lee wrote:
advantage is that the system keeps running --- I've had a crappy Ausus board (don't buy Asus!) that would loose connection to one of the SATA
Asus is fantastic! for a consumer-level board, especially their enthusiast line.
However, do not buy Asus for production work. For workstations, servers, and non-consumer-grade desktops, Asus is subpar, as are many other popular brands. The goal is not "high availability".
A parallel situation would be RAID cards. There is Highpoint (consumer grade) and 3ware (serious hardware). Highpoint works, mostly, but you probably won't be all that happy with it.
Some of it depends on the chipset and BIOS.Always buy a mature technology. The first Nehalem boards out there with the X58 chipset will not be a good bet, when the next generation Intel chips hit the market.
My experience with Asus has been that a particular generation improves with age, that the early models are troublesome, but the later additions to the line are usually acceptable. I use them at home.
But I won't specify Asus or Highpoint at work. Mark Allums