Within its limitations, a good board
Oct 28, 2011
socratease
from California,
Rating:4.0
This board has some limitations you need to be aware of. It's not a gaming machine, it's not in that league. You've only got two SATA ports (not counting the eSATA). And there are only 4+2 USB jacks.
That being said, this is a nice mobo around which to build a small low-powered PC for listening to music, watching videos, browsing the web, and getting normal office-type work done. With the K-Lite codec pack and Windows 7, it can play 1080p video files very nicely (not sure about Blu-Ray). Given a 7200rpm hard disk, it will run most office applications with very good responsiveness. I'm not sure it can quite run without a fan as advertised, it gets quite warm with just passive airflow, but it doesn't need much to keep cool. A single quiet 120mm fan like a Noctua right over that huge heat sink and it will cool nicely and you will not be able to hear it.