Asus DDR3 1600 AMD Socket AM1 SATA(6Gbit/s) Motherboard (AM1M-A)

Asus, as usual, hasn't gone with the flow, and built a very capable motherboard!This was my only choice, as I need ECC support for disk integrity in the server, and even the original BIOS release fully supports unbuffered ECC.The additional USB 3.0 socket offers 4 full-speed ports, which are fully supported by recent Linux and BSD distros, as well as Windows 8.x.The size of this board is actually SMALLER than Micro ATX, width wise, without sacrificing the expansion slots, so I'd almost want to call this Expanded ITX (the width is ITX spec, and the length is Micro ATX). Case mounting points are exactly as MicroATX, so no worries.The AM1 only offers 4 PCIe lanes free (all internal components are on 4 dedicated PCIe lanes, which are independent from the slots), but that is absolutely sufficient should I need to add a SAS controller or a 10Gb/s NIC. The PCIe 16X slot is only wired for 4X cards max. Adding a 4X card will essentially turn off the two 1X slots, or a 2X slot in the 16X position will still leave the 1X open for business.My only concern was the Realtek 8111GR LAN controller, as I have previously had major speed slowdowns with older Realtek chips, but this is quite solid. It is NOT BUFFERED, so plan to have CPU activity on LAN work as part of the package.For a low-power BSD server, this is absolutely ideal, as thus far I have no need to add additional hardware, at least until 10Gb wireless reaches the consumer market!This latest one will be being built soon, with an AMD Athlon 5350 quad-core APU, Crucial ECC unbuffered memory, a Kingspec 16GB SSD, and handle my MediaSonic Probox drive enclosures, including SATA replication, over the USB 3 interfaces. Overall, in-system should be a cool 35-40W, with the only real heat producers external of the machine.

Asus high end boards or thre cheep ones all preform well, this mother board is nice for back-up pc, or grandparent or kids build.

This board has EVERYTHING I need, including the best overclocking abilities (note: AM1 does not support overclocking but Asus is good at helping us oput with it anyway!), BUT it does not have any temp sensors for the CPU, only the CPU socket. This makes me a little hesitant to overclock with it, and I am really disappointed Asus did not add in a CPU temp sensor/ability. I have an AM1 ASRock board that DOES have the CPU temp, so I know it can be done.Otherwise, it's rock-solid and I have been using it with an AMD 5350 at 2.15GHz for a few weeks now as a home server (24/7 uptime) and I have not had a single issue with stability or performanceAM1 is definitely low end, but as a server it's fantastic. It replaced a server with a i7 3820 Sandy Bridge-E and I have no complaints on performance. It handles just as well at serving my needs, but uses 60W instead of 220W (full system load from wall outlet, 4 hard drives)

This is a small and powerful motherboard. Unfortunately one of the ram slots was bad. This was the second ASUS motherboard I've bought in a row with a bad dimm slot. Making it worse, I couldn't figure out what was wrong. The pc started bluescreening right after I installed the operating system with an NTFS.sys file system error, but everything checked good. RAM, hardrive, drivers, it was driving me crazy. Finally, I installed a windbg package and tracked it down to a shorting dimm slot. I moved the memory to the other slot and it stopped bluescreening. Last motherboard from ASUS that I'll ever buy

This Asus Micro ATX AM1M-A motherboard is one of two that I purchased on Amazon... Adding the AMD Athlon 5350 APU, 2.05Ghz, AD5350JAHMBOX along with 4GB Crucial Ballistix Sport Single DDR3 1600 MT/s (PC3-12800) CL9 @1.5V UDIMM 240-Pin Memory Module BLS4G3D1609DS1S00 is an "AMAZING BUY!"This computer can run what some of my other high end systems can. I'm not sure that you could run the latest "CALL OF DUTY" on it but your everyday apps like Microsoft Office, media players and editors seem to run flawlessly. I have run Battle For Middle Earth II in High Resolution and have only experience some minor lags in the game. On one notch down from High eliminates all lags...I am very happy with this system and the pricing is Fantastic! This Motherboard and APU was designed for the less privileged individual, so he/she could afford a computing system without having to "Break The Bank!"

Please do NOT buy this board. I have had more frustration with this than with any other computer part in recent memory. Asus fails to support many normal operations like AES-NI support in the BIOS when all the CPUs that fit this socket will have that instruction set, booting GPT using legacy BIOS off a flash drive, etc. The UEFI/BIOS gui is also just terribly designed and there isn't even a quick "boot menu" option that you usually get when pressing F12.Asus customer support was awfully hard to get a hold of and when I finally did, they informed me they have no plans to update the BIOS to fix any of these issues. I'd stay far, far away. This will for sure be my last Asus mobo.

I gave it 3 starts cause the NIC interface stop responding. I think I have a defective board. I ordered a low-profile NIC card to replace on-board NIC. When it arrives I will let you know the results. Also, any troubleshooting I do I will post here. :)Overall, I like the board and it has performed well so far.

This motherboard has been great! It was a bit of a pain to set up at first, because of some video incompatibility issues that Radeon and certain branches of Linux are having. The solution to that was to wait it out, but honestly I meant to buy a dedicated video card anyway. I made sure to buy GeForce and have had no issues since. It performs very, very quietly, which works well with the SSD's I've put in it. It generates very little heat. It's a general purpose desktop machine for me, which I use for purposes as a college student, for some Steam games, and for serving video content to my television via a MiniDLNA server. It's great.