Asrock = ASUS on the cheap

Volume shipments of the long-awaited ASROCK motherboards, introduced by Asustek Computer’s Hua Ching subsidiary, are finally to begin this month. According to sources, Hua Ching is expected to ship as many as 200,000 boards to the market in the first month, a scale equal to that of leading second-tier board makers.

Market acceptance for the ASROCK motherboards is said to be rather strong, as the products are priced at around US$45-50, only a few dollars higher than motherboards from Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS). More importantly, sources at Asustek said that no confusion between the positioning of ASROCK and Asustek motherboards has been reported.

Read more: Digitimes (http://www.digitimes.com/NewsShow/Article.asp?datePublish=2002/11/04&pages=15&seq=106).

I wonder what they had to sacrifce to sell these boards so cheaply though.. I'm interested in seeing how these motherboards turn out.

Quality has to be seen however we all have some kind of expectation being ASUS, obviously.

ASUS has a good reputation and I'd like to see them hold it up with this line of boards as well.

But like you pointed out, something must have been sacrificed in order to achieve their pricing goal. I suppose they will be offering equipment better suited for the OEM sector rather than the budget conscious enthusiast, but who knows...