ASUS M5A78L-M Plus/USB3 DDR3 HDMI DVI USB 3.0 760G AM3+ based Motherboard

The sound level for the onboard audio is about 1/2 as loud as my old dead 10 YEAR OLD Foxxcon A7GM-S meant to replace it. Not that big of a deal for me as it's purely as a 2nd computer I only use in the garage. Yes I've tried multiple different Realtek audio drivers and the sound is just low. There's no audio boost but mixer and options are at 100% gain. The audio quality is fine it's just much lower than I expected.Upgraded from an AM2+ board that had DDR2 RAM. I had to buy new DDR3 RAM for this board but my AM3 Phenom 1045T dropped right in and booted up first time no problems on Win 7. Yes I was using an AM3 CPU on my old AM2+ board. Gotta love BIOS updates. :)Installed drivers with the CD. The Realtek NIC drivers only recognize 100 Mbps so far, a work in progress. The NIC disconnected randomly until the Realtek drivers were installed, it doesn't like the default windows driver. Pretty happy overall except the NIC issue is driving me nuts I just can't get it to actually communicate at 1000 no matter what adapter options I play with. Wondering if anyone else got stuck at 100 mbps with this board even though I know it's supposed to do 1000? I'm not gonna knock off an egg because there is a possibility it's a switch or wiring issue. Still tracking it down.Windows did notice the change and required a confirmation ID over the phone which is always a hassle. Worked perfect since first boot without any changes in the BIOS required. Paired with my old 750 Ti and now my garage PC is back and better with USB3.

I've had it for about 2 months. It's solid out of the gate. I do not overclock this board. It does not have VRM heat sinks, but i'm sure you could get somewhat of an OC out of it if you really wanted to, but I don't think that's going to be what you're shooting for buying this board. You can get aftermarket VRM sink, but i'd proceed with skepticism if you're really intending on doing that. My intent for this asus board was to run a couple of enterprise drives in a linux software raid and serve as a piece in my home media server. I've ran centos and ubuntu on this with no real issues. You may have to tweak the grub config, but I was able to fire it up from the ge tgo with limited 'advanced' configuration. Having an onboard usb 3.0 extension port was a big selling point for me, especially in the AM3+ micro ATX boards these days. They're a dying breed, so finding features like that can be slim picking, especially mATX. If you're buying this board today, you're likely in the same odd niche as I am; trying to repurpose an old Am3/Am3+ chip from a build from a few years ago.It shipped with the latest bios, which is nice considering that these are probably from a hodge podge of boards sitting in a warehouse, that tells me that either people are buying them, or the bios hasn't been updated in a while. My experience with asus is that they tend to stop updating certain boards once they hit a certain maturity of stability, which pragmatically speaking, i'm sure isn't the only manufacturer that runs a similar philosophy.Remember, all of the SATA ports on this board are 2.0, it does not come with 3.0. That's not a big deal of you're like me and planning running big HDD's, which most platter spinners barely crack the 200MB/s mark. Even if you're running an SSD as your boot drive, it still handles pretty well.Recognized my old gskills 2x4g ddr3 1600mhz ram just fine. No complaints there, and the ram slots were surprisingly solid quality. I'd just helped a friend piece together an Asus x99 board costing 6x the cost of this board, and I felt the ram slots on this board were better joined, for what it's worth. Onboard graphics are also a nice touch in saving you electricity from having to run a gpu, especially if you're trying to accomplish a home server application of this board in which you won't need a graphical interface most of the time. Was pleasantly surprised to find that it actually has HDMI and DVI outputs. That wasn't much of a concern to me at the time of purchase, just having onboard graphics was a requirement. Kind of overlooked that, but it is nice to have a little variety of outputs, and it has them. And they work. Yay!Runs peace of mind cool; had no trouble fitting my old Zalman honker of a fan onto the board. Not water cooling cool (duh!), but not giving you anxiety either on stock configurations.If you're planning on running windows on this board, I don't really think you'll have an issue. I however don't have any anecdotal information on that purpose for this board, and probably never will. If you're looking for a certificate of approval for running a linux server like I was when searching for this odd spectrum of boards to support my aging dinosaur cpu, then look no further. It will work. Stable board.I like asus boards, they seem to fair better in quality than their home networking stuff ( from experience). I also don't think you'd be wrong in going with the main competitor (my opinion only) of this board in the gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 either. Gigabyte seems to have been known for their wildly solid boards on the AM3 platform. That board even comes with VRM sink, but from my research, the unsinked VRM's on this board are a bit better quality. It doesn't really matter if you're not looking to overclock, but wouldn't you want solid voltage regulators for your processor either way? That's just me.NOTE!!!!::: This is the Plus version of this board, which means that not only does it have the USB 3 connectivity expansion, but also this is the version that supports higher wattage AM3+ CPU's. This is a must with AMD CPU's such as my old Phenom x6 1090t Thuban that runs at 125 watts. Some of these AM3 mATX boards only support up to 95 watt cpu's. There saved you some googling and heartache.I'd buy it again.

I bought this motherboard due to the crazy prices for am3+ boards. This was the most affordable board that had enough ram slots on it and USB 3.0. I have had this board in my computer for 8 months and have had no problems. It works with windows 10 and I overclocked my fx-6300 to 4.4ghz (hyper 212 evo cooler)The only con about this board is the bios, which seems ancient. But other than that it is affordable and reliable.

I won't knock or praise the board. From a builders perspective, allow me to point out a few things. This board has only 6 3Gb/s Sata III headers. You can install 2 6Gp/s inputs from the PCI 2.0 Express slot witha $20 adapter. Your only option there, or buy a PCI E SSD, no thanks. It has ONLY two fan headers, you can split them both leaving you with four to use, again, no thanks. It's power phase is 4+1 leaving you around a 4.5GHz cap for overclocking. Also, this deems the mobo unable to utilize a CPU above an AMD FX 6350 effectivly. This I found tolerable. Lastly, thank me later, it IS NOT Windows 10 compatible. The drivers go up to Windows 8.1, anything beyond this is a gamble you the builder face, and if coarse , no thank you. There are also some other reviews at length that explain some things not mentioned here, check them out. The board works and functions well if these barriers are not an issue for you. My recommendation if you feel out of luck for an AM3+ that is mATX, go with the:ASRock 970M Pro3 AM3+/AM3 AMD 970 + AMD SB950 6 x SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX AMD MotherboardThis board is strong in all the places where Asus is weak. I switched it out, and my Asus board is for sale on Amazon. LOL, and your welcome. =)