Best mobo brand?

[agraham]

I've always tended to buy ASUS gear, but I'm getting the feeling they don't make the best stuff after all. I'm not sure where I got the idea that they were so good in the first place.
What are the opinions about which mobo and video card brands are the best for general quality?

[gustie]

Re: Best mobo brand?

i used XFX and thought they sucked (pine)

i like DFI boards - crazy bios features - can adjust about anything going!

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Best mobo brand?

Depends on what your prorities are.
Best for reliability (like a server) may be worst for a performance system (gamers, over-clockers) because there is much less that can be 'tweeked'.

I agree though.
Asus hasn't been better than anyone else for years.
(I think) among the worst for customer support.

.

[shadow]

Re: Best mobo brand?

I have been impressed with the quality of Intel boards. They are pretty good. They usually cost a bit more thou.

[acstech]

Re: Best mobo brand?

Don't even get me started on Asus. Pure junk.

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=6033

I've been using Biostar. Totally reliable, except that they use OST's on the minor caps on the board. In a fairly well cooled computer it's not a problem though. Biostar boards have great tweaking / overclocking options, among others the best fan speed controls I've ever seen on a motherboard. Any of the T-series boards are great.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Best mobo brand?

I've been using mostly Intel, Tyan, Supermicro, Gigabyte (w/re-caps).
I don't care about overclocking or gaming at all though.
-
Quality wise Gigabyte is no better than Asus but back during the capacitor plauge (the bad/stolen electrolyte one)...
Asus LIED and pretended there wasn't a problem.
Gigabyte was either replacing the caps via RMA or sending people caps so they could fix it themselves.
-
I like server class boards even in normal use PC's. (Stability.)
Only use Gigabyte when I need more than 2 USB up front.
Server boards usually either don't have them or only have two.

Gigabyte usually needs at least some caps replaced to have all 'good brands' but sometimes they don't need a thing. Won't be able to know in advance though. GA boards are pretty random about what caps show up on them. Three of same exact model may come with completely different sets of caps.

I was avoiding Biostar for a while because I didn't know that much about them.
From reading other's posts I think Biostar is about the same as Gigabtye in so far as overall quality and consistency in the caps used. I'm not avoiding them anymore I just haven't tripped over one when I happened to need a board.

I will buy other brands too.
- But only if I know they are broken... LOL

.

[agraham]

Re: Best mobo brand?

For me fan control / silence is paramount. Must be all passive (except CPU of course) and offer three controllable fans. My previous mobo was an ACER which I bought because it had this particular monitoring/fan control chip (that the specs advertised), but when I got it the fan control lines weren't hooked up. I sent it for waranty repair and they just said it back saying fan control was not in the design. That's when I swore I would never buy another ACER product after that bait-and-switch and went to ASUS based on what people were saying at the time... Anyway I digress...
I will research DFI and Biostar for my next board.

[bgavin]

Re: Best mobo brand?

PCB has the right question asked: what is the use.

Intel boards are very good for business class machines. They are never over clocked, and are intended for Mainstream and/or Mainstream Performance use.

I placed a D875PBZ into a client machine last week. Performance is impressive, considering the age and technology of the board. SATA-I performance beats IDE, but loses pitifully to SATA-II on the newer boards.

Everest memory READ is 5508 for DDR-400 at 3-3-3-8 compared to 6257 for my ABit IP35 Pro, Corsair XMS at 4-4-4-12

The client spends all day in Quickbooks, so working from a floppy disk won't slow her down much more than QB does by itself. Pig.

To answer your question, I have huge success with ABit boards. None of my KG7 have died in service. All have required recapping, and continue to run. Ditto for various EpoX boards. FIC boards were a huge disappointment. Gigabyte, I really like, but their BIOS is always a day late and dollar short, i.e. dpc latency bugs, etc. They also use non-standard board sizes, i.e. 6 holes, which pisses me off no end, because there is no edge support for the East end of the board.

I just installed an ABit IP35 Pro for my primary workstation. E8400, HX520w power, 4gb XMS, two WDC 640gb SATA-II. I appreciate having the overclocking ability, so I can use high performance memory. I do not overclock the processor or bus. A Zipang cooler with Red Scorpion 1260 rpm fan keeps it at 27C idling, and 43C under Prime95. Infrared temp readings are low 30C for the VRM and bridge sets. The new Thermalright AXP-140 is now available, and it cools even better than the Zipang. Plus, it comes with an excellent bolt-through kit and safety wired bolts. Neat.

Look for all solid caps.
Look for modest but effective chipset cooling.
ATX12V location is important, depending upon case and PSU.
Minor point, look for all 9 holes matching a standoff.

[agraham]

Re: Best mobo brand?

My use is I guess you would say general purpose. Some programming when I take my work home with me. Some gaming because I only like FPSing with the mouse. A tivo box / torrent box so it has to run cool and silent all the time.
I've haven't done any overclocking since back in the Celron 300A days so I wouldn't go out of my way for that although of course I don't mind if the options are there either.
I will add ABit to my mental list of "respectable" brands.

[370forlife]

Re: Best mobo brand?

I used a ECS for a while, apart from the OST caps EVERYWHERE, it had a good bios that was really simple to overclock. Never really had any stability problems, controls and reports fan speeds and all temps. So i guess one recapped might not be bad. Its still chugging away just fine in my second computer at my dad's.

Now I am using a Biostar Tforce in my gaming computer, and I have not had any problems whatsoever. 100% solid caps, AMI bios with tons of overclocking features, Memtest built into the bios, fanless VRM and northbridge heatpipe cooler, sli capable, integraded nvidia 8200 (750a chipset,) very stable so far. Only problem is that their customer support is almost non-existent. Haven't needed it so far.

EVGA is also pretty good, my friend bought a new board from them, and its worked out good so far. Most solid caps, and the rest are United chemi-cons. That has a 730a chipset, fanless cooler.

[i4004]

keywords: asus interesting cooler, wing heatsink

http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1...64&modelmenu=1

http://event.asus.com/mb/6engine/index.htm

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131295

uh, i spent so much time searching for this(looking from top you don't see those wing sinks, so i thought they changed the design..umm.) i'll put some pix here...

video card?
gigabyte...so it balances out the asus....hehe...

btw. now you have 5-6 more brands mentioned(aside from me saying you should remain on asus)...how do you decide which one to pick?

[Scenic]

Re: Best mobo brand?

my recently used brands: Gigabyte, Foxconn, ASRock, Abit and Biostar..

had problems with asus so i chose different brands to see what's up with them...
i already knew foxconn boards from the Pentium 4 era (Foxconn i865 board), but i've never used Abit and Biostar before...

didn't have any problems with them yet.. they just... work ..

ASRock is considered to be a cheapo brand like ECS/PCChips.. but i cant really agree with that... same thing as for abit & biostar.. they just work..

nothing for overclockers though.. (ASRocks typical general settings.. voltages are labeled "low, medium and high" in the bios.. you just don't know what the CPU/RAM really gets..)

the asus boards i recently bought for customers (and one that was supposed to get into my own main rig) were just a nightmare... 2x DOA.. the third one worked, but crashed all the time.. totally random.. you couldn't even reproduce this -.-
and another board that worked, but would randomly just show gibberish instead of the BIOS/POST and lock up shortly before the OS should start..
was not graphics card related...
and the asus support... oh well.. i'm not gonna get into that any further... i'd be sitting here till tomorrow...

the gigabyte and the foxconn ... well ... after some slight "problems" (bios too old, recognized the used CPUs wrong) they just work fine...

the foxconn went into a customers comp... and as i've never heard of him again i guess its working fine *lol*

and the gigabyte is in my main rig... (where that asus was supposed to go until i just had enough of that DOA/bug/support crap..)

[stevo1210]

Re: Best mobo brand?

Personally I use Asus and Intel motherboards only. I have two Asus boards, a P5K-E WIFI and a P4P800S-X, both are very good motherboards and start everytime without an issue for me though I think the BIOS is too simple at times. Intel boards are another favourite. Still got some SE440BX-2 boards running until this day and they have PII 350MHz CPUs.... best of all the boards were made in 97/98 so about 10-11 years old without an issue. The use of Nichicon caps by Intel in those days makes me happy.
My newer Intel boards are rock solid as well 2x DP965LTCK motherboards are rock stable and even come with Samxon and Rubycon caps which is a +1 for Intel again.

Gigabyte and ECS on the other hand are pure disasters for me. With Gigabyte, it's DOA and repairs with every Gigabyte board I've owned. I bought one ECS board and ran away from them afterwards.... seriously it takes me a few boots to boot up the ECS board and I've recapped the thing and even have a good PSU.

[shadow]

Re: Best mobo brand?

the gigabyte and the foxconn ... well ... after some slight "problems" (bios too old, recognized the used CPUs wrong) they just work fine...

I have had similar situation with a Gigabyte as well, they seem to release new motherboards very early but have many BIOS updates to fix up the small issues and add CPU support.

Therefore if you have the first revision of a particular Gigabyte motherboard, chances are that there are issues that are corrected with BIOS updates.

In my case it was very annoying but a simple fix. I had the first revision of one of their Socket A motherboards (GA-7VA) and the CPU I bought was released way after the first revision of the motherboard was made. Therefore the board did not recognize the CPU and would run at a very crippled speed. A BIOS update later and I was happy!

Incidentally that board was also picky about the RAM, however this is a separate issue. The board didn't like my cheapo Samsung RAM. However it never complained about Kingston RAM.

Having said this, it can be a real POS having a first revision Gigabyte motherboard, and you are waiting on some BIOS update to fix some annoying issue. I am sure that the BIOS updates seem to take an eternity to make if you are in such a situation.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Best mobo brand?

Geezz
I forgot about 1/2 the companies I'm okay with because I haven't been using them!

Here's how I see it for 'grades'.
First: Intel, Tyan (These rarely need caps if built after the HN/HM fiasco..)
Second: Supermicro, ->Abit<-,
Third: Gigabyte, *Epox, *Biostar, *Foxconn
-- Below here I don't go looking but sometimes they find me. --
Forth: Asus, MSI, FIC, ECS, Aopen, Soyo
Fifth: AsRock, PcChips, Jetway

* = based on recommendations here and reading.

Specific boards may be up or down a line from where I put 'em.

HOW could I forget Abit! ?
Some Supermicro boards have a few NRSY (Brand) caps that need changed.
- Not to be confused with NIC Components brand NRSY series which are good caps.
Foxconn builds Intel's boards but puts lesser caps on their own branded boards.
- Some models have the same PCB layout.
Haven't had an Epox board in a LONG time but it was a GREAT board.
- I'll trust bgavin's take on current Epox.
FIC was good for P3 boards. Started doing all Emachines class crap with P4. - Junk.
I actually like Soyo boards but usually you have to replace every damned cap.
- Soyo doesn't build mobo's anymore anyway.
I used to like TekRam too but they are gone. Were comparable to Epox.

.

[Scenic]

Re: Best mobo brand?

isn't epox out of business since a few years...!?

edit: sort of...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPoX

the article on the german wikipedia site (de.wikipedia.org) is a bit more informative...

crappy translation
In April 2007, the successor company named SUPoX was founded by some of the former EPoX engineers. The production line was mostly kept, and some new series have been added. Some newer versions of Mainboards however, have been slimmed down feature-wise.

[Junk Parts]

Re: Best mobo brand?

Since I have been suffering with "Dell" for the past few years I don't know much about the newer mobo's. I can tell you this. The last good home built I had was using the Abit VL6 mobo with a 1 Gig Intel PIII CPU, and 512 megs of Ram. That PC ROCKED! It had good features for overclocking too if I remember right. Some PC's are just right if you know what I mean, and that was one of them. Then after some years this great PC started acting goofy, and I joined this site. I learned that what I took to be some sort of glue to hold the caps was actually cap crap! Most of the caps around the CPU were leaking badly. I gave that board to one of the members on this forum here for his own use. I would guess that he recapped it in 10 minutes, and ended up with a good board again. My point is that while that PIII did run so nice I replaced it with a Dell GX180 with the same type PIII CPU. As good as the old Dell has been, it has never been as fast as the Abit VL6 system, and never will be. I don't know what the new Abits are like but that old one had it going on.

[bgavin]

Re: Best mobo brand?

I recommend Dell to all my clients who are unwilling to part with the cash for a performance computer. Dell is the only laptop I recommend to a client.

Several of the eMachine that came in dead (BESTEC power supply) would have been decent machines with a good PSU. They all had Intel boards, etc. Based on what I saw, if a customer bought an eMachine and immediately replaced the PSU with a quality unit, they would probably have a good machine.

#1 Thumbs Down Award: Gateway. No doubt about it. Pile of shit.

[kc8adu]

Re: Best mobo brand?

the "best brand of motherboard" is a fast moving target.
every brand has its dogs and winners.
just as important as good parts on the board is hardware that does not have issues with and performs well with the particular board.

[kc8adu]

Re: Best mobo brand?

I recommend Dell to all my clients who are unwilling to part with the cash for a performance computer. Dell is the only laptop I recommend to a client.

Several of the eMachine that came in dead (BESTEC power supply) would have been decent machines with a good PSU. They all had Intel boards, etc. Based on what I saw, if a customer bought an eMachine and immediately replaced the PSU with a quality unit, they would probably have a good machine.

#1 Thumbs Down Award: Gateway. No doubt about it. Pile of shit.

funny as gateway and emachines are one and the same.
seems the gateway "gt"series btx boxes are the worst.
the motherboards in nearly all of them are bad.