Good Mother board companies, and good but economical motherboards

[pc.expertise]

I have a motherboard by Microstar International of Taiwan, ie MSI P35-
Neo2-FR. This board has a fundamental design flaw. The Al888T audio
chip has too little power and the BIOS are screwed up. When I disable
the audio feature in the integrated peripherals in BIOS, the board
freezes. You cannot disable the audio in the BIOS. That is why, this
board which has 4 heat pipes is in the $115 price range, where as
similar boards by Gigabyte are in $200 price range. But Gigabyte uses
the audio codec by the same company, Realtek. Most of the feedbacks in
the newegg and other sites are bogus and by the vendors. Probably,
their design engineers wrote them, because some of the work arounds
simply need too detailed info of the internals.

MSI is a terrible Taiwanese company. Another Terrible Taiwanese
company is Gigabyte. Both are located in the City of Industry,
California. It would be interesting to try to call their 626 numbers
and get in touch with their tech support. You will be hearing their
music all day long.

Asus does not have a 800 number and try ever getting to their tech
support, and this is despite the fact that asus charges arm and leg.
The fact is that Asus does not have good quality for the right price
either.

Anyone know a good motherboard company for the core 2 duo and core 2
quad CPU by Intel and using DDR2 800MHz memory, 4 slots, upto 8Gig ?

Hadrian

 

[pc.expertise]

I have a motherboard by Microstar International of Taiwan, ie MSI P35-
Neo2-FR. This board has a fundamental design flaw. The Al888T audio
chip has too little power and the BIOS are screwed up. When I disable
the audio feature in the integrated peripherals in BIOS, the board
freezes. You cannot disable the audio in the BIOS. That is why, this
board which has 4 heat pipes is in the $115 price range, where as
similar boards by Gigabyte are in $200 price range. But Gigabyte uses
the audio codec by the same company, Realtek. Most of the feedbacks in
the newegg and other sites are bogus and by the vendors. Probably,
their design engineers wrote them, because some of the work arounds
simply need too detailed info of the internals.

MSI is a terrible Taiwanese company. Another Terrible Taiwanese
company is Gigabyte. Both are located in the City of Industry,
California. It would be interesting to try to call their 626 numbers
and get in touch with their tech support. You will be hearing their
music all day long.

Asus does not have a 800 number and try ever getting to their tech
support, and this is despite the fact that asus charges arm and leg.
The fact is that Asus does not have good quality for the right price
either.

Anyone know a good motherboard company for the core 2 duo and core 2
quad CPU by Intel and using DDR2 800MHz memory, 4 slots, upto 8Gig ?

Hadrian

 

[John Doe]

MSI is a terrible Taiwanese company. Another Terrible Taiwanese
company is Gigabyte. Both are located in the City of Industry,
California. It would be interesting to try to call their 626
numbers and get in touch with their tech support. You will be
hearing their music all day long.

Mainboard manufacturers like other manufacturers ordinarily sell to
Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). They don't sell retail so
they typically don't support retail customers. I don't expect
technical support from manufacturers except for what's on their
website. My only hope is that they write fluent English.

Good luck.

 

[david]

Anyone know a good motherboard company for the core 2 duo and core 2
quad CPU by Intel and using DDR2 800MHz memory, 4 slots, upto 8Gig ?

Hadrian

Try Intel.

 

[Michael W. Ryder]

I have a motherboard by Microstar International of Taiwan, ie MSI P35-
Neo2-FR. This board has a fundamental design flaw. The Al888T audio
chip has too little power and the BIOS are screwed up. When I disable
the audio feature in the integrated peripherals in BIOS, the board
freezes. You cannot disable the audio in the BIOS. That is why, this
board which has 4 heat pipes is in the $115 price range, where as
similar boards by Gigabyte are in $200 price range. But Gigabyte uses
the audio codec by the same company, Realtek. Most of the feedbacks in
the newegg and other sites are bogus and by the vendors. Probably,
their design engineers wrote them, because some of the work arounds
simply need too detailed info of the internals.

MSI is a terrible Taiwanese company. Another Terrible Taiwanese
company is Gigabyte. Both are located in the City of Industry,
California. It would be interesting to try to call their 626 numbers
and get in touch with their tech support. You will be hearing their
music all day long.

Asus does not have a 800 number and try ever getting to their tech
support, and this is despite the fact that asus charges arm and leg.
The fact is that Asus does not have good quality for the right price
either.

You must have had bad experiences with ASUS as mine were the exact
opposite. In over ten years of buying their boards I have had one with
a problem. I got hold of their tech support in a couple of minutes and
had a RMA shortly afterwards. A little over a week later I had a
replacement board. Why you feel this is bad service, or that ASUS makes
bad boards I don't see. I started using their boards after a
recommendation from a friend at Microsoft who said that a lot of the
people there were using their boards.
I don't expect any company to make upgrades available for their hardware
years after it was released but ASUS does. When I bought a P2B-S
motherboard the highest Pentium available was only capable of going up
to 450 MHz. I later upgraded the BIOS and installed an 850 MHz CPU in
and everything worked as if the board was designed for the processor.
I might have bought cheaper motherboards in the past but reliability and
ease of setup are far more important to me than a couple of dollars
savings, especially if I don't have to replace the board every time I
want to do an upgrade.

 

[kony]

I have a motherboard by Microstar International of Taiwan, ie MSI P35-
Neo2-FR. This board has a fundamental design flaw. The Al888T audio
chip has too little power and the BIOS are screwed up. When I disable
the audio feature in the integrated peripherals in BIOS, the board
freezes. You cannot disable the audio in the BIOS. That is why, this
board which has 4 heat pipes is in the $115 price range, where as
similar boards by Gigabyte are in $200 price range. But Gigabyte uses
the audio codec by the same company, Realtek. Most of the feedbacks in
the newegg and other sites are bogus and by the vendors. Probably,
their design engineers wrote them, because some of the work arounds
simply need too detailed info of the internals.

MSI is a terrible Taiwanese company. Another Terrible Taiwanese
company is Gigabyte. Both are located in the City of Industry,
California. It would be interesting to try to call their 626 numbers
and get in touch with their tech support. You will be hearing their
music all day long.

Asus does not have a 800 number and try ever getting to their tech
support, and this is despite the fact that asus charges arm and leg.
The fact is that Asus does not have good quality for the right price
either.

Anyone know a good motherboard company for the core 2 duo and core 2
quad CPU by Intel and using DDR2 800MHz memory, 4 slots, upto 8Gig ?

Hadrian

Motherboards have short product lives and it's sometimes
amazing how quickly they can spin out new versions.

No board is perfect and this even ignores manufacturing
flaws. That you might have some examples from one
manufacturer or another of occasional problems is no reason
to ignore any of the major brands in general.

Buy a name brand board and don't get too picky about it
being better than 99% working... most people who feel theirs
is any better than that, just haven't came across the
particular flaw(s) present in theirs because every system
and use is a little bit different.

 

[Frank McCoy]

Motherboards have short product lives and it's sometimes
amazing how quickly they can spin out new versions.

No board is perfect and this even ignores manufacturing
flaws. That you might have some examples from one
manufacturer or another of occasional problems is no reason
to ignore any of the major brands in general.

Buy a name brand board and don't get too picky about it
being better than 99% working... most people who feel theirs
is any better than that, just haven't came across the
particular flaw(s) present in theirs because every system
and use is a little bit different.

I have yet to find a motherboard without a flaw.
I *try* to buy motherboards whose flaws I personally can live with.
Sometimes that's incredibly difficult; especially when I'm constrained
by buying (or already having) a particular processor I can afford; or
having previously-acquired boards that I need to match my particular
use. ;-{

(For example: I *need* two floppy drives; never mind why. My present
mobo is the first one I've had that for some strange reason only
supports *one* floppy. So ... I bought an ATA floppy drive. It works;
but means I only have three other ATA slots; that are now all full.)

 

[pc.expertise]

Try Intel.

Any feature equivalent motherboard to the MSI one I am talking about ?

 

[pc.expertise]

You must have had bad experiences with ASUS as mine were the exact
opposite. In over ten years of buying their boards I have had one with
a problem. I got hold of their tech support in a couple of minutes and
had a RMA shortly afterwards. A little over a week later I had a
replacement board. Why you feel this is bad service, or that ASUS makes
bad boards I don't see. I started using their boards after a
recommendation from a friend at Microsoft who said that a lot of the
people there were using their boards.
I don't expect any company to make upgrades available for their hardware
years after it was released but ASUS does. When I bought a P2B-S
motherboard the highest Pentium available was only capable of going up
to 450 MHz. I later upgraded the BIOS and installed an 850 MHz CPU in
and everything worked as if the board was designed for the processor.
I might have bought cheaper motherboards in the past but reliability and
ease of setup are far more important to me than a couple of dollars
savings, especially if I don't have to replace the board every time I
want to do an upgrade.

Actually, I have an ASUS motherboard. Its BIOS are NOT BEING provided
by ASUS but are being sold by Phoenix or AMI BIOS which ever wrote
them
originally. ASUS NEVER BOTHERED TO UPGRADE THEIR BIOS AND
PROVIDE CUSTOMERS FOR FREE. That feature has to do with the
addressing of the recent large EIDE hard drives. The conclusion about
ASUS
is that it is selling the same cheap crap as the Taiwanese companies.
Its
just that their people speak better english and are a little more
politically
correct. But not necessarily, actually correct.

For example, I would like to know what codec ASUS MB offer and for
what
cost? Their MB has no heat pipes but still it is as expensive as MSI.
With
heat pipes it is in $250-300 range. so they already charged for
replacement.
MSI was not bad for replacement, once you found a way over the hurdles
they erected.

 

[pc.expertise]

Motherboards have short product lives and it's sometimes
amazing how quickly they can spin out new versions.

One the contrary, if you consider your data as critical, all of
the PC including MB is a critical component for any end user.

The above attitude is a tremendous disrespect for an end user.

 

[Man-wai Chang ToDie]

Asus does not have a 800 number and try ever getting to their tech

support, and this is despite the fact that asus charges arm and leg.
The fact is that Asus does not have good quality for the right price
either.

1. I have never needed to contact motherboard manufacturers.
2. Asus' boards last longest in my home

--
@~@ Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY.
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you!
/( _ )\ (Xubuntu 7.04) Linux 2.6.23.1
^ ^ 18:31:01 up 5:02 1 user load average: 0.07 0.06 0.01
news://news.3home.net news://news.hkpcug.org news://news.newsgroup.com.hk

 

[Man-wai Chang ToDie]

1. I have never needed to contact motherboard manufacturers.

Except recently when I needed to install Vi$ta x64 on nF570Ultra RAID
0... it didn't work.

--
@~@ Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY.
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you!
/( _ )\ (Xubuntu 7.04) Linux 2.6.23.1
^ ^ 19:13:01 up 5:44 1 user load average: 0.00 0.02 0.00
news://news.3home.net news://news.hkpcug.org news://news.newsgroup.com.hk

 

[AHappyCamper]

You must have had bad experiences with ASUS as mine were the exact
opposite. In over ten years of buying their boards I have had one with
a problem. I got hold of their tech support in a couple of minutes and
had a RMA shortly afterwards. A little over a week later I had a
replacement board. Why you feel this is bad service, or that ASUS makes
bad boards I don't see. I started using their boards after a
recommendation from a friend at Microsoft who said that a lot of the
people there were using their boards.
I don't expect any company to make upgrades available for their hardware
years after it was released but ASUS does. When I bought a P2B-S
motherboard the highest Pentium available was only capable of going up
to 450 MHz. I later upgraded the BIOS and installed an 850 MHz CPU in
and everything worked as if the board was designed for the processor.
I might have bought cheaper motherboards in the past but reliability and
ease of setup are far more important to me than a couple of dollars
savings, especially if I don't have to replace the board every time I
want to do an upgrade.

Been running, building, fixing, re-using, hundreds of older machines in
*BSD and GNU/Linux, since 1997, and have a few ASUS P2B-DS dual
processor machines running, as well as some PL97, P3W, and others.

There was a problem with the stabilizer in capacitors in 2000 through
2004 but, (thank you EPA!) after that problem in consumer goods, that
affected most makers of products(even some BMWs!), it is back to
stability and full features that work well for me and my clients.

There is the old saw:

Choice is to make it:

1. Cheap,
2. Quickly available,
3. Full-featured

but, you may have only two of the choices.

This MSI K8NGM2-FID board, running Mepis 6.5-64bit Linux, was delivered
with the 939 pin AM2 AMD Sempron 3000+ cpu with heatsink/fan for $80.00,
shipping free, from 3BTech, and all the GNU/Linux Distros and *BSD
versions work well! (Haven't done the onboard SATA RAID, yet).

Another happy customer. Have dozens of ASUS systems running well in a
collage of over 120 systems here and in schools.

 

[kony]

One the contrary, if you consider your data as critical, all of
the PC including MB is a critical component for any end user.

I never wrote it wasn't, but you miss the important point:

The user is irresponsible if trusting an untested system to
anything important.

Further, minor flaws are no factor when it comes to data
integrity.

If you are waiting for some perfect thing in life, you are
wasting your time, it will never come and you'll constantly
be upset and blaming others when other people manage to get
by. REMEMBER this as it is a *fact of life*. Do not put
all your eggs in one basket, do not operate without a safety
net. Do not walk under ladders or cross a black cat's path
if you want random guarantees instead of appreciating and
testing what you have at hand.

The above attitude is a tremendous disrespect for an end user.

Funny, I have no problem, it seems your irresponsible
attitude caused a problem then you want to blame others.

There are NO products, forget motherboards, I mean products
in general, that are "ideal" in every way. If you want
that, you will have to convince the industry to freeze
technological advances, including performance advances, and
then pay multiple times as much for each product.

If you dislike motherboards this much then don't buy any...
simple as that.

The point is, you pay your money and take your chances like
everyone else. THEN having the hardware, the only possible
responsible action is to test and qualify the hardware for
the intended use. Either it works acceptibly or you return
it for refund immediately.

That's the difference between DIY, build your own computer
and buying some box from an OEM, that you place the burden
of testing and qualification for any given purpose upon
yourself. This is not a difficult thing for practical
purposes, but did you do so or did you fail to and then
spent the time you could have on testing, on complaining
instead?

Learn from your experience, and mine, that you should take
what you can get based upon the best choice at the time,
then just return the product if it doesn't meet a critical
parameter to the particular use.

Again, no motherboard is perfect. If you want to wait for
one, you will never use a computer as there are none,
whether it be DIY or OEM or even multi-thousand-dollar
industrial boards... though in this latter case, the use is
so mission-specific that it's possible there are no flaws
that could effect the particular "mission".

I do wish motherboards were more debugged than they are, but
realize that's not free, it is more time and cost effective
to deal with any problems when possible than seek some
"perfect" solution, because it is always trial and error
unless you want to pay someone to set up the exact scenario
you want to try and extensively test it..... something that
would cost many times more than the cost of a few
motherboards.

 

[Jerry McBride]

1. I have never needed to contact motherboard manufacturers.
2. Asus' boards last longest in my home

I just bought a motherboard from MACH SPEED TECHNOLOGIES. The are one of the
few, very few, that offer a LIFETIME WARRANTY on their stuff....

 

[Bill]

I have been buying nothing but Gigabyte boards for 7 years and have not
had any issues at all. I religiously use the onbaord sound befcause I
think it is comarable with atleast a SB Live, though my last 2 Gig
boards have had the RealtekHD audio chipset. Yes they are a little more
expensive than the other boards, but I have not had one issue with them.
For a friend who wanted to cut corners I bought a Biostar board and was
not impressed with it though it was about half the cost of the Gigabyte. I
push my boards to the limit and cant complain at all.

Later,
Bill

 

[david]

Any feature equivalent motherboard to the MSI one I am talking about ?

http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/index.htm

 

[Darren Salt]

I demand that Bill may or may not have written...

I have been buying nothing but Gigabyte boards for 7 years and have not
had any issues at all. I religiously use the onbaord sound befcause I
think it is comarable with atleast a SB Live,

It has an on-board MIDI synth...?

[snip]
--
| Darren Salt | linux or ds at | nr. Ashington, | Toon
| RISC OS, Linux | youmustbejoking,demon,co,uk | Northumberland | Army
| + Travel less. Share transport more. PRODUCE LESS CARBON DIOXIDE.

What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.

 

[larry moe 'n curly]

I don't know about warranty claims, but I've gotten the best mobo tech
support from Intel, DFI, and Supermicro, especially the latter.

How good is Tyan?

 

[Len Mattix]

What a bunch of crap!! Are you some kind of troll just looking for ways to
waste bandwidth. Your information is certainly inaccurate and especially
about ASUS motherboards. Also your cross posting further indicates the
troll that I mentioned.

I know that asking you to refrain from wasting bandwidth on nonsense and
really bad information is wasted but here is trying!!

Len