Why I chose the Asus M4A88T-M? In short, because it (almost) all the conditions that I put on a motherboard: Onboard graphics card with VGA, DVI and HDMI output (am not a gambler), Toslink output, 6 USB ports at the back, 4 RAM slots and 1 conventional PCI slot. Solely with the Firewire connection haperts, but could be retrofitted for a few euros per PCI-e card.
The board in the mATX format comes in the package known green held. Unfortunately, Asus has been relatively stingy when it comes to the accessories. Apart from the manual and the driver CD, it brings with only 2 short SATA cable. Not even screws for mounting in the PC case are. In return, I noticed that Asus has not simply anchored the fan base with plastic clips on the board (the case of heavy cooler / fan-Kobinationen ever tear), but here screws are used, which are screwed to a metal plate on the back of the board. The installation runs smoothly. A small drawback: the 4-pin ATX connector and the CPU fan connector are installed at an unfavorable point, ie too close to the fan base, so they can be in the installed state barely reach.
After the board was now installed, the first startup was on the agenda. Actually I had ever set it mentally to be able to install Windows 7 and Ubuntu again, because it's needed most on a board changes due to different chipsets. However, I was pleasantly surprised. Almost by chance, I let the computer boot up again with the previous Windows configuration. To my amazement, Windows 7 was launched without difficulty ... no error message, let alone a bluescreen. The only thing that drew attention to the Board changes, was the VGA mode in which Windows suddenly started while it automatically installed the correct video card driver immediately. After the obligatory reboot everything was as usual 1440x900 pixels set on again and the computer ran smoothly.
The same game in Linux Mint or Ubuntu ... without any problem and without any error message also started this.
My conclusion: A empfehlendswertes board, even if it still brings no USB3 in this version. But there is also a USB3 version of the board, it will cost about 15 more.