Best mobo brand?

[i4004]

Re: Best mobo brand?

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...

i think you're just "lucky" with asus and samsung optical drives...
that 1% of crap they make always ends up with you, it seems...heh...

asrock is asus, so it's not like everything asus was unlucky for you...
<wink>

was at asrock site...
http://www.asrock.com/feature/instantboot/index.asp
that's how you bring "new" features...you make a program that reboots instead of shutting down(actually cheating) and then you claim this is better than s3/s4 mode that "accumulates grabage".
huh

cheesy marketing aside, asrock is probably ok.
i have a friend that put asrock in some machine so he now marvels at how can it be that it lasts in excess of 3 years...hehe...

i recently put the cheapest gigabyte board i could find into one machine, and everythign went well...just as with intel, i just can't explain how can that thing be so cheap...

recommended gbyte mobo to a friend(he needed more pci slots, so particular gb model qualified) and he seems to be happy with it.

recommended machines that have gbyte installed(local pc shop "brand" machines) and they're ok too....

i have asus as it was one of the last companies to have win2k drivers for the board(intel was my other choice, but their boards didn't have 2k drivers), so who says support is not good?
<wink>

if i needed board right now i would probably pick asus again.
because i'll probably need something for media playback(when old p3 800 machine dies) intel is not a good option, as they don't have stuff like(for example)
http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?mo...01&l3=496&l4=0

[acstech]

Re: Best mobo brand?

He's not the only one with wacky Asus boards.

Anyway, here's some interesting information about Abit:

http://www.pcstats.com/NewsView.cfm?NewsID=72844
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article...33209&from=rss

Also, see second paragraph here:

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/8150/a...tar/index.html

It appears some ex-Abit engineers went to Biostar.

[i4004]

Re: Best mobo brand?

>He's not the only one with wacky Asus boards.

for sure, but he got 3 duds in short time frame

yeah, no need to recommend abit if it's no more.

[370forlife]

Re: Best mobo brand?

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.

Whats strange is gateway uses mostly ECS motherboards, while all the emachines I have seen use Intel motherboards with Panasonic and nichicon caps.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Best mobo brand?

kc8adu pretty much nailed it.

For most brands it hit and miss
-and-
who was best depends on the vintage of the gear you are looking for because it changes all the time.

~~~

Abit has always built great boards but they got caught first with the 'stolen electrolyte' fiasco and immediatly after with the HN/HM fiasco.
But: They were one of the few companies that owned up to the problems and tried to make things right with their customers. So I hear all the RMA's almost put them out of business.

Intel (and Tyan - I think) didn't get caught with the stolen electrolyte problems because (Intel at least) uses all Japanese caps in critical areas. But HN/HM/KZG are Japanese caps and so far as that goes they are in the same boat as Abit.

Between 2001 and 2004/2005, during 'The Plague" and the HM/HN problems Emachines (Before Gateway bought them out), Gateway, HP, and Dell(mostly Intel) were using OEM boards from Intel, FIC, Asus, and MSI. All of those brand were using HN/HM caps in quanity and that didn't help Emachines reputation at all.
- Realistically that part of their problems wasn't even Emachines (any system builders) fault.
- NOBODY expected problems with Nichicon brand caps.

I think ~STILL~ none of the manufacturers know about the KZG problems.
- Maybe they should read Bad Caps Forums once in a while to see how they are doing?
- Ya think?

Asus is so hit-miss because Asus goes out of their way to set the quality level by the intended market. If it's an OEM or low/middle of the road consumer board they will go cheap on caps. If it's a high end performance board they get good caps.
I've forgotten where I saw it and the specific model but I saw a post some where they compared an Asus "xyz" model to an "xyz-Deluxe". The base model had mediocre or crap caps and the "Deluxe" version had all Rubycon.
THERE IS NO REASON FOR THAT KIND OF CRAP!!!!!
- The cost in caps in huge quantities just isn't that much different.
- Maybe $1-$2 different for a whole motherboard.
If they want to save $2/board they should ship the damned things in plain brown boxes and not down-grade the caps.

When AsRock first appeared they had an "about us" on their own site that defined themselves as a juncture between Asus and PcChips. I think Asus didn't like being associated with PcChips and that information quickly disappeared.
(It may also have been an outright lie. I'm not sure.)

There is also Iwill who is seldom heard from. - So I understand Iwill owns Tyan.
Thing is Tyan branded boards are built better (have better caps) than Iwill branded boards.

Here's a funny from the old 486 days.
PcChips was using fake cache chips to make the boards 'look better' in display windows. The chips were unmarked and PcChips themselves never claimed they were real or write any specs that indicated there was cache on the boards.
- Problem was some of the companies that bought these boards plain-box for resale claimed they were real cache chips in the specs on the boxes. Some went so far as to put fake markings on the fake cache chips.
[Yeah! - That's who I wanna do business with!]

.

[Per Hansson]

Re: Best mobo brand?

Well, I've owned many many Asus mobos
All I can say is they have the worst support of any company I've worked with
If you need support look somewhere else

Also on many of their mobos I've seen / worked with there have been strange quirks
Like my current Rampage Formula which once every 10:th boot or so decides to hang on VGA Init, or sometimes corrupt the CMOS etc...
Or their Rampage Formula where they managed to get the system to not be compatibe with certain RAID controllers in a BIOS update, and of course BIOS downgrades are not supported by ASUS (you need a special unsupported flasher for it)
I eventually solved the BIOS downgrade but it just ain't fun having to deal with such issues on mobos which cost around $200 and RAID controllers costing around $600

I got burned by Abit with the data corruption issue on the nForce2 mobos, NF7-S
I hated them a long time for the way they handeled that problem (basically denied the whole thing)
Tho I've forgiven them for that, I think Abit has come quite clean, especially how they handled the capacitor problem
Just hope they don't go out of business now, my next mobo will most likely be Abit

[jpdoe]

Re: Best mobo brand?

I guess it pays more to choose by chipset brand/model than by manufacturer.
It's also good to let others be the beta testers, and hold on a couple of months before committing to a motherboard. That way you learn from other's misfortune.
Another parameter I like to keep in mind is how does the manufacturer behave regarding BIOS updates. ECS/Pcchips doesn't have the best track record there. I would appreciate ASRock owners comments on that regard.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Best mobo brand?

Whats strange is gateway uses mostly ECS motherboards....

That's not true at all. - Gateway has always used Intel boards.
They've used LOADS of Intel boards from socket 370 up to present.
- Here is a few:
D975XLAG1, D865GVHZ, D945GCZ, D915GSE2, D845HV, D845GERG3, D845GRG, D845GVSR, D845GERG2, D845PECE, too many more....

Thing is Gateway goes by Intel's noun name for the board instead of the actual model number. Like: Santorini, Wasp, Monterey, Seabreeze, Nimitz, Midway, Essex, (The whole 'Aircraft Carrier Series' - LOL)
Also people selling them tend to use Gateway's PN and/or the noun name and never mention Intel's PN for the board at all.
- Once you get past figuring out which is which (via google) then used Gateway gear is a great source of used Intel boards. - For cheap.

I have several Intel SE7210TP1-E socket 478 boards which came originally in Gateway Servers. Many of their servers use Intel boards.

This one cracks me up: - The DG965LVG1 - The "Love Valley".
(Must be from the California branch of Intel.)
http://www.skyline-eng.com/index.cfm...roduct_ID=5432

.

[gustie]

Re: Best mobo brand?

no DFI love here wow lol

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Best mobo brand?

I don't know where to put DFI because I haven't had one since 486 or P1.

I do know that they were still making 370 PIII-S Tualatin capable boards for a few years after everyone else stopped production. I went looking for some of their uATX versions of that a few years ago but couldn't find a good deal on them.

[zandrax]

Re: Best mobo brand?

PCBONEZ and KC8 are right: there ain't such a thing as a "best brand".

Asus was exceptional till Socket 7 mobo included, from good to very good with Slot 1 and Socket 370 ones (had a few problems: early revisions of P2B, CUBX and P3B series had a design bug which crashed the board under a peculiar and heavy cpu load. Since it happened mainly with some Photoshop commands, it was known as the "Photoshop bug") and slowing degrading to average with later boards.
It didn't admitted using bad caps on later Socket 462 and early P4 boards and I suspect cheaper Asus boards are manifactured from other OEMs (hint: some boards are stripped down versions of full featured models like the A7V8X-X was a cheaper A7V8X, others are completely new designs: compare the old P4P800-X with the plain P4P800. What's the purpose in designing a completely new board for a low budget, low margin line instead of removing unneeded features from an existing product and exploit economy of scale?).

Abit: great brand now dead

DFI: in past a good brand aimed at overclockers and gamers, later products ranges from very good (top of the line) to average.

ASRock: cheap brand, a few good products but mostly average to sub-average quality. According to rumors, it's a joint venture between Asus and Hsing Tech (aka ECS, PC Chips and a lot of minor brands): PCBONEZ states this appeared on AsRock's site, I don't know if it's true but it seems possible to me.

Gigabyte: one of the big OEMs with Asus, MSI and Foxconn. Some quality issues in past, some still today

A lot of others, but the point is already clear: all brand are hit and miss, some less and others more.

Zandrax

[i4004]

Re: Best mobo brand?

>Well, I've owned many many Asus mobos

many like 5, 10 or 100?
ever had a problem with on-board network adapter?

i had dfi bx440 board...it was good..untill chaep psu ate it...

[bgavin]

Re: Best mobo brand?

I'm puzzled over why you think Abit is dead. The web site is alive with new products, and they are more current with their BIOS than is Gigabyte.

A quick check at Newegg shows they do not carry any Abit boards. I still see them in regular stock at Fry's.

Am I missing something with ABit?

I've been buying a number of MSI boards also. They offer some nice boards in the embedded video (uATX) format. These are fully populated with Pannie FJs.

[acstech]

Re: Best mobo brand?

Yes, you're missing something:

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

See the last paragraph in "history."

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Best mobo brand?

So not 'dead' but out of motherboard business.

Might be a good time to update that Abit BIOS and Utilities CD. ~~~

[i4004]

Re: Best mobo brand?

abit doesn't have LGA 1366 mobo, which means it's over.

[Scenic]

Re: Best mobo brand?

what the hell?!

i just bought an abit board (I-G31) for my mums pc a few days ago

i didn't know they went out of mobo business at all :O

hopefully they will keep up the support for a while :/

its a nice board and everything works fine so far...



i somewhat like that orange PCB.. only the turquoise heatsink doesn't fit in there at all (color wise)..

caps are NCC and Sanyo BTW

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Best mobo brand?

Found a blurb (forgot where now) that says they will support mobos for 3 years.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Best mobo brand?

I like the turquoise there but I could deal without the lime green.

[Per Hansson]

Re: Best mobo brand?

Dfi where nice, I've only used 2 or 3 (vs used and supported maybe 50>100 Asus boards)
But their support was excellent
I think they are not so high-end as they where then tho, there where some issues with the support staff, their support forums got shut down for a while etc, don't know how it went after that