About 10 before 8 am, I heard the beeping sound of a truck backing up. I looked out the window as the guy from the delivery service got back into his truck and drove off. Sure enough, my new motherboard was on the doorstep when I opened the door.
I bought the ASRock A780GXE/128M board. I have now completely installed and I am back up and running.
I am very impressed with the layout on the board. It was easy to plug everything in and not too many of the cables/connection were conflicting, so the board is fairly clean. It had connectors for my front-panel USB ports, which my last board did not, so my front panel is fully functioning now.
The sound drivers are far superior to what I had on the last two boards. Everything is clearer and louder, so I won't always be turning up the actual speaker volume, but can use the Windows volume control more often.
This board came with an obscene amount of USB ports available. There are six plugs on the back, plus a total of six more on the board (for things like the front panel). It also has SLI/Crossfire port directly on the motherboard, so no daughter card is needed. I don't have the second SLI card to use right now, but it is there and rar'n to go should I choose to go down that path.
The driver disks were also easy to use and simple. Installed the LAN and sound drivers and Windows immediately started using them. Has a bunch of overclocking features that I may install at some later date, but I've always been pretty happy with my system as-is, so may not touch those. We'll see.
For being an Asus boy for the last, oh, about 10 years or so, I am very pleased with the layout, cost, features, and installation of the ASRock motherboard. I would likely recommend it as a solid board if a friend was looking for a new one.
Two comments: (1) thanks for changing your blog back: I hated the "meanwhile" presentation and (2) how can I get the same motherboard and benefits that you are now enjoying?
ReplyDeleteI'm definitely an ASRock fan. :)
ReplyDeleteFrom your post I guess you don't know that ASRock is actually a subsidiary of ASUS? Guess that explains part of the enjoyment of the new board, huh? :) Personally I think some of the asrock boards have a better combo of features and an easier bios update.