Question about quality

philb2 said:
Reading comments in this thread, is it fair to assume that most of the posters here are professionals who build and support PCs as a business, as opposed to guys like me who build one system every few years for their personal use only.

I think that the combined experience of many professionals is very useful, better than those "reviews" on websites that never seem to find any real flaws or negatives.
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Or we just have a LOT of hardware. I have 11 “desktop” systems (consumer hardware) running today. So I get a lot of “let’s try something new… oh that is a bad idea” that I get to experience
 
lopoetve said:
Or we just have a LOT of hardware. I have 11 “desktop” systems (consumer hardware) running today. So I get a lot of “let’s try something new… oh that is a bad idea” that I get to experience
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That too. I've reviewed probably around 200 boards in addition to building countless systems professionally and personally for myself and others. Besides that, I've done infrastructure deployments, workstation deployments and I've supported things like Protools stations and all kinds of hardware in a ton of different industries from helicopter plants to cosmetic factories.
 
Even large companies might not experiment with lots of "the new" at all times. And of course, those big companies aren't usually dealing with DIY stuff, but big OEMs with boards not generally available/applicable (noting, they can have lemons too).

And homelabbers might have "a lot" of equipment, but most of it will be "older".

IMHO, only a svelte builders/integrators might be able to "lend a hand" with regards to what "new stuff" is working well (I just don't know if they test it well enough, or would share "rate of return" data).
 
What brought me to [H] was their mobo reviews. Here are some of my experiences. I honestly feel like do your research but you're still rolling the dice. If I could buy boards strictly built in Taiwan or the US I would. Anywhere that doesn't have concentration camps like China.

I would maybe try Gigabyte again.... I absolutely hated Gigabytes unstable BIOS a few years ago. Like I would click on anything and randomly it would switch from UEFI to the old version. I dunno if they worked out their bugs with that but it drove me crazy enough to sell the board and CPU.

MSI always seems to work for me but they have quirks... Like in my current B550 some places you have to set the same setting twice in 2 areas... Like get it together nobody wants these redundancies. Their customer service is terrible.

Asus I've had a mixed experience with. But I liked their BIOS. Recently though it's kinda like they're cheaping out like what 2 more USB ports are going too expensive for you yet I'm paying more for your board which is basically a slightly better version of the Asrock alternative. Honestly I used to look at Asus as premium but now they're like Nvidia telling us how awesome they are but cutting back on vram.

Biostar honestly never had issues but now where I live I can't get them like I could when I lived in the US.

Shuttle their boards were fine too.

Abit great boards R.I.P. Not sure if they are still around outside North America?

Epox great boards R.I.P. Not sure if they are still around outside North America?

Evga well it felt pretty budget and 1st board I had from them failed but to their credit their customer service was good. Who manufacturers their boards? I'd buy if they built AMD boards.

DFI Finicky.... Not sure if they are still around else where but I'd go Abit or Epox over board manufacturers I can't buy over them any day.

Are NZXT boards actually a thing? I'm generally asking cause I think I saw someone post about one before. Who makes these?

I'm sad we have less and less competition. Honestly my favorite boards ever were AMD w/nvidia chipsets. Nforce 2 was awesome.
 
I've been using a GIGABYTE GA-X79-UD3 in my main PC (specs in sig) since January 2012. No issues to report.
 
Dan_D said:
That too. I've reviewed probably around 200 boards in addition to building countless systems professionally and personally for myself and others. Besides that, I've done infrastructure deployments, workstation deployments and I've supported things like Protools stations and all kinds of hardware in a ton of different industries from helicopter plants to cosmetic factories.
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Dude, you are Awesome .
 
SpongeBob said:
What brought me to [H] was their mobo reviews. Here are some of my experiences. I honestly feel like do your research but you're still rolling the dice. If I could buy boards strictly built in Taiwan or the US I would. Anywhere that doesn't have concentration camps like China.

I would maybe try Gigabyte again.... I absolutely hated Gigabytes unstable BIOS a few years ago. Like I would click on anything and randomly it would switch from UEFI to the old version. I dunno if they worked out their bugs with that but it drove me crazy enough to sell the board and CPU.

MSI always seems to work for me but they have quirks... Like in my current B550 some places you have to set the same setting twice in 2 areas... Like get it together nobody wants these redundancies. Their customer service is terrible.

Asus I've had a mixed experience with. But I liked their BIOS. Recently though it's kinda like they're cheaping out like what 2 more USB ports are going too expensive for you yet I'm paying more for your board which is basically a slightly better version of the Asrock alternative. Honestly I used to look at Asus as premium but now they're like Nvidia telling us how awesome they are but cutting back on vram.

Biostar honestly never had issues but now where I live I can't get them like I could when I lived in the US.

Shuttle their boards were fine too.

Abit great boards R.I.P. Not sure if they are still around outside North America?

Epox great boards R.I.P. Not sure if they are still around outside North America?

Evga well it felt pretty budget and 1st board I had from them failed but to their credit their customer service was good. Who manufacturers their boards? I'd buy if they built AMD boards.

DFI Finicky.... Not sure if they are still around else where but I'd go Abit or Epox over board manufacturers I can't buy over them any day.

Are NZXT boards actually a thing? I'm generally asking cause I think I saw someone post about one before. Who makes these?

I'm sad we have less and less competition. Honestly my favorite boards ever were AMD w/nvidia chipsets. Nforce 2 was awesome.
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Abit, epox, and DFI are all long dead. RIP in memory of them all making some really good boards.
 
Starfalcon said:
Abit, epox, and DFI are all long dead. RIP in memory of them all making some really good boards.
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i still won't get rid of my DFI lanparty UT NF3 250Gb just because of that. best socket 754 motherboard that no one knew about because they launched it months before 939 launched..
 
Starfalcon said:
Abit, epox, and DFI are all long dead. RIP in memory of them all making some really good boards.
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I remember ABIT fondly for the most part. I do not remember EPoX or DFI in a positive light. I worked with a lot of boards for both brands and had tons of trouble out of them. I was working as a technician back during their heyday and saw a lot of them fail. I built several boards using popular DFI LAN Party boards and they were inconsistent from one board to the next at best.
Fresch said:
Soyo too.
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Soyo was dogshit. It was one of the worst brands I had ever dealt with overall. I built four systems for my work with Soyo boards. Out of four of them, three of them developed hardware problems with the boards in just over a year. Bad expansion slots, bad memory slots, USB issues, etc. I had more issues with ones purchased by friends. I don't recall reviewing many, if any of them as they were pretty well on their way out by the time I got into that business.

Most people buy a board and use it for two or three years and if it worked, they remember the brand fondly. Or, they remain loyal to a brand over several years buying boards here and there. If one's bad, it tends to not spoil the brand's reputation in the customer's minds. However, in my case, I've built systems professionally, for friends and a lot of them for myself. As a reviewer, I'll often work with a good chunk of an entire product line during its service life. When you do that you start to see certain patterns emerge. The point is, I've seen good and bad boards come from every manufacturer past and present. However, some brands are far more consistent than others either in the good way, or the bad.
 
Dan_D said:
Soyo was dogshit. It was one of the worst brands I had ever dealt with overall. I built four systems for my work with Soyo boards. Out of four of them, three of them developed hardware problems with the boards in just over a year. Bad expansion slots, bad memory slots, USB issues, etc. I had more issues with ones purchased by friends. I don't recall reviewing many, if any of them as they were pretty well on their way out by the time I got into that business.

Most people buy a board and use it for two or three years and if it worked, they remember the brand fondly. Or, they remain loyal to a brand over several years buying boards here and there. If one's bad, it tends to not spoil the brand's reputation in the customer's minds. However, in my case, I've built systems professionally, for friends and a lot of them for myself. As a reviewer, I'll often work with a good chunk of an entire product line during its service life. When you do that you start to see certain patterns emerge. The point is, I've seen good and bad boards come from every manufacturer past and present. However, some brands are far more consistent than others either in the good way, or the bad.
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A-fucking-men.

I had several boards in 2004-2005 from them - can't remember which one, but I'd built several systems, and had to RMA all of them - or try to, I should say, since it required an INTERNATIONAL FAX of the original invoice to get an RMA. Email anyone? Nope - Fax, and they gave me a number in taipei for it.

After fighting with two of those, I said fuck it, trashed the last two boards, and bought replacements out of my own pocket for them.
 
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I still have a DFI SLI-DR with a CABNE Opteron socket 939 in my retro gaming machine. A board that was a lot of fun.

DFI also made a cheap line of boards. IIRC they were no good.

DFI went to make industrial computer components, dunno whether they are still around.
 
Anyone remember iWill? They were interesting boards particularly the MPX-2 which was a dual socket 462. It had its quirks but IME was far superior to Asus' dual socket 462 offerings particularly with 64 bit PCI-X peripherals. (High end enterprise U320 SCSI RAID controllers in particular)

Had a few DFI Lanparty X48 boards with a ridiculous amount of options in BIOS to tweak everything under the sun if you wanted. Had two of them literally go up in flames (VRM) too. One running purely stock and the other pushing pretty much everything to the limit.

As for Gigabyte, can't complain about two Aorus X570 machines I have running (Elite with 5900X and Extreme 2.0 with 5950X) both heavily loaded (128GB 3200) and 3090s under water. Fastest times from power switch on to desktop RFS (Ready For Service) times I've seen in an "enthusiast class" workstation build. I'm talking close to laptop NUC speed here!

Compared to my HEDT Threadrippers that boot almost as slow (POST) as our Supermicro servers, it's nice to be able to sign in mere seconds from a cold start.

But they (Gigabyte) do have cranky BIOSes, I will say that.

I've had a few MSI "GODLIKE" boards and those were solid. As always, with all the RGB crap I turn it off on first POST and BIOS walkthrough. I do like OLED screens on the boards like the ASUS Zenith Alphas have. Nice to configure them to show cooling liquid temps, flow rates, GPU and even nvme temps. Those boxes are open bench so the display is always visible.

Supermicro is an absolute rock solid for servers and actual workstations where stability over everything else is needed.

I had a few issues with some fairly high end ASUS Z390 coffee lake boards that had faulty AMOLEDs and POSTING issues, basically DOA out of the box for those features which was a major turndown. These were purchased in person at Microcenter. That left me feeling salty considering their higher price.

I have used AsRock for budget minded builds. They are OK I suppose and I did have a mini-ITX board that just died out of the blue after 2 years of service but that can happen with any brand. They're no PC Chips or Amptron (man I am dating myself here haha) mind you, but I get it where people just don't want to spend a lot on a motherboard.

Which leads me to the next thing, price. OMG the top tier stuff is just crazy expensive! Back in 2011 I spent around $600 for an EVGA SR-2 dual socket board. I thought that was expensive but that is / was a truly avante-garde product! It's possible to spend THREE TIMES that today on a super, duper, full cover block (which is nice) board with enough VRM phases to impress this veteran EE but come on! A mortgage payment (for some) for a board? Especially on the Intel side where they change sockets with the same frequency that some people switch out phones (me excluded but that's another story).
 
I also believe all manufacturers have issues, I love ASRock. Been using them as long as I can remember. And not a single issue. But a guy above me had a lot of issues. So it is a crap shoot IMO
 
cpufrost said:
Anyone remember iWill? They were interesting boards particularly the MPX-2 which was a dual socket 462. It had its quirks but IME was far superior to Asus' dual socket 462 offerings particularly with 64 bit PCI-X peripherals. (High end enterprise U320 SCSI RAID controllers in particular)

Had a few DFI Lanparty X48 boards with a ridiculous amount of options in BIOS to tweak everything under the sun if you wanted. Had two of them literally go up in flames (VRM) too. One running purely stock and the other pushing pretty much everything to the limit.

As for Gigabyte, can't complain about two Aorus X570 machines I have running (Elite with 5900X and Extreme 2.0 with 5950X) both heavily loaded (128GB 3200) and 3090s under water. Fastest times from power switch on to desktop RFS (Ready For Service) times I've seen in an "enthusiast class" workstation build. I'm talking close to laptop NUC speed here!

Compared to my HEDT Threadrippers that boot almost as slow (POST) as our Supermicro servers, it's nice to be able to sign in mere seconds from a cold start.

But they (Gigabyte) do have cranky BIOSes, I will say that.

I've had a few MSI "GODLIKE" boards and those were solid. As always, with all the RGB crap I turn it off on first POST and BIOS walkthrough. I do like OLED screens on the boards like the ASUS Zenith Alphas have. Nice to configure them to show cooling liquid temps, flow rates, GPU and even nvme temps. Those boxes are open bench so the display is always visible.

Supermicro is an absolute rock solid for servers and actual workstations where stability over everything else is needed.

I had a few issues with some fairly high end ASUS Z390 coffee lake boards that had faulty AMOLEDs and POSTING issues, basically DOA out of the box for those features which was a major turndown. These were purchased in person at Microcenter. That left me feeling salty considering their higher price.

I have used AsRock for budget minded builds. They are OK I suppose and I did have a mini-ITX board that just died out of the blue after 2 years of service but that can happen with any brand. They're no PC Chips or Amptron (man I am dating myself here haha) mind you, but I get it where people just don't want to spend a lot on a motherboard.

Which leads me to the next thing, price. OMG the top tier stuff is just crazy expensive! Back in 2011 I spent around $600 for an EVGA SR-2 dual socket board. I thought that was expensive but that is / was a truly avante-garde product! It's possible to spend THREE TIMES that today on a super, duper, full cover block (which is nice) board with enough VRM phases to impress this veteran EE but come on! A mortgage payment (for some) for a board? Especially on the Intel side where they change sockets with the same frequency that some people switch out phones (me excluded but that's another story).
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I remember a lot of motherboard brands that aren't around anymore. Some of the companies still exist, but they exited the North American market a long time ago.
  • iWill
  • EPoX
  • DFI
  • FIC (maker of the worst motherboard of all time)
  • QDI
  • MTech
  • Foxconn (They still make a lot of boards but no longer market their on in North America.)
  • ABIT
  • Diamond (Yes, the video card Diamond dabbled in motherboards briefly.)
  • Intel
  • Soyo
  • Soltek
  • PC Chips (Merged with ECS)
  • ECS Elitegroup (Still exists but no longer sells its own motherboards in North America.)
I'm sure I'm forgetting a few, but that's what I can remember off the top of my head.
 
Dan_D said:
I remember a lot of motherboard brands that aren't around anymore. Some of the companies still exist, but they exited the North American market a long time ago.
  • iWill
  • EPoX
  • DFI
  • FIC (maker of the worst motherboard of all time)
  • QDI
  • MTech
  • Foxconn (They still make a lot of boards but no longer market their on in North America.)
  • ABIT
  • Diamond (Yes, the video card Diamond dabbled in motherboards briefly.)
  • Intel
  • Soyo
  • Soltek
  • PC Chips (Merged with ECS)
  • ECS Elitegroup (Still exists but no longer sells its own motherboards in North America.)
I'm sure I'm forgetting a few, but that's what I can remember off the top of my head.
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Agree on FIC!
Don't forget Shuttlegroup/spacewalker. I had a dual pentium pro (socket 8) board that was budget minded if that was such a thing LOL and did not have high hopes at all but that thing was actually very good!

Built a lot of systems based on Foxconn (mostly pentium 4 junk) and those boards were OK for Office users.
 
Domingo said:
Beyond Gigabyte's potential quality issues (I honestly can't comment/don't know), their software division is horrendous and I'm pretty sure their tech support team just uses Google translate for everything. They could make the best piece of hardware out there...and they might, but I'd be wary of buying it. I have a 4090 from them and I'd trade that thing for another OEM's if I could.
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What's wrong with it? I would check out youtube reviews for Nvidia card - there's a youtuber who does a 'best 30xx or 40xx series' of card and compares multiple cards. It's worth checking out.

LigTasm said:
MSI has worked extremely well for me the past 2 generations. I have two MSI Z690 boards right now and they're by far the best bang for the buck I could find with all the features, solid VRM and no unnecessary RGB (both are Z690-A Pro boards).
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I almost bought a Z690-A Pro - if you check older posts of mine, I inquired about that board and was waiting (for a sale). I almost bought one but I found an Asus Z690 Tuf on sale - but, on ebay. I took a chance - it was supposedly new - just tested and put back. It's been fine (knock on wood) and I've been happy with it. I definitely would check out ASUS or MSI boards - I don't like MSI's BIOS (screen) though. It's awful.
I dunno how good Gigabyte boards are - they are usually cheaper than the other makes but that can be both good and bad. I though they had good/decent graphics cards - at least the Eagle and OC series? I would check out youtube reviews for motherboards - if you can find them. I have no idea if their AMD boards are good - I guess it's best to search reviews. Their Z690/Z790 boards are fair? I think the ASUS and MSI ones are probably better - but, I didn't look in depth enough for them because I picked a board (and was mostly looking at MSI and ASUS ones). They did choose a strange audio layout though.
 
I'm not the OP but I find this thread very interesting and informative. Maybe my next build will not reflexively be ASUS. However, unless things change I'm firmly an AMD guy.
 
Domingo said:
Beyond Gigabyte's potential quality issues (I honestly can't comment/don't know), their software division is horrendous and I'm pretty sure their tech support team just uses Google translate for everything. They could make the best piece of hardware out there...and they might, but I'd be wary of buying it. I have a 4090 from them and I'd trade that thing for another OEM's if I could.
Click to expand...

I've got news for you. All motherboard software sucks and almost always has since the beginning.
 
cpufrost said:
Anyone remember iWill? They were interesting boards particularly the MPX-2 which was a dual socket 462. It had its quirks but IME was far superior to Asus' dual socket 462 offerings particularly with 64 bit PCI-X peripherals. (High end enterprise U320 SCSI RAID controllers in particular)

Had a few DFI Lanparty X48 boards with a ridiculous amount of options in BIOS to tweak everything under the sun if you wanted. Had two of them literally go up in flames (VRM) too. One running purely stock and the other pushing pretty much everything to the limit.

As for Gigabyte, can't complain about two Aorus X570 machines I have running (Elite with 5900X and Extreme 2.0 with 5950X) both heavily loaded (128GB 3200) and 3090s under water. Fastest times from power switch on to desktop RFS (Ready For Service) times I've seen in an "enthusiast class" workstation build. I'm talking close to laptop NUC speed here!

Compared to my HEDT Threadrippers that boot almost as slow (POST) as our Supermicro servers, it's nice to be able to sign in mere seconds from a cold start.

But they (Gigabyte) do have cranky BIOSes, I will say that.

I've had a few MSI "GODLIKE" boards and those were solid. As always, with all the RGB crap I turn it off on first POST and BIOS walkthrough. I do like OLED screens on the boards like the ASUS Zenith Alphas have. Nice to configure them to show cooling liquid temps, flow rates, GPU and even nvme temps. Those boxes are open bench so the display is always visible.

Supermicro is an absolute rock solid for servers and actual workstations where stability over everything else is needed.

I had a few issues with some fairly high end ASUS Z390 coffee lake boards that had faulty AMOLEDs and POSTING issues, basically DOA out of the box for those features which was a major turndown. These were purchased in person at Microcenter. That left me feeling salty considering their higher price.

I have used AsRock for budget minded builds. They are OK I suppose and I did have a mini-ITX board that just died out of the blue after 2 years of service but that can happen with any brand. They're no PC Chips or Amptron (man I am dating myself here haha) mind you, but I get it where people just don't want to spend a lot on a motherboard.

Which leads me to the next thing, price. OMG the top tier stuff is just crazy expensive! Back in 2011 I spent around $600 for an EVGA SR-2 dual socket board. I thought that was expensive but that is / was a truly avante-garde product! It's possible to spend THREE TIMES that today on a super, duper, full cover block (which is nice) board with enough VRM phases to impress this veteran EE but come on! A mortgage payment (for some) for a board? Especially on the Intel side where they change sockets with the same frequency that some people switch out phones (me excluded but that's another story).
Click to expand...
lol i still have a PC Chips socket A board floating around in a box some where with an athlon XP 1700+ sitting in it still.. i'm so bad about throwing away old hardware, lol.
 
Dan_D said:
I've got news for you. All motherboard software sucks and almost always has since the beginning.
Click to expand...

Compared to Gigabyte control center, I'll take MSI's Dragon Center 10 out of 10 times. At least it mostly works and it doesn't try to override your RGB settings. Maybe even Armoury Crate, although it's only barely better than Gigabtye's. The worst thing about Armoury Crate is that there's a BIOS setting buried that makes Windows keep trying to re-install it.
 
Asus rep took a huge nosedive with z690 where they had by far the worst boards (memory issues) and the apex was an embarassment (I sold mine on ebay at a 300 dollar loss since nobody wanted them lol). z790 ones look to be much better. I've got an x670e gene and it's alright but not really done much with it and had no issues with my b650e-f in my work pc.

for intel my z690 and z790 tachyons have 0 issues, work great. z690 msi unify-x is one of the best boards I've used. x570 gigabyte and amazingly evga were the best over msi and asus IME. not used asrock am4, am5 or lga1700 boards but the z590 oc formula was the best gear 1 board available IME. I think that covers most boards in the last 2-3 years but I mainly buy high-end OC oriented boards. I'm kinda getting out of doing oc tuning for fun so I probably won't buy anything new for a while.

one nice thing about that z590 ocf was you could set up RGB in the bios and not have to use any in-os software.

regarding gigabyte RMA, I had an issue with my FI32U monitor and sent it in, they fixed it the same day and sent it back so good experience there but then again not a motherboard.
 
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D-EJ915 said:
Asus rep took a huge nosedive with z690 where they had by far the worst boards (memory issues) and the apex was an embarassment (I sold mine on ebay at a 300 dollar loss since nobody wanted them lol). z790 ones look to be much better. I've got an x670e gene and it's alright but not really done much with it and had no issues with my b650e-f in my work pc.

for intel my z690 and z790 tachyons have 0 issues, work great. z690 msi unify-x is one of the best boards I've used. x570 gigabyte and amazingly evga were the best over msi and asus IME. not used asrock am4, am5 or lga1700 boards but the z590 oc formula was the best gear 1 board available IME. I think that covers most boards in the last 2-3 years but I mainly buy high-end OC oriented boards. I'm kinda getting out of doing oc tuning for fun so I probably won't buy anything new for a while.

one nice thing about that z590 ocf was you could set up RGB in the bios and not have to use any in-os software.

regarding gigabyte RMA, I had an issue with my FI32U monitor and sent it in, they fixed it the same day and sent it back so good experience there but then again not a motherboard.
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Are you also a professional builder?
 
D-EJ915 said:
Asus rep took a huge nosedive with z690 where they had by far the worst boards (memory issues) and the apex was an embarassment (I sold mine on ebay at a 300 dollar loss since nobody wanted them lol). z790 ones look to be much better. I've got an x670e gene and it's alright but not really done much with it and had no issues with my b650e-f in my work pc.

for intel my z690 and z790 tachyons have 0 issues, work great. z690 msi unify-x is one of the best boards I've used. x570 gigabyte and amazingly evga were the best over msi and asus IME. not used asrock am4, am5 or lga1700 boards but the z590 oc formula was the best gear 1 board available IME. I think that covers most boards in the last 2-3 years but I mainly buy high-end OC oriented boards. I'm kinda getting out of doing oc tuning for fun so I probably won't buy anything new for a while.

one nice thing about that z590 ocf was you could set up RGB in the bios and not have to use any in-os software.

regarding gigabyte RMA, I had an issue with my FI32U monitor and sent it in, they fixed it the same day and sent it back so good experience there but then again not a motherboard.
Click to expand...

I don't agree. I have the Maximus Z690 Extreme and the APEX. I didn't have issues with either of them.
 
Dan_D said:
I don't agree. I have the Maximus Z690 Extreme and the APEX. I didn't have issues with either of them.
Click to expand...
Perhaps you got lucky since Asus apparently did get some good ones out the door, most of us did not and sold them off. Asus actually did RMA refunds on the Apex.

https://www.overclock.net/threads/official-asus-strix-maximus-z690-owners-thread.1794802/
https://www.overclock.net/threads/a...5-xmp-issues-rma-policy.1801450/post-29084273

I didn't have an extreme but there were a few members that replaced it with hero board and had no issues. (they wanted to use 4 sticks)
 
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sirmonkey1985 said:
lol i still have a PC Chips socket A board floating around in a box some where with an athlon XP 1700+ sitting in it still.. i'm so bad about throwing away old hardware, lol.
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If it still works, someone out there can still use it. (y)

You made me remember I have an athlon board and cpu somewhere when I bought the bundle on ebay just for the power supply since it was cheaper than just the power supply.
 
SamirD said:
If it still works, someone out there can still use it. (y)

You made me remember I have an athlon board and cpu somewhere when I bought the bundle on ebay just for the power supply since it was cheaper than just the power supply.
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So many Powerspec PCs were bought from microcenter for the same reason! Harvest the GPU and sell the box or parts. There were a lot of open box returns too as those had LHR versions.
 
KamikazePlatypus said:
This. All OEM bloat sucks, period. Give me good drivers, everything else I can do in the BIOS or better open source software, thanks.
Click to expand...

I've not heard of any decent open source software for RGB control or even fan control that's brand agnostic.
 
cpufrost said:
Kind of surprised support hasn't been integrated into Windows yet! 🙃
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There isn't a single standardized API for controlling RGB and fans. The hardware is physically different and without some type of API to interface with, its not really possible. I've heard of third party fan controls that were sort of brand agnostic, but support for each board basically has to be added to it by the software developer. I've never heard of this for RGB. As for adding that stuff to Windows, Microsoft is working on doing just that. When we'll see it or how well it will work is another matter entirely. My guess is it will probably work about as well as HDR support does. Meaning, great on some configurations and horribly on others.
 
It seems to work that way (with Windows).
It would be nice to slipstream a switch into install isos that just shut it off altogether.
Even better if it were a set and forget feature either from BIOS or out of band utility.
RGB on motherboards is the devil! The only thing I want to see is something useful like post code LED, status for RAM, GPU, et al fine too.
And disk and network activity lights.
The the vegas style BRIGHT RGB strips along motherboard coolers, backlit dragons, and so on...NO!
JMHO, of course.
And I'm a fan of dragons.
I still have Corsair DDR memory that has LED lights. These actually were (sort of) functional and would go from green to red like a VU meter on a tape deck depending on memory pressure! Not sure how they did that. Crucial had their Ballistix Tracers that worked on ram activity and was more mixed but certain things like Prime95 blend would set them off flashing in a seizure inducing frenzy. Those tracers also were blistering hot and practically every set I had literally burned out and Crucial would replace them until they were no longer manufactured and then offered gift cards. The DDR3 variants fixed the problem but were just kind of dumb flashers like we have now.
 
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