[Arch Angel]

So I just finished my new rig, and I had some serious problems with the motherboard. My specs (the ones that count, anyhow):

Mobo: ASUS M2N-E SLI
Proc: AMD Socket AM2 5200+ Dual Core
RAM: 2 GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800
Proc Fan: Thermaltake Mini Typhoon (this thing is huge!)
Video Card: 3DFuzion 256 MB (can't remember what geForce off the top of my head though)
Sound Card: Some old thing I had laying around that windows actually recognized.

Now, you look at the mobo, and then you see the sound card, and you wonder "Why the [bleep] we he use an old sound card with a mobo that has 8 channel digital on-board sound?". Great question. The answer is really fricking stupid. When you plug a USB appliance into the motherboard (or even into the front panel of the case) the board will NOT PLAY SOUND. It took me 3.5 hours of searching on the internet, playing with the audio controls, BIOS, etc., to figure this out. Apparently, this is a known problem with the ASUS motherboards.

Imagine my frustration when I booted up, everything worked splendidly, except I had no sound. And when I contacted ASUS about this, their answer was "Too bad - go buy a sound card". Why would I buy a motherboard with such great onboard sound when I can't use it? And this goes for any USB device (I have 4 and counting): Printer, keyboard, mouse, logitech gamepad.

And this wasn't the only problem I had. The front panel has 2 USB ports. I connected them at build, fired up the PC, and got a "USB over current" error. What the f*&^? Again, searched the internet for 2 hours and found out that this is another known problem and the resolution is to flash BIOS. An easy procedure, and one that I should have done anyhow. The BIOS on the mobo was March 2007, the update was June 2007, and I bought my board in August 2007. Why wouldn't ASUS just update the BIOS on any new boards it manufactures? Answer: "We want people to use our website".

I just wanted to post this so everyone else out there who is thinking of building a rig can take this into consideration. I woudn't recommend this board ever, and I will never buy an ASUS product again.

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Why wouldn't ASUS just update the BIOS on any new boards it manufactures? Answer: "We want people to use our website".

this won't help you in your issues with the board but....just because you bought it in august doesn't mean it was made in august....that board could have been made any time between march and august and beeing that the bios revision was done in june...it's pretty likely it was actually made between march and june

[dsenette]

Why wouldn't ASUS just update the BIOS on any new boards it manufactures? Answer: "We want people to use our website".

this won't help you in your issues with the board but....just because you bought it in august doesn't mean it was made in august....that board could have been made any time between march and august and beeing that the bios revision was done in june...it's pretty likely it was actually made between march and june

[Neil Jones]

Items are sold through a method known as the Distribution/Supply Chain/Channel.

Basically a board is put together, usually tested, then packaged up in nice fancy boxing and put on a conveyor belt somewhere.
From there it can spend anything up to a year/18 months or more sitting in a warehouse somewhere waiting for the laws of supply and demand to catch up.
When they do, the board gets packed off somewhere else to another warehouse for a while, until somebody else orders it.
From there it often either goes through more warehouses or into a shop. From a shop you receive it. In all that time due to the handling about its possible that its received damage somewhere along the line.

Therefore, just because you buy it in August doesn't mean it was made in August, its more likely it was made in March and only took three months to come directly to you which is a fair old lick down the Distribution Channel.

It is of course possible that the board went out with a problem in the first place. Even big companies like Asus have a bad series of boards under one model name and on occasion you will get a bad board. This is not unique to Asus, it happens to MSI, Abit, Gigabyte, etc. But if you're not happy with your board and you think its got a fault, use any warranty you have and send it back for a replacement or refund.

[Arch Angel]

Items are sold through a method known as the Distribution/Supply Chain/Channel.

Basically a board is put together, usually tested, then packaged up in nice fancy boxing and put on a conveyor belt somewhere.
From there it can spend anything up to a year/18 months or more sitting in a warehouse somewhere waiting for the laws of supply and demand to catch up.
When they do, the board gets packed off somewhere else to another warehouse for a while, until somebody else orders it.
From there it often either goes through more warehouses or into a shop. From a shop you receive it. In all that time due to the handling about its possible that its received damage somewhere along the line.

Therefore, just because you buy it in August doesn't mean it was made in August, its more likely it was made in March and only took three months to come directly to you which is a fair old lick down the Distribution Channel.

It is of course possible that the board went out with a problem in the first place. Even big companies like Asus have a bad series of boards under one model name and on occasion you will get a bad board. This is not unique to Asus, it happens to MSI, Abit, Gigabyte, etc. But if you're not happy with your board and you think its got a fault, use any warranty you have and send it back for a replacement or refund.

It isn't that there are major defects in the board. In fact, it is up and working. I was just extremely frustrated with the issues I had getting the board up and running, on top of ASUS telling me "That's just the way it is". Although I expected there to be some issues that I would need to resolve, I never imagined that I would run into the 2 above problems.

And this doesn't include the fact that neither of these major issues are covered on ASUS's website. I had to search the internet for hours to find the problem and resolution.

So it boils down to a lack of help from ASUS (both phone and internet), major problems that are KNOWN ISSUES, and the fact that I wasted countless time trying to figure out what was wrong. And I am trying to post this here so other people who are thinking about building a PC take all of this into account when thinking about using an ASUS M2N-E SLI mobo.

[Neil Jones]

Like I say, if you're not happy with your new toy, send it back under warranty for replacement or refund. Its possible that you have a board that's come from a bad batch. It happens. This is why we have warranties.