Artful Dodger

Category: Review on Asus P5WD2-E-Premium Motherboard

Posted by: 20-Sep-2006

Strengths: Good spacing for easy component installation

Weaknesses: BIOS settings are too cryptic with limited help Generally unstable with problems which are hard to diagnose

I bought this motherboard to assemble a reliable desktop PC to be used as the main back office box in my business. Although I had only limited experience in building small computer systems, I thought a computer science degree, good research skills, and 20 years experience in Information Technology industry would buy me a ticket to an exclusive club of people who can assemble PCs from parts. Now, many days and night later, I don't think it was a particularly good idea. Building and rebuilding, upgrading and reconfiguring BIOS and other ROMs, installing and uninstalling software, sending faulty parts to the manufacturer, waiting for weeks until they arrive only to discover that nothing was fixed were gradually adding to my frustration.

The main lesson I've learnt from this exercise which I'd like to share with the world is:

"Guys and girls, never ever build a computer from parts at home, unless you know what you are doing and really enjoy the process."

Now the facts about P5WD2 premium from ASUS.

I chose this board because it supported RAID on 4 disks through a built-in Intel SATA controller. I bought 4 120GB drives and configured them to have 2 RAID sets: RAID0 (also known as "mirror") for temporary files and RAID5 for critical business data. My RAID5 set also contained Windows XP Professional and other software. The system also had a PCI Express video card, 2 GB of DRAM, a dual-core Pentium CPU, a floppy drive and a DVD drive.

When the system was completed and configuration problems were overcome, it worked in a reasonably stable mode for a week or two. Then it started rebooting itself, sometimes showing blue screen of death with random error messages at Windows start-up. Then one of the hard drives went corrupted. The RAID controller recognised this and downgraded the set. I lost RAID0, but RAID5 was still operational. I sent the faulty disk to the manufacturer for replacement. When the replacement disk arrived, I installed it and the on-board RAID controller rebuilt the RAID set overnight. After a couple of weeks the new disk failed and the set was downgraded by the controller. It looked like the motherboard (or the on-board RAID chip) problem. But even before I found some time to talk to the shop again, the system crashed.

Now each time I boot it, it passes BIOS and other start-up processes up to Windows start-up, and then reboots automatically in an unlimited loop. Choosing "safe mode" doesn't help, as well as replacing my hard drives with a bootable hard drive from another PC. Enough is enough. I might've just been unlucky, but there are so many other brands. Why would I buy an ASUS board again?