I'm with you on the Asus, I too have mostly used Asus boards as they are very reliable. I have only ever had one go on me, and that went when the Power Supply gave up, so I reckon it was not a board reliability issue.
Currently using the following board :
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... cket%20775)%20PCI-Express%20DDR2%20Motherboard
Mainly as the price-performance, and user reviews were good.... only complaint I could find is that the 24pin power socket was in an awkward place. In truth you just have to plug that in before the GFX card, which is probably the correct sequence anyway!!
I have always found Asus BIOS to be simple and easy to use, and on other brands I have had issues with USB headers, network chips, etc. One MSI board I had needed a plug in network adaptor, as the oonboard chip simply did not work (I could not be arsed with RMA). A gigabyte board had issues with the USB headers, and so to get my front USB ports working required a plugin USB card, and some hacking of wires!!
All in all, never had a problem with Asus. They run pretty cool at stock speeds, and seem to have excellent build quality and bundled cables/software. The current board shown above even has a fastboot Linux based OS system built in!!