Motherboard Opinions

[Jamie]

What are your opinions on the best boards. Not a cost issue but overall
quality and stability?

 

[John]

What are your opinions on the best boards. Not a cost issue but overall
quality and stability?

Wow thats impossible to say since no one actually goes out and buys 30
boards. And ALL boards tend to have problems in the beginning as bugs
are sorted out with bios upgrades etc.


Also there are partisans like with hard disks and video cards. And
usually with a board you get a certain percentage who out of luck buy
components and have it set up a certain way where they dont have any
problems while others tear their hair out so the first group will
always say their board is perfect wonderful --- but it may not be with
someone with a faster processor, or Raid config, or different video
card etc.

I used to read the weirdest freaking posts about MBs. I swear Ive read
just like the HD threads people who insist ASus boards are total crap.
You get the usual --- I worked in a store or know a guy who works in a
store and we had $60 returns for ASUS ................. One guy
claimed he worked in a store and they returned an RMA board to him the
same one with some wires soldered on to it hanging out , a really
messy amateurish fix. Ive never seen such a thing personally.

Same with ABIT. After the bad cap stuff ages ago when it first popped
up in the ABIT group people were bashing abit since none of the other
makers admitted to having ANY bad caps all any knew was Abits had them
from that guy who was fixing them in a kind of home business setup.

I always say I tend to like Abit and Asus mainly because theres a lot
of feedback and thats really important ---- big newsgroup posts. And
because of that you see some of the smaller players get bashed
Chaintech even MSI but frankly I think all of them have problems and
none are really that bad except for PC chips maybe and all the brands
they sell under, I mean looking at the freaking prices they are sold.
Im a cheap skate so I look for cheap prices --- there can be some
price differentials just on the fact of name hype, or that a bigger
org has more overhead or more well known name can charge higher prices
but PC chips has a bad rep from the old days and I dont see anything
that puts them in the top rungs of MB makers. That said however a lot
of people buy their ECS cheapo specials at FRYs and claim not to have
any really horrible problems with them.

Since the boards almost come free with the processor at FRYs combo
specials Id get one too if I could.

 

[S.Heenan]

What are your opinions on the best boards. Not a cost issue but
overall quality and stability?

I've always chosen Abit, Asus, and Gigabyte boards for my machines. The only
slight complaint I have is with Revision 1 boards which can have slight
quirks. This holds true for all manner of PC hardware. It's the price to be
paid for being an early adopter.
FWIW, my old Rev 1.04 A7V is still in use in a server today. That board is
4.25 years old.

 

[RBM]

I agree with the other posts, personally I've only used Asus boards, I'm
anxious about trying another company,but I've had nothing but good
experience with Asus, I just can't bring myself to change. I also like the
boards with lots of stuff on them, even if I don't use it, I like to have
the option

 

[Q]

Well, everybody seems to say that ASUS is great, and ASRock is a cost
effective alternative. Buy ASUS.
~Q

--
What is said here is for amusement
purposes only. Any opinions expressed
are promised only to waste space on
your hard disk. ~Q **********
*******************

 

[Jamie]

ya but I am one of the ones that have had problems with ASUS boards and I
found their customer support horrid. I am an ABit fan. Also I don't really
like a whole lot of OnBoard so that also is a reason why I choose ABit.

 

[John]

ya but I am one of the ones that have had problems with ASUS boards and I
found their customer support horrid. I am an ABit fan. Also I don't really
like a whole lot of OnBoard so that also is a reason why I choose ABit.

A while back I vaguely remember even Anandtech had a thing about how
ASUS was a bit stingy or rigid about RMAs. I thought they seemed a but
reluctant about it too when I did my board but that was a long time
ago when I read that at Anands and I RMAd my board have no idea how it
is now but I did some Abits a year or so ago and they were incredibly
hassle free. Maybe too hassle free since I heard they were doing that
great financially. but who knows if thats true. I know many companies
complain that a lot or even most of the returned stuff is actually OK
PNY claims that at their website. .

 

[RBM]

I've never used an Abit board,but they look great and if I had any issues
with Asus, they'd be my next choice. I agree Asus support sucks, I can't
ever get them to return support question emails

 

[kony]

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 16:21:09 GMT, "(e-mail address removed)"

I know many companies
complain that a lot or even most of the returned stuff is actually OK
PNY claims that at their website. .

While some stuff might be OK, others might be working to the
manufacturer's satisfaction but their product was flawed in
such a way that it didn't work for the user... which is
still unfit merchandise depending on how you look at it.

To give you an example, I recall a PCCHips motherboard that,
if you took out a certain CPU and installed a different,
officially supported CPU, the board acted dead. Clear CMOS
didn't help, but returning old CPU to board and flashing a
different bios did get the 2nd CPU working, but it was an
OLDER bios! I can imagine anyone who'd started out with
that board and tried an officially supported CPU could end
up returning it to them, it then tests fine, but their bios
bug(s) still made it unusable .

 

[DaveW]

Asus is the world's largest manufacturer of motherboards and uses the
highest quality parts.

 

[John]

To give you an example, I recall a PCCHips motherboard that,
if you took out a certain CPU and installed a different,
officially supported CPU, the board acted dead. Clear CMOS
didn't help, but returning old CPU to board and flashing a
different bios did get the 2nd CPU working, but it was an
OLDER bios!

Hey I agree with you that not all these things that are OKed are 100%
OK. A good example are the older motherboards with fans on them.
Everyone is using passive cooling now I think but in the old days
after a year or so --- those fans could go at anytime and many worked
intermittently after a year or so . Like the ASUS rma they gave me
seemed ok but had those strnage freezes that were hard to catch cause
the fan would work when you turned it on and then suddenly seem to die
at certain times. If you didnt catch it when it froze then it ws hard
to find and usually most people dont have the case open all the time.
Things like that are hard to find. And the Abit RMA they gave me with
the strange freezes which I still havent figured out.

The hairpulling thing with the Abit is , after all the work Ive done
on it (different drivers, clean installs, swapping all the hardware)
--- it gets better but never goes away. Its at the point now there are
NO errors reported in the event folder in WIN XP when it freezes and
sometimes itll go for a day or so before freezing so its almost
impossible to test compared to when it used to freeze every 10 min or
so when I did something heavy in graphics or was downloading a lot
with my cable modem. In fact so far its worked for 3 days no freeze. I
think its because I stopped downloading and doing some graphics stuff.
Ive got to test it again.

On the otherhand I got a lot of motherboards from Newegg that were OK
that were RMAd by somebody.

 

[Billy no Mates]

I use Gigabyte mainboards. I have just changed to a P4 processor from an AMD
Athlon & the mainboard i had for the AMD worked without fault for the two
years or so that i had it.