literally. He's big into fishtanks. But other than that, all the others are still alive and kicking. I've had Abit, MSI, Soyo, Gigabyte, Asus, Tyan, and Intel, and I consider Asus to be well designed and excellent quality, nearly that of Tyan and Intel. The only thing I can fault Asus for is maybe their support isn't enterprise-class, only consumer-class.
Click to expand...

I forgot about the A8N-SLI Deluxe. I had one of those. Other than that I'd like to add that Tyan's quality is FAR from what it used to be. Anyone who had a Tyan K8WE (S2895) can tell you all about that.
 
My last three personal installs have been ASUS motherboards and it is very likely that the next one will be too.
 
I've had many Asus boards over the years, and used to buy nothing but Asus.
Asus with my Pentium 100 (don't remember model)
Asus Venus with Pentium Pro 200
Asus A7V with my Athlon 850
Asus A8V Deluxe with Athlon64 3400 (three builds)
Asus P5B with E6400
Asus P5B-Deluxe with Q6600 (my current rig)
Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe WiFi (failed Phenom build)

Through the A8V, I never had any complaint at all with Asus boards. They all worked, BIOS worked, drivers works. The P5B works well enough, but it's never been quite right. Fan monitoring doesn't work, temperature sensor for the CPU will randomly jump to 90c and then run the fan at 100%, suspend/sleep modes never work quite right, etc. From reading around on web postings, I'm not alone with these problems yet Asus never fixed them.

P5B-Deluxe is better than the P5B vanilla, but I can't say it's stable the way my A8V-Deluxe was. The M3A32 was dead, dead, dead out of the box no matter how many CPU's and PSU's I tried in it. Very frustrating to spend that much on a board and it won't even post.

I won't say that I will never buy an Asus board again, but right now I like the Gigabyte P35-DS3L I used for my wifes computer and an Abit P35 board I have for an extra computer. So we'll just say Asus has lost my loyalty.
 
Tyan...wow, there's a name I haven't heard in a while. I used to have one of those also. For the life of me, I cannot remember the model #. It was a dual processor board and I ran two PIII 450MHZ in it with 768MB of RAM. That was a rock solid board and I ended up giving it to a buddy who STILL runs it as a gaming/FTP server.
 
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