On my way home from the London Asus Xtreme Design Event I spent Much time Looking at the board,

My First impressions where very good, 

the board felt incredibly solid the colour scheme was good (not brilliant)

the peripherals on board where also good, most interesting to me were the addition of a 1x pcie port and the generous 5x Sata ports  and having had a board fail in the past due to a blown capacitor it is also nice to see the almost standard all solid caps 

also interesting was the wide variety of interface ports on the rear starting with the ps2 keyboard port i'm glad this was included as i will always use my Unicomp keyboard (although converter ports are available) 

3 different display outputs (inc. HDMI) are useful highlighting the versatility of the board as a HTPC / general machine

i have never used esata but i believe i probably will do soon so nice to see one included 

the rest are fairly standard. 

some minor negatives about the board 

whilst i praised the board for including the legacy ps2 port it is becoming a minor annoyance of mine that board still have IDE ports as i have not bought an IDE drive for at least three years now 

the placement of the 24 pin power port i would like to start to see board manufacturers placing this nearer the top / edge of the board as it is easily the most obtrusive cable in any case i have ever built 

Couldn't wait to get this home as i had big plans for it 

Yakyb