I was curious, although I believe I could take an educated guess, as to what is your favorite motherboard manufacturer? If you had to commit to one of these for the rest of your life, which one would you pick?
I voted for MSI. They don't have the best reputation as overclockers, but every system I've put one in has been a breeze to setup and has run rock-solid. Now that I'm 400 miles away from my family I'm glad I used them in all their computers.
I'm gonna go with MSI, for plain and simple reliability.
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Straight_ManGeeky, in my own wayNaples, FLIcrontian
edited December 2004
Abit, MSI, then Asus. Then Intel. That's for clients. For servers, my favorite is Tyan. Tyan is extra careful with design, has few batch failures over long term, now has a US division which can do tech support also. DANG good boards. I do not use them for client boxes, nor recommend them, due to cost and the fact that most Tyan boards use chipsets that want ECC+Registered RAM. But for steady server boards they have some of the best in the business.
Of the bunch, the only one I have NOT had to replace a Northbridge fan on is a few models of MSI. So far, I have had to replace one Gigabyte board's NB fan, two Abit board NB fans, and two Intel NB fans and HS's and have RMA'd a handfull of Intel boards (Intel boards also do not OC worth a dang). MSI's I do not recommend for OCing, mostly because they will not be OCable much at all and thus will not have OCed FSB bridge sub-busses adn due to NOT OCing MSI boards much at all I have had no MSI NB fans fail. I also do not build SFF boxes, if I did I probably would end up with FIC or Shuttle board depending on features wanted, in that preference order.
I've used Acer and AcerOpen boards also, those are not real good grade, but not terrible in the main.
Abit has produced the most satisfaction for me by far. Asus comes in second, followed by MSI. I've owned a variety of asus boards and have found them to be pretty decent. I've only had occasional glitches with them. None can touch the current abit board I'm running though. I've owned one MSI board and was really liking it until one day it decided to just die for no reason one day. In hindsight it was prolly one from their bad caps days. I'd probably give them a second try as I believe they have them issues straightened out. I really liked the way it ran when it did run. The biostar boards I run on my farm are pretty good budget boards with a lot of features (not OC features but integrated features like LAN, video, sound, etc). I would have to say that gigabyte boards are teh suck IMO. They have been more temperamental than a biatch on menstruation week for me. They didn't like many of the budget ram sticks I threw at them while asus took them and ran like a champ. Friends don't let friends buy gigabyte . I've heard good things about tyan in the old days but it seems that they have fizzled for the most part today. I've heard good things about supermicro but I haven't worked with any of their boards. It seems like Epox and DFI have been coming on quite strong the past year while Soyo has the sun setting on them. Chaintech has seemed to be pretty decent although I've heard a few unpleasant things about them here and there. I've really liked aopen products including the single motherboard I've owned by them. It worked like a champ. Although they aren't known for their overclocking prowess, they put out solid products IMO.
I have to give the nod to Abit for overall features and performance and also longivity. My friend is still running my old BH6 board I first bought when the fastest P2 in production was the P2-450, which makes it at least 5-6 years old. I also like the Asus boards I've owned and unlike some others here, the 1 Gigabyte board I've owned was the best overclocking P3 board ever made and it's still running for primesuspect.
Well, since this computer contains the only motherboard I've ever owned NOT manufatured by Packard-Bell, Compaq, or Dell...
Good grief - you have been through the mill.
About the only real stinker you've missed is pcchips, arguably the worst of the bunch. Glad to see that you've escaped from the clutches of the proprietary underworld.
About the only real stinker you've missed is pcchips, arguably the worst of the bunch. Glad to see that you've escaped from the clutches of the proprietary underworld.
i made the mistake of buying a pc chips board for my p4 temporarly till i could aford a good asus
This brings up an interesting side-topic, which board company provides the best RMA policy? I've never tried to RMA a board so I don't have any experience with any of them.
I voted for Chaintech, yeah I was ranting about this board about a year ago but I've discovered it wasn't so much the board as it was an incompatability with the ram I was running, the Corsair PC3700 while intended for cas 3-4-4-8 operation was defaulting to lower latencies at speeds below 215mhz at 1-1 and under a divider it forced the board to run lower latencies no matter the setting (although at 1-1 the cas would do the speeds you set it at).
After I put in this OCZ the cas was set at 3-4-4-8 no matter the ram's clock rate which cured the ills I was experiencing with the Corsair and I must say, it has much better headroom.
With the Corsair the highest OC I ever got with this board or the Abit IS7 I had for a short time was 262mhz, that was it and at that speed either board would start spitting out memory errors after some uptime, it was depressing.
Now I'm running at 270fsb, stable, no memory errors, no hitches and it's quite satisfying.
The only reason I'd consider jumping ship is if I decided to go socket 939 in the future, Chaintech doesn't offer a board with that socket, bummer :bawling:
I was beginning to think I was the only one who had voted for DFI but I see somebody else has joined me.
It always was Abit, from my first Abit board, a KT7-R, I've always liked them. But then I got my first DFI board.
Good layout, overclocker friendly, lots of great little touches like onboard start and reset buttons and five audio outputs for onboard 5.1, unlike most boards where you have to use your mic and line in sockets for rear and mid.
This NFII Ultra B has been rock solid so far, I like it. And it was designed by a guy who used to work for Abit so it kinda makes sense.
Only boards I've had real problems with have been Elite and have had two MSI boards fail completely on me.
And Abit, for me, would be a very close second choice of board.
This brings up an interesting side-topic, which board company provides the best RMA policy? I've never tried to RMA a board so I don't have any experience with any of them.
Asus and msi there neck and neck
Asus took a rma that was caused by crappy ram the ram caught fire when it was hevly over clocked and mented the ram slot
and where i do co-op we had a guy bring in a board the entire back of his board was burnt . Because he forgot to put the stand offs in
we sent it back to msi and they sent a new one no problem
I was beginning to think I was the only one who had voted for DFI but I see somebody else has joined me.
It always was Abit, from my first Abit board, a KT7-R, I've always liked them. But then I got my first DFI board.
Good layout, overclocker friendly, lots of great little touches like onboard start and reset buttons and five audio outputs for onboard 5.1, unlike most boards where you have to use your mic and line in sockets for rear and mid.
This NFII Ultra B has been rock solid so far, I like it. And it was designed by a guy who used to work for Abit so it kinda makes sense.
Only boards I've had real problems with have been Elite and have had two MSI boards fail completely on me.
And Abit, for me, would be a very close second choice of board.
Dfi is my #2 or #3 havent decided abit is my second last place ive had board from them have capasitors explode
Well hopefully the days of bad caps are over for all the board makers. I'd definitely give MSI another shot as I really liked the way it ran (a KT3 Ultra) right before it went caput. In hindsight I should have rma'd the board as I didn't even try overclocking or anything exotic with it.
There were a batch of bad capacitors about everywhere a coupla years ago.
I had an Albatron board at the time, amongst others.
I noticed on that board electrolytic caps were bulging at the top, quite a few of them, so I replaced them all.
Board ran fine ever and a day after that.
One bad experience with one manufacturer's board can put you off that make for life, sad to say. But with MSI, I had two go bad. That's hard to ignore.
There were a batch of bad capacitors about everywhere a coupla years ago.
I had an Albatron board at the time, amongst others.
I noticed on that board electrolytic caps were bulging at the top, quite a few of them, so I replaced them all.
Board ran fine ever and a day after that.
One bad experience with one manufacturer's board can put you off that make for life, sad to say. But with MSI, I had two go bad. That's hard to ignore.
Thats because some cheep chineese compeny claimed to have ecs's (not the motherboard manufacture) electricite formula.And they forgot a curtial eliment so the water in the eletricite turned to oxygen and hydrogen gas resulting in the capasitor expanding and popping.
only 2 batches of 1 model of asus board were efected by this problem.
mabey because asus doesnt buy as cheep capasitors just a few bad caps
I'm going to have to go with MSI on this one. They're the only people that make dual processor boards in my price range that have a decent feature set and stability. All the problems I've had with them were the chipset mfr's fault for either bad drivers, or in the case of my K7D, the 760MPX having faulty USB. MSI has a no-questions-asked RMA policy and sent me a brand new board (read: NOT refurb) when I had a bad flash on my K7D.
That being said, every Abit board that's crossed my desk has been an excellent board. I haven't had an opportunity to deal with their RMA department and hope I never do. My main complaint with Asus is that they don't make dual processor workstation boards anymore.
I've been very pleased with all my Asus hardware: my P2B-DS server has an uptime measured in years and my P2B-B server is trying to catch up. My P4T-E, despite using the infamous Rambus memory, is still one of the most stable machines I've ever owned. My complaint about Asus is the same as the one for Abit: where's the dualie boards?
I can't really agree with Straight_Man about Tyan. I had a Tyan Tiger MP that died 6 months after I got it, RMA'd it and the next one died 6 months later. I got the original board new from a friend and he'd bought it some time previous and never used it, so it's mfr warranty was up by the time the second board went kaput. I'm not buying another Tyan board; YMMV.
I've never seen a working PC Chips board. Wait, that's not true. I got this 386 machine from khan that had a PC Chips board with an integrated AMD 386 processor (no FPU) and a bunch of ISA slots. It worked.
I think it's worth noting that of the major OEM's, I would only buy an IBM. I have one of their older desktops in the PC300 series and it's rock-stable. My IBM PS/2 doesn't crash either, but it's more of a retro computing experience. My new laptop (Thinkpad T42p) is totally awesome despite being very proprietary. Not like you can upgrade a whole lot with laptops anyway.
My last 6 motherboards have all been Abit. Never a problem with a one of them... Each time I upgrade, I just move my old board down the line... First my my spare machine, then my wife, then my brother, and on to the in-laws...
I'll stick with them as long as they keep producing good quality products..
I've heard good things about tyan in the old days but it seems that they have fizzled for the most part today.
Tyan is almost totally into the server market and very high end Workstation market these days, deliberately. It is thier niche. They are not into the consumer market. Thus, consumers do not use them, and they have indeed fizzled except for server and very high end graphics dev workstations. They also are deliberately making boards that require high quality and VERY reliable components to work right, and thus are not compatible with a lot of consumer products.
Tyan has also moved MFRing to the far east (speaking of world area). So, lots less news about them is out and about in teh public eye, and because they are not consumer oriented a lot of mags and sites that discuss consumer grade electronics no longer speak of them.
BUT, they had some of the first PCI-X boards and 64 bit PCI embedded boards, some of the earliest SCSI-III/UW onboard (embedded controller) motherboards, and if you go to the mfring site and not the US site you will see what will hit the US in small qty in a month to three or so later into future. Newegg WILL special order Tyan boards for folks-- and they have motherboards from them indexed and priced on thier site. They are NOT cheap. They are durable and deliberately designed for that. They have thier own niche, and Tyan is no longer a universal-- across the whole spectrum of PC subniches-- PC motherboard mfr.
Yeah, I love my Tyan. And, actually, feature for feature, when I was looking, it was the Only one with the features I wanted and thought I needed, i.e. an AGP slot. Check it out, and you'll find that the S2885 was the only dual Opteron board with separate dimm slots for each processor AND an AGP slot. Aside from s--l--o--w bios updates, it's the greatest thing since sliced bread!
Flint
P.S All my other boxes are now Abits! Hence my vote----
Comments
Abit would be a close second.
Of the bunch, the only one I have NOT had to replace a Northbridge fan on is a few models of MSI. So far, I have had to replace one Gigabyte board's NB fan, two Abit board NB fans, and two Intel NB fans and HS's and have RMA'd a handfull of Intel boards (Intel boards also do not OC worth a dang). MSI's I do not recommend for OCing, mostly because they will not be OCable much at all and thus will not have OCed FSB bridge sub-busses adn due to NOT OCing MSI boards much at all I have had no MSI NB fans fail. I also do not build SFF boxes, if I did I probably would end up with FIC or Shuttle board depending on features wanted, in that preference order.
I've used Acer and AcerOpen boards also, those are not real good grade, but not terrible in the main.
I'm still a newbie! :bawling:
About the only real stinker you've missed is pcchips, arguably the worst of the bunch. Glad to see that you've escaped from the clutches of the proprietary underworld.
I love them no problems ever well msi is the same but they proform less with the equlivlent model
i had gigabytes and abits with capasitors explode and they wouldnt take the rma
i made the mistake of buying a pc chips board for my p4 temporarly till i could aford a good asus
the board caught fire and was un useable
After I put in this OCZ the cas was set at 3-4-4-8 no matter the ram's clock rate which cured the ills I was experiencing with the Corsair and I must say, it has much better headroom.
With the Corsair the highest OC I ever got with this board or the Abit IS7 I had for a short time was 262mhz, that was it and at that speed either board would start spitting out memory errors after some uptime, it was depressing.
Now I'm running at 270fsb, stable, no memory errors, no hitches and it's quite satisfying.
The only reason I'd consider jumping ship is if I decided to go socket 939 in the future, Chaintech doesn't offer a board with that socket, bummer :bawling:
It always was Abit, from my first Abit board, a KT7-R, I've always liked them. But then I got my first DFI board.
Good layout, overclocker friendly, lots of great little touches like onboard start and reset buttons and five audio outputs for onboard 5.1, unlike most boards where you have to use your mic and line in sockets for rear and mid.
This NFII Ultra B has been rock solid so far, I like it. And it was designed by a guy who used to work for Abit so it kinda makes sense.
Only boards I've had real problems with have been Elite and have had two MSI boards fail completely on me.
And Abit, for me, would be a very close second choice of board.
Asus took a rma that was caused by crappy ram the ram caught fire when it was hevly over clocked and mented the ram slot
and where i do co-op we had a guy bring in a board the entire back of his board was burnt
we sent it back to msi and they sent a new one no problem
Dfi is my #2 or #3 havent decided abit is my second last place
I had an Albatron board at the time, amongst others.
I noticed on that board electrolytic caps were bulging at the top, quite a few of them, so I replaced them all.
Board ran fine ever and a day after that.
One bad experience with one manufacturer's board can put you off that make for life, sad to say. But with MSI, I had two go bad. That's hard to ignore.
only 2 batches of 1 model of asus board were efected by this problem.
mabey because asus doesnt buy as cheep capasitors
That being said, every Abit board that's crossed my desk has been an excellent board. I haven't had an opportunity to deal with their RMA department and hope I never do. My main complaint with Asus is that they don't make dual processor workstation boards anymore.
I've been very pleased with all my Asus hardware: my P2B-DS server has an uptime measured in years and my P2B-B server is trying to catch up. My P4T-E, despite using the infamous Rambus memory, is still one of the most stable machines I've ever owned. My complaint about Asus is the same as the one for Abit: where's the dualie boards?
I can't really agree with Straight_Man about Tyan. I had a Tyan Tiger MP that died 6 months after I got it, RMA'd it and the next one died 6 months later. I got the original board new from a friend and he'd bought it some time previous and never used it, so it's mfr warranty was up by the time the second board went kaput. I'm not buying another Tyan board; YMMV.
I've never seen a working PC Chips board. Wait, that's not true. I got this 386 machine from khan that had a PC Chips board with an integrated AMD 386 processor (no FPU) and a bunch of ISA slots. It worked.
I think it's worth noting that of the major OEM's, I would only buy an IBM. I have one of their older desktops in the PC300 series and it's rock-stable. My IBM PS/2 doesn't crash either, but it's more of a retro computing experience. My new laptop (Thinkpad T42p) is totally awesome despite being very proprietary. Not like you can upgrade a whole lot with laptops anyway.
-drasnor
I'll stick with them as long as they keep producing good quality products..
Tyan is almost totally into the server market and very high end Workstation market these days, deliberately. It is thier niche. They are not into the consumer market. Thus, consumers do not use them, and they have indeed fizzled except for server and very high end graphics dev workstations. They also are deliberately making boards that require high quality and VERY reliable components to work right, and thus are not compatible with a lot of consumer products.
Tyan has also moved MFRing to the far east (speaking of world area). So, lots less news about them is out and about in teh public eye, and because they are not consumer oriented a lot of mags and sites that discuss consumer grade electronics no longer speak of them.
BUT, they had some of the first PCI-X boards and 64 bit PCI embedded boards, some of the earliest SCSI-III/UW onboard (embedded controller) motherboards, and if you go to the mfring site and not the US site you will see what will hit the US in small qty in a month to three or so later into future. Newegg WILL special order Tyan boards for folks-- and they have motherboards from them indexed and priced on thier site. They are NOT cheap. They are durable and deliberately designed for that. They have thier own niche, and Tyan is no longer a universal-- across the whole spectrum of PC subniches-- PC motherboard mfr.
Flint
P.S All my other boxes are now Abits! Hence my vote----