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Brand avoidance?

N

NePlusUltra

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 22, 2011
Messages
76
What motherboard brands do you inherently avoid when building a system for one reason or another?

For me....MSI has forever scorned me. I also hate DFI for some unknown reason.
 
None really.

I have had boards that were great and were PITA's from all the main manufacturers.

There are boards from DFI, ASUS, Foxconn, Intel and Gigabyte that stand out for being great experiences in my mind.

I've never tried boards from Biostar or ASRock. ASRock is starting to build a good rep though.

I'm skittish with EVGA, they have a great return/rma policy but its necessary ;) I had major pain working with some of their first Intel boards, had sata issues which never got resolved. Over the years I RMA'd a couple mobo's and video cards and got second-hand, sometimes broken replacements. But even so I haven't completely black listed them.

At the moment I'd probably be going with MSI or Gigabyte for my P67 build but I'm just awed by the efforts of Gary and JJ on behalf of Asus and I'm confident that the issues with their P67's are being addressed.
 
I know I will catch a lot of grief saying this, but I avoid Asus motherboards at all cost. They make cutting edge motherboards with the latest bells and whistles but every one I've owned had a weird things happen to them. I contribute it to buggy bioses. I see the same thing happening to their P67 boards. They will fix the major bugs but the minor quirks will never be addressed. In my case, it was very aggravating to have the motherboard working perfectly then one day you press the ON button and the fans start but nothing else happens. I had an Asus P5K Premium Black Pearl edition motherboard that did that and it had something to do with the memory controller. I tried all types of ram and finally gave up and sold the board. I also had problems with an Asus Crosshair I bought. The fan on my 5970 would start at 100% when I booted up and would stay at 100% until I rebooted. I was never able to fix it and just bought another board and never had the problem again. They never seem to fix the bugs since they are so busy pumping out another motherboard. I finally gave up on them.
 
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Borocay said:
I know I will catch a lot of grief saying this, but I avoid Asus motherboards at all cost.
Click to expand...

Ya, my first Asus board was the one in the sig, I found their support to be slow in updating BIOS and drivers. Whenever I went to their website i wanted to pull my hair out, they drop support really freaking quick too. The speed of the website was a problem but its largely better though I don't like having to use capcha to download files. I think I may start to migrate to EVGA...
 
Ive had great results from asus, msi, biostar, dfi, and gigabyte...always had good rma experience for the very few ive had to exchange...im running the last dfi x58 T3eH6 board for a year now and what a great board its been.....id never be afraid of asus boards...
 
I am a huge fan of Biostar so I will continue the Tradition going into Sandy Bridge. Look at the Results of Biostar OC's. Biostar gets so much Hate but you cant complain about these results. I think they make a great product

7007: http://hwbot.org/community/submission/957022_pt1t_cpu_z_core_i5_670_7007_mhz
5569.7: http://hwbot.org/community/submission/2105731_namegt_cpu_z_core_i7_2600k_5569.7_mhz
5727.78: http://hwbot.org/community/submission/879238_pcci2iminal_cpu_z_core_i7_extreme_975_5727.78_mhz
6761: http://hwbot.org/community/submission/760597_boblemagnifique_cpu_z_core_2_e8600_3.33ghz_6761_mhz
7153.9: http://hwbot.org/community/submission/1084958_namegt_cpu_z_phenom_ii_x4_955_be_7153.9_mhz

I always Buy Biostar or Gigabyte. I never buy Asus they are fairly expensive when BS & Giga have the same features & to me less head aches
 
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I guess, if you're an enthusiast, ECS is a brand you should shy away from.
 
ASUS....they always something odd going on with their stuff. My last one had a bug in the BIOS that made the clock in Vista go 4 times faster than real and it was because of a setting in the BIOS for the RAM.

No thanks. Not anymore, it's been a interesting 10yrs using ASUS stuff, but I am done now. Gigabyte is where I am going based on the opinion of my buddy who is an engineer that qualifies vendors to be used in his companies products. ASUS=shoddy construction according to him.
 
I think it comes down to luck. Any brand can produce a bad batch of motherboards. I don't tink you can really say companies as a whole are good, as even a high quality producer can suddenly have a bad lot. So you really have to go on a case by case basis rather than write off a whole range of products with different components and probably produced in different factories by different sets of people.

Ive had 5 ASUS boards with some 6 years old and still working fine, with next to no issues (sata controller dropping main disk for some reason, updated bios fixed it however). It depends on your luck of the draw.
 
Love Abit (IP35-E, IP35 Pro), Gigabyte (P45-UD3P, X58A-UD3R), now EVGA (SR-2)
No problems with DFI (P45-T2RS LP Jr.) or my Jetway (I31GM4)

Hate and will never purchase another ASRock. My X58 Extreme was a piece of crap. That was my first and last ASRock board. Board worked fine for several months f@h...all the sudden died for no reason.

I'd like to try Asus but Gigabytes are always cheaper with similar features. :confused: So I never buy Asus.
Wish Abit was still around. :(
 
I started avoiding Asus after I received a new board with broken PCI-E retentions tabs out of the box (leading to they were broken before it was packaged as these retention brackets were lower than the heatsinks or any other contact point that would have any pressure during shipment).

When I received a replacement from dell (place of purchase) the replacement had defect where the cap next to the PCI-E was raised preventing certain video cards from installing fully causing crashes on load.

When I RMA'd that I installed it and duplicated the same issue I was having. Come to find out after calling, as my paperwork was all blank, that they could not find a problem so they sent the same one back (even though I included pictures showing the differences as I had another board just like it).

Finally I requested an escalation (took several days) and I got a working replacement board. The entire process took 2 months with all the RMA's to get a working board.

I liked the layout and features of the recent asus boards, however I went with another vendor simply due to my customer service experience and poor QC.

I give props for the Asus Reps on here, but on the manufacturing and CS backend you get the overwhelming feeling nobody gives a $hit.
 
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I'd think that most boards are actually made by Foxconn anyway even if they says Asus on it, it's just an Asus branded PCB that's assembled by Foxconn slaves.
 
The only board I ever had go bad (well partly bad...) was an ECS brand.
It would only accept 512MB of RAM, no matter what.
So I will never buy from them again. That and their boards look weird, like to much wasted/empty space.

My current board is an Asus, it's been running great for about 4 days now. No problems so far.

The board I just took out was a Gigabyte, had a stick of RAM go bad but I don't think it was the motherboards fault. My only complaint about that board was a crappy NB heatsink design and mount. Other than that though it ran great and had no problems with core unlocking and overclocking.

I have a Biostar that is about 4 years old now, it's still running strong.
It's been retired to just an average computer now, but served me well in gaming when I had it.
 
Most issues I've had with motherboards have been from ASUS boards. Plenty of DOA boards, almost like they don't even check their boards before they ship them out. Also, Gigabyte's warranty/support service is garbage. I RMA'd my EP45-UD3P to them once, just to get it back with the same exact issue. Went to RMA a second time and was refused. Best RMA service seems to be EVGA.
 
`br4dz- said:
Most issues I've had with motherboards have been from ASUS boards. Plenty of DOA boards, almost like they don't even check their boards before they ship them out. Also, Gigabyte's warranty/support service is garbage. I RMA'd my EP45-UD3P to them once, just to get it back with the same exact issue. Went to RMA a second time and was refused. Best RMA service seems to be EVGA.
Click to expand...

I gave up on Asus boards after an experience just like you had with gigabyte, but I just got my Gigabyte board back working in under a week so I can't fault them as yet. I understand their CS has gone up some the last few years.

EVGA is definitely the mobo company you want taking your RMA though. Well if you live in the USA, I'm not sure about overseas.
 
Not going to read all these comments but I just bought an ASROCK EXTREME 6 with a 2600K and I have to say its the best built board i have seen..It don't have all the blingy lights like other boards but it is rock solid and fast..I am very very pleased with it..
Most just shug off ASROCK,like I use to but its a great product..
 
I usually avoid ASUS at all cost after buying 5 doa boards from them. I prefer gigabyte since I have 0 issues with them in 10 years. My opinion is changing about ASUS with my new board. I received a P8P67 as a birthday gift and have been impressed by it. Its well built and it works.

I wouldnt have spent my own money on it but I am glad I have it. I may buy from them in the future. We will see how long this one lasts.
 
I've only owned Abit(great boards other than never, ever being able to get a functioning RAID setup) and Asus boards, so I don't have much brand experience whatsoever.
My last few boards have been Asus, and while I won't put them in my Do Not Want category, I will admit a few frustrations.
My A7N8X was very finicky with RAM(finally found a set that actually has a stable co-existence), while my M4N98TD EVO is going to be RMA'd this week hopefully. The EVO from day 1 has had an odd thing where on random boots it will clear BIOS settings and return to default; my friend has experienced this same issue with both of his Crosshair boards. The dealbreaker is that my second set of memory slots is apparently FUBAR, as the board refuses to boot with RAM in those slots. I have bought two 8GB kits now that pass MT86 with flying colors in the first two slots. It sucks to experience downtime with your main system, but I will forgive these transgressions if I receive a problem-free EVO in return...
 
Dave65 said:
Not going to read all these comments but I just bought an ASROCK EXTREME 6 with a 2600K and I have to say its the best built board i have seen..It don't have all the blingy lights like other boards but it is rock solid and fast..I am very very pleased with it..
Most just shug off ASROCK,like I use to but its a great product..
Click to expand...

I have a ASROCK S939 DUAL board that used the ULI 1395 chipset. The board had an actual real 8x AGP slot and a PCI-E 16x slot. Still running strong today after 5yrs.
 
I've had socket 478 and AM2 Asrock boards, both of which were rock solid. Foxconn, jetway, ECS and sometimes MSI I find to just be meh...
 
I'd probably favor Gigabyte because they're one of the few manufacturers that doesn't use bad capacitors in even their cheapest mobos.

BioStar designs can be wierd. I had an old one that used only the 20-pin connector for power but ran the CPU off the +12V rail, meaning only one wire provided all the +12V for the mobo and slots. Some cheaper BioStars have a PCI-E 16x slot but no 1x slot, and the minimum DRAM voltage may be at least 0.1V higher than normal. The latter lets you boot with inferior DRAM and configure it manually, but it also prevents thorough testing of 1.5V DDR3 or 1.8V DDR2. Also BioStar lets the voltage be set high enough to burn up the memory.

Every time a capacitor popped on one of my ECS mobos, the computer either shut down or rebooted, but my Asrock always kept chugging along, probably because it had 2-3 times as many caps.
 
I buy Intel boards for myself and Gigabyte boards for friends and family.

I got myself the D975XBX2 aka the Bad Axe 2 when Core2Duo was fresh, and now I have the DP67DE for Sandy Bridge. The Bad Axe 2 is retired, still in good working order, and I'll probably sell it (PM me with offers). The five Gigabyte boards I got for family and friends were either P35-DS3L or P45-DS3L boards, also early in the Core2Duo days, and they are all working fine and their owners still feel no need to upgrade.

Back in the AGP days I got a couple of ASUS boards; one of those may possibly have failed, but it could also possibly have been the CPU, and at the time AGP was five years dead so I just recycled them both.
 
I had way too many issues with brand new Asus desktop boards. It seems that if you get one that works it will be great but DOA's, faulty parts and endless RMA's to get to a good working board is a pain in the ass. Maybe I just have had bad luck with Asus, but I don't think I would ever buy another mobo from them. They are the only manufacturer that has given me any issues.

BTW, I am typing this from an Asus G73 laptop that has had the mobo replaced once and still has a minor issue that I am still debating if I want to go through the RMA process again to maybe get it fixed or just live with it.
 
ASUS, EVGA, Intel and Gigabyte they all make great board, my favorite is ASUS, they always come up with new ideas and have product cover all price point.
 
Through the years I've used Epox, Soltek, Shuttle, Abit, MSI, Biostar, Gigabyte, DFI and Asus. The only DOA board I ever got was the Asus. RMA'd it and the second one died within a day. That was my last Asus board. No problems with any of the other brands.
 
I have used Asus, Gigabyte, and MSi. I am mostly an MSi fan. I have almost considered ASRock boards, and was completely surprised when ASRock blew past MSi recently (in # of mobos sold). I may have to start giving ASRock more of my time when searching for new mobos.
Anyway, only board I've had to rma was from MSi, (it killed two CPUs o_O). They sent me a brand new retail box to replace my board. And I got the CPU's replaced for free too from AMD, so, I had a good experience regardless and will continue to purchase MSi stuff because I know they'll replace their stuff if it goes nutty.
 
I will be avoiding ASUS branded motherboards. Didn't like my last one...so buggy.
 
Asus, ECS, Just terrible.
Asrock I am skeptical.

Quality but finnicky: DFI, I think they stopped making full sized boards but I know recently they have been terrible for customer support.

No issues with: Biostar/Abit/Epox the last 2 don't make boards anymore but they were great. I heard Abit engineers went to Biostar not sure if its true but Biostar keeps breaking OC records since the P45's came out.
 
ECS, Intel's own line up and of course they aren't around anymore but, DFI. Every DFI motherboard I have had went to shit in months and ended up picking up something else on the quick. Intel's motherboards work usually right off but then random memory slots and other things that to die as they age. ECS, MMMmm! :mad: My dad went cheap on his last build and I was the one that after 4 returns to Fry's picking him up a Gigabyte that he still rocks 3 years later. That computer never turns off. As for the rest, Biostar, ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte, EVGA and the old ABIT's I have never had any real issues with them that I didn't cause myself. But on that front, MSI, Gigabyte and Biostar were and still are the toughest out there.
 
First time I bought an Asus motherboard, P67
does not POST...

so yeah, avoid ASUS
 
The only boards I refuse to use now are Asus boards. Their boards always seem to have more problems than other boards, BIOS updates have a 50% chance of making everything worse, RMA time is glacial, and their high end boards almost always have problems (and poor driver support). Also I hate how they will sometimes put out 7+ versions of similar motherboards because I don't think they are capable of properly supporting each version.

Oh yeah, Asus spelled "Athlon" wrong on a post screen once too. What a treat that was to see that my Tahlong CPU was runnign at XXXXMHz :rolleyes:

I don't know why people keep buying Asus boards like they are something special. I've built around 40 systems for friends/family in the last decade and every single time I used an Asus board something odd would happen. I'd use a free ECS board from MicroCenter before I would do another build based on a Asus board.
 
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My MSI is real finicky. It can go days just fine then it will randomly lock up the computer. Every other hardware has been replaced at some point to pinpoint the problem. Left a sour taste in my mouth.

My next board will be EVGA or ASRock.
 
-slash- said:
My MSI is real finicky. It can go days just fine then it will randomly lock up the computer. Every other hardware has been replaced at some point to pinpoint the problem. Left a sour taste in my mouth.

My next board will be EVGA or ASRock.
Click to expand...

Its more liklely the chipset and not the board. Those Nvidia chipsets were all junk and made me lose hair :mad:
 
Borocay said:
I know I will catch a lot of grief saying this, but I avoid Asus motherboards at all cost.
Click to expand...

Same here, the P5K was horrible: First one wouldn't work at stock speed with all Dimms populated. The second one is now on it's last legs (crashing every few hours, tried another PSU). I could only run a q6600 @ 3ghz at sensible voltages.

I don't recall any issues with Gigabye, I brought this MSI (had issues a LONG time ago) board because it had a rebate. It really is luck of the draw [touch wood], this one is very stable (aside from the doomed Sandy Bridge chipset:mad:), maybe all the military shit really is true! lol
 
JohnHenrySolo said:
Have you tried it outside the case /w bare essentials?

I hate DFI~
Click to expand...

after 3 hours of trying things, eventually narrowed down the problem to faulty sata ports

reboot loop if anything is plugged into sata6 port
boots okay if ONLY boot drive is plugged into sata3 port
freezes at windows logo if more than one hard disk plugged into sata3 ports

RMAd the board today, got no patience for such rubbish

granted, due to Sandy Bridge chipset issues this fault may not have totally been ASUS', but still they seem to be having a LOT more issues than any other board
 
anything branded Nvidia, they have had too many manufacturering related problems to actually consider buying one of their products (Nforce fiasco anyone, 7XXX and 8XXX mobile parts anyone?)
 
No Biostar ever. Had a video card once, dead without me doing anything to it in 3 months. Hadn't even OCed it.
 
Trigger said:
after 3 hours of trying things, eventually narrowed down the problem to faulty sata ports

reboot loop if anything is plugged into sata6 port
boots okay if ONLY boot drive is plugged into sata3 port
freezes at windows logo if more than one hard disk plugged into sata3 ports

RMAd the board today, got no patience for such rubbish

granted, due to Sandy Bridge chipset issues this fault may not have totally been ASUS', but still they seem to be having a LOT more issues than any other board
Click to expand...

Its not the recall issues since SATA 6 ports were not affected by the problem.
 
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