Asus CUWE-RM

The Asus CUWE-RM is a Socket 370 based microATX motherboard that uses the Intel 810E chipset. It has three PCI slots, no AGP slot, supports FSB settings to a maximum of 133 MHz, and uses UltraDMA/66 for hard-drive data transfers. Decent features for a board aimed at this segment.

All our testing was done using 128 MB RAM and a 600 MHz Celeron processor. The board gave a respectable 23.4 and 24.2 in BW 2001 and CCW 2001 benchmarks. Onboard audio and video are never high performance solutions, and this was reflected in our 3D tests. The board delivered a barely playable 30 fps in Quake III Arena and was not able to run 3DWinbench 2000, another benchmark for testing gaming performance.

Other features of the board include hardware monitoring, boot virus protection, PC100 SDRAM support and an audio modem riser slot. It also has a JumperFree BIOS. At Rs 6,100, the CUWE-RM is a good deal for those who want to assemble a computer for running normal productivity applications, be it home or office.

Anuj Jain