A little about my philosophy should be in order. I don’t overclock. It might seem unpopular to most people to visit a motherboard review without any word on the overclocking, but the fact is, I prefer to run the system at the default ratings. After all, a Athlon 2400+ XP and 512MB DDR memory should be able to run any program currently available and most likely won’t be taxed until DOOM3 comes out.

Installation was a snap. The easy to follow instructions clearly labeled where every connector was supposed to go. The Power LED, Speaker wire, Reset SW, and other connectors attached without issue after installing the 2400+ XP CPU, the AIW 9700 Pro in the AGP8x slot and my memory. At this point I booted the computer. Seeing the BIOS screen on first boot is always a good sign. Before attaching drives and the other PCI devices in a system it’s important to eliminate the possibility of video, memory or the CPU being the problem when installing a motherboard.

At this point, I installed my hard drives, inserted my PCI cards, CDROM, attached the keyboard/mouse and rebooted the computer. Having previously formatted my 60GB HDD, I set the BIOS settings to boot off the CDROM first and proceeded to install Windows XP. This is not necessary in all cases, but anytime I install a new motherboard, I like to have a fresh start. After all, it doesn’t do at all to have a driver conflict from a previous install show up while writing a review.

Installation of the drivers went off without a hitch. I had a small problem with faulty wiring on my case, which caused me to lose a power supply 5 minutes into installing the drivers, but that wasn’t the fault of the motherboard, or any of the other system components. All in all, the entire process didn’t take any longer or shorter than any other motherboard install I’ve done. I give props to Asus for having comprehensive easy to understand instructions and installation guide.

BIOS Screenshots