Thoughts on the IC7 MAXIII?

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wtburnette

2[H]4U
Joined
Jun 24, 2004
Messages
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I have one being delivered today and wanted to know what others think of this board. I've noticed a lot of folks here use it and wanted to get some feedback so I know what to expect. I'm currently using an Abit BH7 i845PE mobo which has been great. My 2.8B processor can run at 3.2Ghz with default voltage or 3.4Ghz at 2.75v. I've been drooling over this mobo for a long time though and finally decided to pull the trigger. I've also purchased a 3.2C processor to go on it, which I hope to hit at least 3.6Ghz with.
 
you either love it or you don't but the people that don't have something wrong with them most likely mentally
 
I love mine. Overclocks GREAT. Abit boards usually show temperatures as up to 13c higher, but don't worry about it, as long as you know it's a misread, you can judge it. Don't let that tiny flaw stop you. Pair this baby up with a Zalman 7000A-cu and you're set.
 
Yeah, my BH7 board has the same temp problem. I've learned to live with it... :p

I'm gonna start out using the Thermalright SLK-900U that I already have. If that doesn't work, I'll have to look into alternatives.
 
The IC7 Max 3 is a great motherboard. Probably the very best out there for pure overclocking. I considered buying one myself till i layed my eyes on one of the high-end Gigabyte boards which have more on-board features. I also wanted a board with a blue PCB :p.
 
The_In_Kid said:
you either love it or you don't but the people that don't have something wrong with them most likely mentally
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No I can't agree. The reason I don't like Abit is due to their inconsistant quality from one board to the next and I have had horrid experiences with them in the past. I will not likely EVER buy another Abit board. No matter how awesome the IC7 Max 3 looks on paper.
 
Sir-Fragalot said:
No I can't agree. The reason I don't like Abit is due to their inconsistant quality from one board to the next and I have had horrid experiences with them in the past. I will not likely EVER buy another Abit board. No matter how awesome the IC7 Max 3 looks on paper.
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Wow, that's pretty harsh. I know they've had quality issues in the past (I know, I used to have a BH6 and it was flaky as hell), but they're supposed to be much better. This BH7 mobo I have has been awesome. The only problem I had is the northbridge cooler actually fell off (the clip they used broke). Other then that it's been an awesome board. They used to have problems with capacitor leakage, but they switched to using all Rubycon capacitors which are supposed to be the best. I honestly hope you're wrong, cause I really want this board to kick ass!
 
Well I had a BP6 and it was good quality although Abit stopped supporting and manufacturing them way to soon after their release.

I had a BX6 rev 2. It died. My roomate had one and it died. I moved to a second BX6 and it was fine. Although all my benchmark scores went down consistantly from the first board. Even with the same BIOS.

Next I got a KT7 RAID board. It was crap. The thing was horribly unstable. Didn't matter what ram or BIOS I used.

Then I tried another and another and I just kept having the same issues. Tested my Antec PSU and it was good. To make a long story short after three of those boards and all available BIOS's and 4 different memory brands the board was unstable and not worth a crap.

I switched to a KT7A RAID. It was junk too. Same issues. I finally spend the extra cash on an Asus A7V-133A. I dropped it in and let Windows 98 redetect all of it's devices and BAM! everything worked. Didn't even need to reinstall anything. All was well.

I got so sick and tired of VIA 4 in 1 drivers and changing BIOS's that I decided my next system would be an Intel based machine with an Asus board. As that's what I used during the years when I didn't have an Abit board.

Although the IC7 MAX 3 has a great layout and great features I will never trust Abit again.

I've also helped out too many friends that have systems built on Abit boards and it's more of the same old story. So yeah its harsh but it's my experience. And I've worked on hundreds if not more systems. I've been a service tech at a number of places. I've built and sold machines on my own for myself.

Not to mention I upgrade my system every 3 to 6 months. Anyway in short the only motherboard manufactuers that I can think of that suck as bad as Abit are ECS and Soyo. Both of which have given me better and more consistant results than Abit.

The way I feel about Abit boards is this. They are hit or miss. It's not based on model number, so much as the individual board. If you get a good one, you'll have a rock solid and stable motherboard with an unmatched feature set. If you don't you've got the worst pile of shit to grace your PC's case making your machine on par with an E-Machine or an old Packard Bell.
 
Well, I finally got the board and processor installed yesterday. Thing setup like a dream, no problems at all. It's running nicely, but I haven't had time to get everything reinstalled or tweaked out yet. I think I'll run it for a while at stock, to let the AS burn in, before trying to see how it'll OC. Hopefully I'll be able to push this CPU pretty high...
 
I bought an ic7-max3 shortly after they first hit the market. That board worked fine, until I upgraded my home network to gigabit. The onboard NIC was incapable of transmitting over 100mb/s. So, I RMA'd my board, costing me $37 and tieing up $150 for a deposit fee for nearly 2 months.

The second board did not have a functional silicon image sata controller or 1394 controller, they didn't even show up in the bios. The onboard intel sata controller worked, unless I transfered data over the network. During even moderate usage (12MB/s) the system would hard lock. Also, games would often hang for 20 seconds or so about once per hour. I also RMA'd this motherboard.

When I got the 3rd motherboard, it was dirty and there were etch marks on the PCB (where the previous owner had sliped with a screw driver.) The onboard sound controller produces popping and hissing noises, and the onboard intel nic hard locks my system if I try to use it.

After my 3rd RMA I came to the conclusion that ABIT is not capable of providing functional customer support, and that it would be better to get my $150 deposit back. Right now, that POS max3 is functional enough until I can replace it with an ASUS board.

I will never have anything to do with ABIT ever again. It's just not worth the gamble: if you get a bad board, you'll always have it, snice ABIT does not RMA you a new board, but one that has been refurbished.

I have owned several motherboards, a FIC 503+, a non-branded board from a computer show, and even an ECS board, and none of them even come close to how crappy my ic7-max3 is.
 
I had a related issue with my IC7 board, transfering large files over SMB would hardlock the system, and when I tried gigabit speeds I could not get above 10MB/sec

From my ABIT experiences I don't think I would get one again. There are also a lot of unhappy IC7 customers, check out the ABIT forums. I am surprized HardOCP gave it such rave reviews.
 
Oh yea, I forgot to mention the abit forums. That was the most discouraging of all: to see that my problems were not just an isolated case. For so many people to have problems with this board, ABIT must have known there were issues with it, and they chose to sell it anyways. You can't have failures of that magnitude without it showing up in the development process, and to release a known faulty product is just craptacular.
 
Well, I'm really glad mine has been great so far. I'm using PATA, not SATA and I don't transfer anything over my home LAN. I might test to see if I have the same problems, but even if I do, they won't really effect me. Guess I got lucky with that... :rolleyes:
 
Well, I'm playing around with it and so far I've got it up to 3.5Ghz (219Mhz FSB 1:1 ratio). Not super, but I'm happy it can do at least this much. Might try pushing it higher after I burn it in and test it for stability... :cool:
 
I think it was a waste of money. The MAX3 isn't worth the $80.00. If I would have done it again I would have purchased the IC7-G. $80 for OTES, Green LED, and 4 Extra SATA ports isn't worth it or at least it wasn't for me.

Adam
 
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