ASUS Micro ATX DDR3 2600 LGA 1150 Motherboards H97M-E/CSM

Nice and good looking board. One of the reasons I bought this is that it does not have a PCI-only slot and other older connectors like COM port and parallel port. The sound quality is good. I think the CMOS battery placed at the edge would give it a longer life compared to if it had been placed near the CPU. I would have liked it to have drivers for Win XP, and I wish ASUS could provide a detailed description of every setting in the BIOS, either in existing paper manual or online(prefer).The other board I was considering is MSI's beautiful A88XM-Gaming motherboard with an AMD A8-7600. The A8-7600's performance is about similar to the i3-4130 based on what I read on the Internet and later, I could upgrade to a Carrizo chip (hopefully at similar price). It has Radeon graphics iGPU (which I think is better than Intel's). The A88XM-Gaming motherboard with a price of $109.00 (ASUS H97M-E/CSM was about $98.00) not only looks good, but is a gaming board with micro-atx form factor, does not have a PCI-only slot, perhaps has better sound quality, and other on-board features. But, I went for the i3-4150 after I read reviews on blogs and on tomshardware site that the Intel Graphics was good, so I may not need to buy a separate graphics card, and also that the AMD A8-7600 was not available at the time of my purchase.This board along with the i3-4150 consumes very low power. Along with the ASUS H97M-E/CSM, my PC has an i3-4150 CPU (with stock fan), Crucial Ballistix Tactical BLT2K4G3D1608ET3LX0 2 x 4GB DDR3 1600 1.35V RAM, a WD Blue WD5000LPVX 500GB Laptop HDD and an Antec EarthWatts EA-430D Green (Bronze efficiency) power supply. The Kill-A-Watt power meter reading moves around 11-12w at idle, with no user apps running; 12-13w at idle with Firefox running (with few loaded tabs) and in foreground; 15-18w when watching Netflix or Hulu in IE11 with video in a 7" X 12.1/4" sized area (Power use varies with video area. Watching Netflix or Hulu in Firefox in similar sized video area consumes 19-20w; Not sure about Google Chrome). The temperature reading is around 33 degC. I have enabled all 'C' states, enabled Intel SpeedStep, enabled ASUS EPU in BIOS and set it in 'Savings' mode (in ASUS AI Suite 3), and have disabled many items including ports that would be unused. On disabling the EPU or setting it to 'Performance' mode, the idle power usage is around 16-17w. I use my PC mostly for Internet browsing, using online apps like Microsoft Excelonline and Google spreadsheet, and watching videos online on sites like Netflix, Hulu, and Youtube. I never play any big games, online or offline. The EPU in 'Savings' mode is perfectly alright for this type of work. In my usage the power is mostly below 25w and sometimes goes above 30w and rarely above 40w. In BIOS mode the power drawn is a constant 30w. The standby power is 0w.Windows 8.1 64 bit was installed by creating a bootable USB drive from the DVD using Rufus utility software (available at rufus(dot)akeo(dot)ie) on an older Win XP laptop. The PC boots up in about 40 secs to password screen. See my review of the Intel Core i3-4150 Processor (3M Cache, 3.50 GHz) BX80646I34150 where I have written on how to build a basic PC like mine.Started using on on 6/27/2014 and have had no problems so far. Satisfied with this purchase and would recommend it to others.

BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL with the Intel 1150 CPU socket as the pins are extremely delicate. Follow CPU installation instructions exactly.Nice board with excellent manual, as usual but micro boards are just too small for me.. There is no plastic header for the front panel connectors and it is very hard to attach the wire connectors. I have bought two of this model so I obviously like them. No set up or installation problems for me. I much preferred the older MOBO monitoring software. The present one is not nearly as good.

Very nice board considering it is a work station.Set up and go. Nice features, not overdone.Needed to retire a Asus P8Z68-V LX system that my Mrs. had from daily use. Close to 7 years old, this is a example of the quality of Asus.Did quite extensive research before this purchase. Most information was good and on the spot. System went together very smoothly.Most said this board would not O.C. Ran across a article in which Asus released a statement dated early 2014, claiming it would if a "K" processor was installed. Very true.A few minor items:The users guide is short, No memory QVL. -download from Asus. Setting up the BIOS, null. Only the internal connecters and the IO. Not really a problem for me, others may have a hard time.Pleased with the outcome of this system, the specs are:Asus H97M-E (CSM) board.Intel i5 4690K.Samsung 850 EVO drive.G.Skill F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL memory.Zalman CNPS 10X Performa cooler.Seasonic SSR-650RM PSU.Antec GX 500 case.Windows 10 Pro.Delivered on time and perfect.

I love this motherboard. It replaced a dead board from another manufacture. I love that fact you can overclock with it even though it not designed for overclocking. I love how ASUS has shoved the middle finger to Intel and let this board overclock. I was in a bind i couldn't find a Z97 board at a good price. I only has so much money to spend and the leftover stock on H97 and Z97 boards is little to none, I know this is a reburbished board but it should do me until my next full upgrade. I love ASUS UEFI Bios, It the best I have used so far. the including of the M2 slot is good but i know it would limit the M2 drive the live 960 pro and 960 EVO.

Functions but not ideally. Mouse pointer sticks to the center of the screen in BIOS rendering it useless. Navigating with the keyboard is an exercise in frustration. Was able to load my operating system making it functional but not in a straightforward manner. And this was with the second board that I got after returning the first for the exact same problem. After reading that this problem has been a recurring one for years with Asus motherboards I will never buy another one.

Bought this for a mid-range gaming PC that dual boots Win10 and Linux. On Windows I installed the official motherboard drivers; on Linux I let the kernel figure things out and so far I haven't had any driver/hardware issues.I bought a M.2 SSD (SATA bus, not the crazy 10G one) for the Operating Systems and it performed as expected. I believe this version of the motherboard is focused on the Corporate environment, but it is by no means hobbled performance-wise... you just may not be able to do as much overclocking/CPU tuning as with other modelsFor the size, it comes with a good number of PCI-X ports, as well as connections for USB2/USB3 hubs. It had no problems accommodating a GTX 970 in a standard, micro-ATX chassis.