Opinions on "ultra durable" Gigabyte boards?

[Krankshaft]

Re: Opinions on "ultra durable" Gigabyte boards?

I bought the Gigabyte Ultra Durable GA-EP45-UD3R for my main quad core rig with solid caps and I'm very happy with it. I believe the solid caps were Chemicon when I checked.

I couldn't agree more about the Asus comment they suck IMO. I took careful consideration when choosing my mobo and the failure rate of the Asus boards based on reviews seemed unusually high. Even if I took into account user damage there were still too many similar failures. Couple that with my experiences with Asus boards either partially (onboard audio or network failing) or totally dying the choice was a no brainer.

[weirdlookinguy]

Re: Opinions on "ultra durable" Gigabyte boards?

GA-EP45-UD3P here. It's a UD3R but with dual gigabit LAN and a few other goodies. It's been a great board so far, I've had it for almost a year now.

[ratdude747]

Re: Opinions on "ultra durable" Gigabyte boards?

no more a8n32-sli... bing'd POS!!!

geez... all of my asus boards are dead to various degrees now... mostly crap-ass designs... like putting an smd diode next to the fan clip for a s370 board... smart! that way a 6 point clip (462 style) crushes it, rendering it useless unless you find the part # and solder in a new one... until you try another clip like that and blow it again...

[Rulycat]

Re: Opinions on "ultra durable" Gigabyte boards?

I agree ratdude, ASUS boards seem cheap these days. They look the part, but I had more life out of a £40 Foxconn with all OSTs apart from the VRMs than I did from my ASUS A8N-SLI. The only good ASUS boards are the REALLY top of the line ones.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Opinions on "ultra durable" Gigabyte boards?

The only good ASUS boards are the REALLY top of the line ones.

And only -some- of them.
If you are going to spend that much on a mobo anyway you are better off going with Intel or Supermicro.
.

[toastygoodness]

Re: Opinions on "ultra durable" Gigabyte boards?

supermicro ftw. their boards are so solid (although pricey, even for AMD).

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Opinions on "ultra durable" Gigabyte boards?

The ""REALLY top of the line"" Asus are also very pricey.

I would trust a bottom of the line Supermicro WAY more than a top of the line Asus.
.

[lightingguy32]

Re: Opinions on "ultra durable" Gigabyte boards?

Lately I have found that I have only purchased solely gigabyte motherboards for all of my builds. So far I have the GA-P55A-UD3, the GA-P55-UD3R, and the GA-EP43T-UD3L, they are all rock solid and reliable, not to mention one of them survived being shipped to me with the processor (and an enormous heatsink attached to it and 8gb memory in the dimm slots) in a usps flat rate box with only regular bubble wrap around it. I was quite surprised that it didn't die from ESD or physical damage from not being in the original box. It will be interesting to see how Gigabytes P67/H67 boards perform

[Krankshaft]

Re: Opinions on "ultra durable" Gigabyte boards?

I had an Intel board before my current Gigabyte build.

Intel makes good boards for general purpose computing but for a gaming rig I find they're a bit too utilitarian.

I agree stay away from Asus they can't even write an owners manual without Chinglish in it. I only bought one of their boards and it has a dead onboard nic that was enough of a sign for me to stop buying their boards.

On one of their mobo boxes I have it said "Rock Solid - Heart Touching" what does that mean? Probably you'll be holding your hand over your heart during your heart attack when their crap mobo blows up .

[goodpsusearch]

Re: Opinions on "ultra durable" Gigabyte boards?

Gigabyte and Asus are not that different.

[Krankshaft]

Re: Opinions on "ultra durable" Gigabyte boards?

The Asus boards crapping themselves left and right would say otherwise.

I did a lot of research before I bought my board and comparatively Asus had alot more failures across the board not just one model either than Gigabyte they varied from outright dead to onboard component failure. The later which I experienced personally.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Opinions on "ultra durable" Gigabyte boards?

Gigabyte and Asus are not that different.

Depends on -when-.
In so far as stability, before they both went to poly caps I would have agreed they were about the same.
Since then Asus has been unstable in general and Gigabyte has been a better choice.

I suspect Asus designers don't 'get' that ESR can be too low in some applications.
.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Opinions on "ultra durable" Gigabyte boards?

Asus also gets a lot more complaints about sudden unexplainable death.
ASDS = Asus Sudden Death Syndrome.

[Rulycat]

Re: Opinions on "ultra durable" Gigabyte boards?

I bought an ASUS Radeon 5750, arrived semi dead. Would boot into windows but 3d would not work, Aero or otherwise. Returned it and got the Gigabyte Ultra Durable version which worked perfectly and is nearly silent. ASUS is a joke.

[Chaiyz]

Re: Opinions on "ultra durable" Gigabyte boards?

I've been on the MSI bandwagon before, jumped ship and loved Asus for years. First Gigabyte board for me was the P35-UD3R which is a cheap no frills workhorse. That board powered my server at my business and still does to this day, 24/7 365 never an issue in 4 years. I have at home an HTPC with P35-UD4 Q9540 running rock solid for 2 years. EP45UD3R in my kids gamer never an issue. I've build 2 p55 i7 boards in the past 3 months without a single issue.

I'm sold on Gigabyte and the UD motherboards are of the best you can buy for the money.

Chaiyz

[hardwareguy]

Re: Opinions on "ultra durable" Gigabyte boards?

The Gigabyte UD series boards have been awesome!
I've used mainly the GPA-890UD3P and the X58A-UD3 and UD5

[Trinite]

Re: Opinions on "ultra durable" Gigabyte boards?

My last experience with ASUS with a P5P800 that would not go 1MHz past 200FSB. I swapped it out for a much cheaper ABIT and got 225FSB no problem. Currently running an ABIT IP35Pro for the last 3 years, pretty much 24/7 with a heavy OC. Too bad they aren't around anymore. Have a really cheap Gigabyte as well, no frills, but never had any issues with it.

[turbozutek]

Re: Opinions on "ultra durable" Gigabyte boards?

I have a GA-G33M-S2L, and while it's not technically rated as 'ultra durable' I don't think, it IS very good.

It has solid caps around the VRM and Sanyo 'lytics everywhere else. I can attest to the improved ripple rating of the solid caps, as the crappy TEAPO caps in my PSU vented, but the board was still stable using the on-board video!

Also I'd confirm the general feeling on ASUS in this thread; lately they have been rubbish. Too many product lines and too much 'quick, finish that design in a half assed way and get onto the next one' from that company now I think!

Chris...

[BigTroll]

Re: Opinions on "ultra durable" Gigabyte boards?

I love my GigaByte Board, Its been staying on 24/7 most of the time.

[foxpro]

Re: Opinions on "ultra durable" Gigabyte boards?

A small update on durability of Gigabyte.
I have using this boards for 2 years already. Mainly cheap versions starting with 945/946, P31, P35, P43, P45, G31, G41, G43, G45. What to say, I am very satisfied with them. Used on 300+ maybe 400 PCs and I will not change them if they keep this way. (There have been failures here and there, but the factors were mostly external, mainly connected to electric discharge during thunderstorms, using LAN connector as entry point in the MB.)

The main discussion in this topic should be the solid capacitors that Gigabyte uses and how long they suppose to last, and not what Gigabyte or Asus or MSI have as extra on the MB for the money you gave or what kind of support you receive for it. Of course we will not see if those 50000 hours are true until we spend a few years more in our lives, but great number of boards running fine for 2 years is already a success, having a bad experience with ECS/Epox/Soltek/Asrock/ in the past (and not that bad experience with MSI and Biostar). Asus and MSI are great brands and I love them, but they have too many experiments in their boards for my taste. I love to keep the PC's simple and reliable.

Speaking of durability, maybe they (Gigabyte) hit a great timing with those solid capacitors, now when Intel CoreDuo/Core2Duo/QuadCore cpu's are quite cool this days. Also Intel keeps their chipsets very cool this days, so nowadays motherboards do not need extra active coolers on chipsets. Those active coolers will likely fail in a couple of years, making a motherboard prone to failure.
Keeping the board cold looks like the most important factor for its durability. Keeping this in mind, I never use Intel CPU box coolers. Beside being too small (thin) for my taste, their design puts a lot of pressure to the cpu and the board, making the board curved a bit, which is not a good thing on a long run.