Whats a good board?

[pentium]

Re: Whats a good board?


Never in my teen years....

[Rainbow]

Re: Whats a good board?

Right now, I have an ECS SF2/661FX board here - and what a surprise! All big caps are Panasonic FJ 3300uF/6.3V and 1800uF/16V and there are Sanyos 1000uF/6.3V all over the board! The tiny caps are G-Luxons. That looks really great - but don't know why they used good caps - was the board made for HP/Compaq or are they all like this?

[willawake]

Re: Whats a good board?

gigabyte featured several times on this forum with the most toasted fets.

[stevo1210]

Re: Whats a good board?

Hmm.... I might sound a little crazy here but....

Now I just realised that it is actually cheaper to buy a new PC?! If I was to fix up this junkie PC.... i'll have to upgrade it with new processors and RAM to get it up to todays standards....

So instead i found Dell and realised it will only cost me $500 for a Dimension E520 tower?
I wonder what motherboards Dell uses nowadays.... Last time i peeked inside a Dimension 4600.... It had something like an Intel board with all good Nichicon caps.

Anyone got an opinion on Dell desktops? I know many people that use Dell desktops and they are very reliable.... except for the small driver issues.

Thanks.

[stevo1210]

Re: Whats a good board?

I just found an Intel desktop board thats similar to the one used in the Dell XPS Pentium II computers.... It has Nichicon PW(M) caps around the CPU.... and best of all it's lasted about 10 years....

[MD Willington]

Re: Whats a good board?

Guys... ECS/PCChips OEM's for many of the other companies, Abit VA20 is an ECS board, Gigabyte had them make boards, Shuttle had them make boards... DFI has stated a few times they are getting out og the motherboard industry...

Asrock is actually a half decent company...

I would have to question the motive of a retailer that carried a product they thought was a flaming piece of dog shit...

With ECS they have a deal, you sell a ton of boards or combos, you get a kickback ($$$) on each one you sell... There was documentation regarding this on the ECS retailers website, it was a PDF that explained how much money they would get back from ECS per combo sold...

[Spacedye69]

Re: Whats a good board?

My sis-in-law's Dell I had apart a few weeks ago kinda scared me. Good caps around the CPU (nichicon HD), but it was missing the AGP slot, 2 memory slots, and the rest of the caps were Nichicon V series, which are not low esr. It runs well, but no upgrading and I'll like to see in a couple of yeard how reliable GP caps will be. If you go with a Dell, spend the extra $100 and get an Optiplex. BTX mobo, very quiet and stays cool.

[stevo1210]

Re: Whats a good board?

Wow.... First time i heard of general purpose caps on a modern Pentium 4 class motherboard....
But in the past i have seen older motherboards with general purpose caps.... I've got a board here, a Gigabyte GA-586AVS (Socket 5).... this was my recapping test board.... it actually had "Stone" General purpose caps.

[willawake]

Re: Whats a good board?

and the rest of the caps were Nichicon V series, which are not low esr.

same on intel boards, even current ones.

[Spacedye69]

Re: Whats a good board?

it looks like a micro-atx Intel board before the castration of the AGP and 2 dimm slots.

[stevo1210]

Re: Whats a good board?

I just noticed that the Dell E520 has SATA Optical drives.... It's about time we got SATA drives. I wonder if SATA optical drives are faster than IDE Optical drives....

[gonzo0815]

Re: Whats a good board?

Probably not, but i read somwhere that there are few compatibility problems with SATA DVD Burners. Most IDE drives do usually not use the fastes mode, in maost cases it is only UDMA 33, wich means that there is absolut no bottleneck other than the slow drive mechanics.

[toastygoodness]

Re: Whats a good board?

[reply to previous posts]
I have also seen many of the new (well around 2002-now) Gigabyte (starting with the socket 478, one that I have which is an intel chipset) motherboards very nicely put together. The one thing that seems to bother people, I've read, is that they hide all the customization settings on their BIOS. Personally, I don't really care about overclocking besides that it will void warranties, but if you overclock, then another brand might be better. Otherwise, Gigabyte makes quality boards at the right price. I also like ABIT, and I think MSI is okay after you get rid of the bad caps. If Albatron is still around, I liked their AMD boards. As for ECS and ASRock, it's gambling. They have all bad caps, but sometimes its a good budget board that works for what it pays, other times its usually DOA.

And if you get the Gigabyte boards, do try to get the ones made in Taiwan. I've found that they tend to be of better quality (unlike the capacitors made in taiwan) than Gigabyte's boards made in China. ASUS makes boards for HP/Compaq, and Apple has Foxconn (*cough* Hon Hai *cough*, not a great company) to make almost all of their products.
[/reply to previous posts]

Dell's reliability seems to kind of be going down. I've found the motherboards failing about twice out of thirty Dells. If you do get a Dell, I find their Optiplex using more reliable (i'm not sure if they still have a longer warranty) parts, plus u cna get those tiny form factors (micro-BTX or something? heard intel came up with it to cool off their super-hot NetBurst procs) for pretty cheap.

[stevo1210]

Re: Whats a good board?

[reply to previous posts]
I have also seen many of the new (well around 2002-now) Gigabyte (starting with the socket 478, one that I have which is an intel chipset) motherboards very nicely put together. The one thing that seems to bother people, I've read, is that they hide all the customization settings on their BIOS. Personally, I don't really care about overclocking besides that it will void warranties, but if you overclock, then another brand might be better. Otherwise, Gigabyte makes quality boards at the right price. I also like ABIT, and I think MSI is okay after you get rid of the bad caps. If Albatron is still around, I liked their AMD boards. As for ECS and ASRock, it's gambling. They have all bad caps, but sometimes its a good budget board that works for what it pays, other times its usually DOA.

And if you get the Gigabyte boards, do try to get the ones made in Taiwan. I've found that they tend to be of better quality (unlike the capacitors made in taiwan) than Gigabyte's boards made in China. ASUS makes boards for HP/Compaq, and Apple has Foxconn (*cough* Hon Hai *cough*, not a great company) to make almost all of their products.
[/reply to previous posts]

Dell's reliability seems to kind of be going down. I've found the motherboards failing about twice out of thirty Dells. If you do get a Dell, I find their Optiplex using more reliable (i'm not sure if they still have a longer warranty) parts, plus u cna get those tiny form factors (micro-BTX or something? heard intel came up with it to cool off their super-hot NetBurst procs) for pretty cheap.

I didnt know that Gigabyte boards made in China were worse than the ones made in Taiwan.... they are the same company arent they?

Arent Dell optiplex the business series of desktops? They are the more expensive range.... upgrading them is a bit hard because of the small size.

[stevo1210]

Re: Whats a good board?

Hello Everyone,

I found a high resolution image of the Asrock P4i65G motherboard on ebay (it was the only place i could find a Hi-Res image), I think they use OST caps around the CPU?
There are also some Sanyo caps near the I/O ports. Are OST caps really bad like GSC and Chhsi or are they a bit better like G-Luxon?
How do the onboard components look (apart from caps) .... Those MOSFETs around the CPU look a bit small which is quite wierd. I just hope that the CPU isn't powered by a 5V line.... I was wondering if this board is good enough for a Celeron 2GHz CPU.... I just felt like reinvesting into this PC today even though im going to buy a Dell in the future.

Thanks.

[stevo1210]

Re: Whats a good board?

NOW TO MY 100TH POST!!!!

I just noticed that the Northbridge heatsink on the Asrock P4i65G is mounted on a 45 degree angle with the chipset!!
How does that cool? shouldn't heatsink coolers be directly on top of the chipset?

[Per Hansson]

Re: Whats a good board?

Gratz ;-)

Does not matter; it is still covering the full "core"... it's just the PCB package of the chipset you are seeing...

And the "heatsink" is so crap anyway that it could probably work just as fine without it ;-)

[hkivan]

Re: Whats a good board?

Hello Everyone,

IThose MOSFETs around the CPU look a bit small which is quite wierd. I just hope that the CPU isn't powered by a 5V line.... I was wondering if this board is good enough for a Celeron 2GHz CPU....
Thanks.

The board comes with 4-pin +12V connector which is solely for CPU VRM.
The majority of P4 mobo use 12V to feed cpu vrm.

Many asrock boards come with small mosfets too. They are just fine and not even warm without heatsink on them. They are low ESR mosfets.

[stevo1210]

Re: Whats a good board?

Guys... ECS/PCChips OEM's for many of the other companies, Abit VA20 is an ECS board, Gigabyte had them make boards, Shuttle had them make boards... DFI has stated a few times they are getting out og the motherboard industry...

Asrock is actually a half decent company...

I would have to question the motive of a retailer that carried a product they thought was a flaming piece of dog shit...

With ECS they have a deal, you sell a ton of boards or combos, you get a kickback ($$$) on each one you sell... There was documentation regarding this on the ECS retailers website, it was a PDF that explained how much money they would get back from ECS per combo sold...

Asrock is half decent? does that mean that they are crap?

[Shroomie]

Re: Whats a good board?

Nah, it means they're not a bad deal for what you pay. They ain't bad, but they ain't great.