All Time Best Motherboard ?

TBH, I have to qualify, my recently retired RE3 was the most stable but the most fun were A7V-333 and aforementioned A7N8X-e, back when overclocking was a bit of a novelty..I also loved my A7M266:rolleyes::rolleyes:... f/it!! nearly ALL the socket A boards except later VIA based 1s..
 
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So is everybody done with the trip down memory lane and ready to get back to the original question?

Or is this thread totally hijacked?
 
Is this question able to be answered without stepping down memory lane?

OK, I want to know. The Motherboard I want has to have power, it has to have speed, it has to have a long life.

What I mean is the only way someone would know a board has long life is to have it for 3 to 5 years or long enough to become obsolete compared to what is available at the current time.
 
Is this question able to be answered without stepping down memory lane?



What I mean is the only way someone would know a board has long life is to have it for 3 to 5 years or long enough to become obsolete compared to what is available at the current time.

But the thread starter is pretty clearly interested in BUYING a motherboard, right now. Which is why he's asking for recommendations. Unless people are seriously suggesting he buy a 5 year old motherboard (or worse, from a company that doesn't exist anymore)?
 
But the thread starter is pretty clearly interested in BUYING a motherboard, right now.

I understand that. However the problem is he can't ask for a current up to date motherboard that is known to last long. You only can ask if old motheboards lasted long since a current motherboard will not have been around for 3+ years to verify its longevity.

You can ask about good brands but that does not guaranty that the new stuff will not have problems.
 
My vote goes to the DFI UT-NF4-SLI-DR EXPERT or VENUS. The Venus version was the EXPERT board with the Jewel Case, solid caps & deluxe bundle & only 1000 were made for the 25th anniversay of DFI being in business. edit -- yes, that's 1 thousand unit made world-wide. =) -- end edit

I saw a venus on ebay a while back for $400... new all items in original packaging.
 
About every board I've had I would say (except my current build...budget issues)
Abit NF7-S v2 love me some socket A.
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe/Premium

The A8N lasted 5 years before popping and I'm not a 'gentle' user in means of power.
 
Abit BP6
Abit KT7-Raid
Abit NF7-S v2
DFI Lanparty Expert
Epox KT333

those were some of my favorites that I'd rank as all-time best.....
 
LOL, I had 2 Abit BE6-II boards that just stopped working that ran a celeron 366@550 back in the day. Recently tried recapping them and can't get them to post even though before the recap one worked for about a day before failing again :( I stayed away from abit after that! Also a MSI K7Pro left a bad impression for me!!


My more better boards have been.
FIC-503+
Asus CUSL2-C TUSL2-C
Soyo TISU
Asus P4P800-SE
Albatron PX915P4C (socket 478 + PCI-E 16x)
Asus A8N32-SLI

ASUS has been good to me for some time!!
 
I had a Asus CUSL2-C which I forgot about in my original post. Loved it. It overclocked my P III 800 to 992Mhz. I almost joined the 1Ghz club back then.
 
Wow, you know you have been around way too long and built way too many systems once you realize you have owned half of the motherboards listed on here.
Nod to the BP-6, DFI Lanparty Ultra-D, Epox and Abit may you RIP.

For me personally though, with recent boards I had a great experience with my ASUS P6T Deluxe. And I have built dozens of systems around the Foxconn H67S boards without any of them having issues at my workplace.

Also to note... both me and my brother have had horrible issues with gigabyte p67 based boards.... I know others will disagree, but I will not be purchasing gigabyte again anytime soon.

This is why I will be purchasing the ASUS Sabertooth Z77 board for my ivy bridge build.
 
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Abit used to be THE mb to have back in the day.... celeron 300a made them famous.
 
I know it's not what the OP asked for, but the trip down memory lane has been fun in this thread.

For me it is the Asus P2B-F with the legendary 440BX chipset. Bought mine new, and it has been through more CPUs, memory sticks, and video cards then I can really remember....yet it still works as new in my often used Windows 98 / DOS retro gaming system! Currently running a Coppermine P3 700, 512MB memory, SoundBlaster AWE64 Gold ISA, and a 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 AGP. Just completed a replay of System Shock 2. :D
 
Freaking Abit.

Jesus just that name... I am getting old.

My P5P43TD is the first board I have actually overclocked so I really don't know in terms of OC. I know the Abit Intel P4 boards back in the day were rock solid.

I have only owned the following boards:

ASUS A7V333
ASUS A8N-SLI Prenimum
ASUS P5P43TD

For the features the A8N blew everything I owned out of the water. Dual NICs, Nforce 4, Heatpipe etc. I intended to go SLI and never did. Ending up selling the board with the X2 3800 I had. Shame I never OCed it. Hopefully the guy I sold it to on here did.

I still have the A7V333. Fucking VIA. Terrible drivers. Had to update like every week, but the baby never BSODed. Then again it was never OCed. This board is still rocking a hot as hell Tbred XP 2200. I remember it was my first machine I built when I was 15. I must have spent like 1500 ordering from like 8 different places.

Me and friends used to compare Futuremark scores at land parties for like years. I remember the look on my friends face as I crushed his stupid XP 1900 palomino. Then my other friend decided to get a 2.8C P4 that just destroyed everything. The Ti4600 ran my XP2200. 330 dollar graphics card back in the day. I sold a 6800GT back in the day and with it the guy decided he wanted the Ti4600 for like 10 bucks. I probably should have kept that card.

I remember I had to order a DVD-ROM drive because I wanted a dual solution and the Toshiba I wanted was sold out at newegg so I ordered from Directron. Had to order my Proc and HSF from like a small online shop because it wasn't available at the egg.

I built in a crappy case that had EMI issues and would short constantly so I upgraded to an Antec solution. I changed the HSF like 3 times as well. Went from like a Volcano 7 (shit) to like a Vantec Aerocool and I never even overclocked.

The board is still running along with the original Enermax PS. Had gone through 2 other PS upgrading her and always had to revert back to the Enermax. All the original parts still work on the machine.

11 years now and the kicker is my parents the other day asked why it was so slow all of the sudden (internet technologies/flash etc they cant run videos at HD) and how they could upgrade it.

I was like it needs to be retired. I don't know what I will do. I think I might just keep it since it is memorable to me.


BEST PIECE OF HARDWARE I EVER OWNED!
visiontek_gf4_4600_box.jpg
 
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Did everyone else have that blue Zalman heat sink on their NF7-S northbridge? That stock fan was the biggest POS ever.
 
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Did everyone else have that blue Zalman heat sink on their NF7-S northbridge? That stock fan was the biggest POS ever.

Lots of people did. Some even had to cut it going forward in order to fit bigger coolers. This was before sockets that were cooler friendly.

I think just about every awesome cooler you had to modify the mainboard in some way.
 
I had the idea to find my NF7-S and mount it on my office wall in a shadow box or some sort of display shelf. I'm really curious to discover what cooler I used back then, I cant remember. It should also have a pair of those BEAUTY all copper OCZ DDR-3200 DIMMs, now those were expensive at the time.

I really wish didn't toss my DFI NF4 SLI Lan Party
 
I had the idea to find my NF7-S and mount it on my office wall in a shadow box or some sort of display shelf. I'm really curious to discover what cooler I used back then, I cant remember. It should also have a pair of those BEAUTY all copper OCZ DDR-3200 DIMMs, now those were expensive at the time.

I really wish didn't toss my DFI NF4 SLI Lan Party

I had 2 GB of DDR OCZ ram back in 06. I just looked at the newegg order history and the cost for 2 GB back then was 239.99.
 
I had the 2x1GB OCZ Platinum on my NF4-SLI and I'm pretty sure it was $340CAD. I remember feeling like such a baller when I got them, they overclocked really well.
 
I had the 2x1GB OCZ Platinum on my NF4-SLI and I'm pretty sure it was $340CAD. I remember feeling like such a baller when I got them, they overclocked really well.

My old machine consisted of the
AMD X2 3800 on a Zalman 7770 ALCU
2 GB OCZ 3200 DDR ram
Gigabyte 7800 GT with the Zalman GPU coolder (cant remember the model)
ASUS A8N Premium SLI

Never went SLI and never overclocked :( and I still spent 1500 on the build. I probably could have saved a bunch of money by not buying what I did, but oh well. I ended up selling the combo last yea for like 150 which included the CPU/RAM/MB. The 7800GT I didn't even overclock, but I ran the fan at 5v which was like the equivalent of being fan less.

Now I have 500 dollar upgrade and I OCed the bejesus out of it without doing voltage increases.
 
I had 2 GB of DDR OCZ ram back in 06. I just looked at the newegg order history and the cost for 2 GB back then was 239.99.


Wow that's pricey.

I remember buying a 512 DDR 400 stock for about a hundred +.
 
Wow that's pricey.

I remember buying a 512 DDR 400 stock for about a hundred +.

Shit that was cheaper than my 2001 build where I was a bad ass and bought 1 GB, it would be like equivalent of 8 GB today. Nothing ran on 1 GB back in 2001. It was like all 256 with like a 512 recommend.

I spend 333 on DDR PC2700 then of samsung value ram.
 
I bought 128M of PC100 for $130 at least ten years ago. IIRC, when I had my 486SX25, RAM was $43 a meg. And that was for 30 pin SIMMs.
 
I am going to have to vote for any motherboard that has the Intel BX chipset as "the best" because of the impact on overclocking as a whole , it brought true over clocking to us and it sure was fun mashing everything out of PIII processors.

I will leave the debate about "current" mobo's open...

Bink...the Abit's were the bomb , I still have a BE-6 and a BX-133
 
Really? in almost 200 posts only 1 person mentions Tyan? Rock solid boards, maybe not the overclockers dream board, but I would have put my dual socket1 Celeron 300 box with the S1832 against most OC'd singles, and that board was overclockable, which I did.

My main systems have all been dual socket Tyans since Pentium 200 days. Next ones will be diskless mITX micro boxes and sadly will mark the end of my Tyan era. Time to retire the Socket 462A Athlon and 604 Xeon boards and the Chieftech towers.
 
Yeah, Tyan was my favorite until they went all server and stuff. Very stable boards if I may say so.
 
#1: Supermicro H8DC8. 0 issues with it, and I've had it for 6 years. 2006 tech and it's a 2.6 GHz quad core with 16GB of ram thanks to some used corporate equipment from eBay.

#2: Tyan Thunder. I built a dual Opteron rig for a friend using one. I'm pretty sure he's still using it. Also well made and trouble free.
 
Tyan 440HX chipset with dual CPU's. 8 memory sockets, I had it fully populated that was either 128 or 256 MB. That baby smoked on Windows 2000 WS.
 
This is the best board ever made as far as enthusiasts goes. The SR3 is the LGA2011 successor to that board (not released yet).

For single CPU, I would have to say the Rampage IV Extreme.
Has anyone ever done 7-way SLI/Crossfire? :D
 
#1: Supermicro H8DC8. 0 issues with it, and I've had it for 6 years. 2006 tech and it's a 2.6 GHz quad core with 16GB of ram thanks to some used corporate equipment from eBay.

#2: Tyan Thunder. I built a dual Opteron rig for a friend using one. I'm pretty sure he's still using it. Also well made and trouble free.

Yep, SuperMicro another as yet unmentioned winner, also rock solid boards.
 
1. Asus Sabertooth X79 - £259
2. Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 - £77
3. MSI Z68A-GD65 - £142
4. ASRock Z68 Pro Extreme 4 - £95
5. Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3-ISSD - £164

Afshispeaks
 
My first overclocking motherboard, Abit BH-6 and a celeron 300a. Overclocked to 450 MHz.

Abit we miss you.
 
Really? in almost 200 posts only 1 person mentions Tyan?

One of my favorites was the Tyan Trinity S1598 Super 7 motherboard. Back in 2000, I was lucky enough to find one of these boards with 2MB of on-board cache.

Along with 784MB of RAM and a K6-3 450 clocked at 600MHz, it was a stable and powerful system. Since the K6-3 450 had 256KB of L2 cache, the 2MB on the S1598 became L3 cache--pretty remarkable for the time.
 
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