Asus M2R32-MVP

Zitat

Mid-range motherboards need a little something special to set themselves apart from the rest of the field, and the M2R32-MVP's apparently spectacular overclocking potential does that rather well. We were able to push our sample's HyperTransport clock up to a whopping 380MHz, which is almost twice its stock speed and certainly more than enough for all but the most extreme liquid nitrogen-fueled overclocking endeavors.

The board has more than just overclocking potential going for it, too. Power consumption is much lower than that of boards based on Nvidia's nForce 590 SLI chipset, but you still get support for dual-16-lane multi-GPU configurations. Asus has also done a nice job with the BIOS, providing plenty of tweaking options and the handy ability to store BIOS settings via profiles.

However, a few rather major issues spoil the M2R32-MVP's appeal for us. For one, the PCI-based Gigabit Ethernet is simply unacceptable for a motherboard in this price range. Other boards around the $140 mark offer much faster throughput, often with two GigE ports rather than one. We're also not crazy about the notched north bridge cooler and the limited clearance between it and longer graphics cards. Just the potential for metal-on-metal contact is disturbing, especially since Asus has made very effective use of heatpipe coolers to avoid clearance issues on other boards.