Asus makes a good motherboard, to be sure, but they rarely make a motherboard without making a few questionable design decisions. Take the A7N8X-E: a great Socket-A board, but still lugging around the stillborn AGP Pro standard, which never really took off in the consumer market (PCI Express looks to fill that gap). And in a world where most PC hardware looks like cast-off Chaka Khan outfits, Asus keeps pushing the drab browns and yellows. Still, for the $150 price, the A7N8X-E is a lot of nForce 2 motherboard, with onboard SATA, Firewire, Ethernet, and WiFi. The proprietary 802.11b connector is sort of a drag, but Lars at Trusted Reviews correctly reckons that by the time you are ready to upgrade this motherboard, you’ll want something better than 802.11b. In fact, you want something better than that now.
