Asus C60M1-I AMD C-60/ AMD FCH A50M/ DDR3/ SATA3/ A&V&GbE/ Mini ITX Motherboard & CPU Combo

I bought this motherboard and built a NAS4FREE server. Used four WD red disk drives. I was having issues with laggy SAMBA performance due to disk timeout errors using ZRaid. After doing quite a bit of reading and trouble shooting I finally resolved the issue by changing the BIOS settings for the disk controller. The drives were showing different speeds in NAS4FREE so I hard coded BIOS disk controller speed to 6gb/sec and set interface to AHCI. Also changed all sata cables to brand new ones but I think the old ones were OK. The new ones are a little shorter so cleaned up the look inside the case. Also had a problem with trying to install USB3 card and also two port sata card (not at same time). Neither card worked with NAS4FREE due to BSD driver support issues but in the process the video changed over from the onboard motherboard graphics so I lost video. Tried everything and finally downloaded the BIOS image to a USB stick and rebooted. This reset the video back to motherboard (cards removed). Then went into BIOS and changed setting to force video to not switch if it sees a card in the pcie 16x slot. This worked and I could then test each card to determine they do not work with NAS4Free. I am pleased with motherboard but would have liked USB3 port support. Also eight sata ports would also be nice but six is still good. Have been running this server 24x7 with no issues. Running UPNP with transcoding with good cpu performance. Gig network interface works well and I have good I/O performance. Overall very pleased with this purchase.after 5 monthsIt has been five months running this NAS4Fee server setup on a 24/7 basis. No problems and rock solid on NAS4Free with several NAS4Free updates since initial install. I am now running six 3TB WD red drives and 8GB RAM. Running UPNP and several other NAS4Free services without problem. UPNP transcoding works good even with large HD files. Most UPNP access is to samsung phone and Nexus 7 tablets via Mediahouse and MX player pro and to IPOD via 8player. There is a noticeable slowdown when accessing files while doing multiple copy operations to NAS but still acceptable. Had a small issue with minor gig card errors but this was due to a NAS4Free update that was subsequently resolved with another update. I am running ZFS raid setup with no problems once you understand the terminology. I recommend NAS servers always have a UPS power to allow safe shutdown on a power failure.Still very happy with my purchase.after 1 yearC60M1 MB still doing well and very few problems with NAS4Free running ZRaid. Some problems with onboard NIC during heavy use. Needs a reboot to resolve. This is a known issue. Applied a fix and seems to work OK adding Extra Option in GUI network settings ( rxcsum -txcsum -vlanhwtag ) without brackets. I decided to purchase an Intel PRO/1000 Pt Dual Port Server Adapter. This has two gig network interfaces so you can gang these for higher speeds. This is on the NAS4Free hardware compatibility list. Installed this card in C60 MB single 16x slot normally used for video card. Made sure BIOS was set to use onboard video only to avoid loosing video. Not sure if this would affect an installed card in the 16x slot but Nas4Free could not detect this hardware. I have concerns with setting video to Auto since it I might loose video again and would need another bios reset to correct. Anyway I am disappointed that the new dual port intel NIC does not work with the ASUS C60M1 motherboard. Checked the net for solutions but appears other have similar issues as far as I can find. Possibly the 16x slot will only recognize video cards. Will keep trying to see if I can find a solution.Followup on Intel PRO/1000 Pt Dual Port Server Network (NIC) Adapter with NAS4Free.After backing up the configuration and creating a BIOS recovery SD card I decided to see if I could get the new Intel NIC working. Shutdown Nas4free ver 9.2.0.1 - Shigawire (revision 959) and rebooted into Asus bios version 305 (latest at this time) Went into BIOS advanced menu then NB Configuration. Setup for Dual Monitor and Integrated Graphics to Auto. Rebooted into NAS4Free and had all three interfaces visible.backup your NAS4Free configurationIn the NAS4Free Web GUI go to Network -> Interface Managementin management create- Interface OPT1 (Intel NIC2)in LAGG create- Interface lagg0 with em0 and em1 ports selected and saveIn Management using the pull downs reset the order of InterfacesLAN = lagg0 ( Intel Pro Dual Port Aggregated NIC interface )OPT1 = re0 ( Asus MB NIC1 )rebootThis configures the Intel dual port NIC with the two ports aggregated as one interface (requires reboot). The re0 motherboard interface was also still available so decided to use it as a secondary interface. In NAS4Free web GUI Network menu I selected the OPT1 (Re0) interface and activated it (check box in top right corner) then gave it a static IP address and subnet mask. Eg 192.168.1.251/24. I now have the Intel NIC with both ports aggregated as one interface 192.168.1.250 and the Realtek NIC as a secondary IP address 192.168.1.251 for Admin or secondary interface for copying files etc. This works very well and should be more stable under load since the RealTek NIC would sometimes freeze under heavy load with mutiple connections. All in All very please.

This MB is a work of art with a stylish yet functional oversize fanless heatsink, 6 SATA ports, and a generous itx-size lay out for the various connection points. The BIOS interface is pretty, although I would prefer the familiar utilitarian BIOS provided in generations past.While the working motherboard is a pleasure to use ... and rock solid stable ... you first need to get your hands on a working motherboard. Alas, the first was DOA while the second worked like a champ. I decided to put another to work on a second fileserver, and wouldn't you know it ... another bad board (one dysfunctional memory socket). QC seems secondary to an otherwise masterful work of engineering and design art.

I purchased this motherboard to replace two brand new ones manufactured by ECS which arrived DOA. I will not repeat the wonderful comments of those other buyers who mainly use this as a NAS server or other purpose. It truly indeed has all the bells and whistles and runs remarkably well once your operating system is loaded and configured.However, this motherboard is being used to replace the one which came with a Dell Dimension 2400 which dates back to 2004. My original intent was to make this a media server to watch videos from online sources as Hulu.com, Dramafever etc.The intended operating system was Ubuntu which I have sucessfully work with for the past 5 years. It's free and works very well with almost any motherboard that I have installed. However, with Ubuntu 12.04 and any newer versions, I experienced a constant flow of runtime errors with error messages relating to watch battery being out of sync, errors at location xxxx etc. It was just simply overwhelming every time I rebooted and got a runtime type error within the first minute. Perhaps there are solutions that already address this problem. However, I just don't have the the time and patience to deal with it.In desperation, I went back to using a earlier version of Ubuntu 11.04 and all tried the same version with Xubuntu 11.04. Both were able to boot successfully and had almost no crashes except when Adobe Flash began to fail and had to be reloaded. This of course, is another issue which may be fixed using a program called FlashAid from Mozilla.In conclusion, seems that the older Ubuntu versions 11.04 and possibly older work better with the Asus motherboard. Windows XP works extremely well and this is what I have decided to keep on as my operating system. One of my friends in the IT department mentioned that the newer motherboards have the BIOS replaced with something called the UEF1 which somehow improves the older BIOS functions but somehow may cause incompatibility.Anyhow, I am no expert so I will let the reader try to figure this one out and perhaps provide a simple explanation to the problems I had experienced. Otherwise, great mb provided you are using Windows XP, For Windows 7 & 8, I simply have no opinion.3/29/13: Did some experimenting and research with the Ubuntu issue. On page 12 of the user's manual that explains that only 4gb or less will be acknowledged when using 32 bit Windows software. To fully utilize your 8gb of ram, 64 bit software must be used.With this information in mind, I removed one of my my 4gb memory modules and reloaded and rebooted Ubuntu 12.04. To my surprise, bootup this time was sucessful, no runtime errors and even Adobe Flash did not crash. Tried Windows XP and also experienced much improved performance. In conclusion, I guess it is important to read the fine print and load only what your motherboard can support regardless if seller mentions that the motherboard will support 8gb.

This mother board could be a perfect fit for a home server, if the quality can be better. I used it to run FreeNAS 24x7 for 4 months but sadly, the on-board NIC simply died on me yesterday. I can't get the on-board NIC working anymore and it looks like my best choice is to use an add-on PCIe NIC card for the networking. I would expect it can last longer than that even it only cost me $80 bucks. Only four months? such a short lifespan.