Who makes the most reliable mainboards?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ruel Smith
  • Start date Start date
cheap said:
Reading through that thread, it seemed that a lot of the people
with problems were trying to get by with power supplies less
than 400watts. I wouldn't use less than a 550 watt power supply
today.
Click to expand...

But seriously.

Like any other component, a power supply should be
suited to the system requirements.

Many systems run just fine on 150 watt power supplies.
 
cheap said:
Reading through that thread, it seemed that a lot of the people with
problems were trying to get by with power supplies less than 400watts.
I wouldn't use less than a 550 watt power supply today.

All motherboards seem to have some issues; usually from the chipset,
the bios, or a cheap component part.
Click to expand...

You can get by just fine with a quality 300 watt PSU from someone like
Antec, but have problems with some garbage 500 watt PSU from someone you've
never heard of. Wattage ratings don't tell the real story. Check out the
amperage on the +12V line. That will paint you a better picture.
 
BP said:
I just had an ASUS P4C800E-Deluxe board go bad. It seems this is not an
unusual event: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/8069/?o=40
I have real reservations about using this board again. I'm thinking I should
go with a board that, while it may not have as many features, is much more
reliable and well built. Does anyone have any info or links to information
on motherboard reliability ratings. Most ratings I've found address features
and price only. What brands do you have confidence in?
Click to expand...
my preferences:
Supermicro, tyan
 
hona said:
my preferences:
Supermicro, tyan
Click to expand...

I'll have to get you drunk and exchange wallets. What do you like to
drink? :)

For workstation boards it's hard to beat Tyan.
 
Timbertea said:
I'll have to get you drunk and exchange wallets. What do you like to
drink? :)

For workstation boards it's hard to beat Tyan.
Click to expand...

Just built 3 P4 3.2 systems for a real estate office with Tyans with onboard
video, audio and lan. Went flawlessly. They have been going for a month in
the office without a single issue. I have to agree with you as far as
workstations go.

Ed
 
Ed said:
Just built 3 P4 3.2 systems for a real estate office with Tyans with onboard
video, audio and lan. Went flawlessly. They have been going for a month in
the office without a single issue. I have to agree with you as far as
workstations go.
Click to expand...

I've never heard of Tyan. How much do their boards cost? Their Web
site doesn't seem to give prices, which is usually a bad sign.
 
Gary C said:
Neither do the mills of forestry products, but their retailers do.
Click to expand...

currently, overall, I expect no more than links to sellers when
browsing products at a manufacturer's web site
 
Mxsmanic said:
Ed Medlin writes:




I've never heard of Tyan. How much do their boards cost? Their Web
site doesn't seem to give prices, which is usually a bad sign.
Click to expand...


Tyan sells mostly server & workstation boards. They don't really go
after the single-CPU consumer market. The offerings they have for the
single-cpu consumer market are really dated.

Typical workstation board from Tyan is in the $300-580 range. Most of
the server boards are a bit less, depending on features. $500 for a
motherboard is only a small part of the cost for a professional level
workstation.
 
Timbertea said:
Tyan sells mostly server & workstation boards. They don't really go
after the single-CPU consumer market. The offerings they have for the
single-cpu consumer market are really dated.

Typical workstation board from Tyan is in the $300-580 range. Most of
the server boards are a bit less, depending on features. $500 for a
motherboard is only a small part of the cost for a professional level
workstation.
Click to expand...

What does one do with a workstation, as opposed to an ordinary desktop,
that requires special boards and mulitple CPUs?
 
Timbertea said:
I'll have to get you drunk and exchange wallets. What do you like to
drink? :)

For workstation boards it's hard to beat Tyan.
Click to expand...
lol, I'll take you up on that. I'm not as picky about booze as i am about
motherboards.
 
Mxsmanic said:
What does one do with a workstation, as opposed to an ordinary desktop,
that requires special boards and mulitple CPUs?
Click to expand...
Nothing. "Workstation" class boards are usually tesetd more, so they tend
to have less stability issues. The downside to this is that they cost
more and are usually behind in offering the latest and greatest features.

As far as multiple processors go, there are many discussions on this
subject going on on every hardware group and web site. The new processors
from AMD and Intel are dual-core: two processors in one package (essentialy
the same as having two seperate processors).

Is it worth getting dual processors? For most people, the answer is no.
It depends what your plans are for your computer.
 
Mxsmanic said:
What does one do with a workstation, as opposed to an ordinary desktop,
that requires special boards and mulitple CPUs?
Click to expand...

3D rendering with LightWave 3D or something similar?
 
Mxsmanic said:
I've never heard of Tyan. How much do their boards cost? Their Web
site doesn't seem to give prices, which is usually a bad sign.
Click to expand...

Higher than most consumer based MBs. They are really reliable and are more
well known in the server market. These were customer request, so I just
built what he wanted.


Ed
 
Mon said:
Now we're talking. This is the kind of information I was looking for.
Click to expand...

I have two Tyan boards here that are about 4+ years old. They work
flawlessly and are still great boards. I upgraded to an ASUS because I
needed a faster processor for rendering video and I couldn't find any
Tyan boards for home server use, otherwise I'd have gone w/Tyan.

Let me say this, I never use anything other than Crucial memory with my
computers since I don't like to play games w/my hardware.
--


Newsfeeds
The Safe Harbor of SPAMMERS

Gotta have SPAM:

(e-mail address removed)
(e-mail address removed)
(e-mail address removed)
(e-mail address removed)
(e-mail address removed)
 
Mxsmanic said:
Timbertea writes:




What does one do with a workstation, as opposed to an ordinary desktop,
that requires special boards and mulitple CPUs?
Click to expand...

The term is being diluted these days, as people are calling things that
aren't workstations workstations, and we do indeed have improvements in
graphics and dual core deskstop chips on the way...


The main reason to get a workstation up until about 3 years ago was
graphics, graphics, and graphics. If you wanted to do CAD/CAM, video
production & editing, rendering, animation, medical imaging (still a
good use, get your CT-scan back a lot sooner), and much of scientific
computing. Much of this could be done of a regular computer, but some of
the medical imaging and scientific computing really did need 64 bits due
to the size of the datasets, and consumer level systems would choke
trying to display those models.

Outside of those fields, there was another reason, most computers were
just horribly slow. Most heavy users had dual PIII/Celeron systems in
the early days just to make their job tolerable. Most of these were
still hard drive bound, but they were fast enough. Most of these folks
don't have a dual cpu workstation anymore, they have a fast P4. This
need went away after we broke the 2Ghz mark for most users.

In large part, thanks to gamers being willing to pay a premium, consumer
level cards are catching up and the graphics power is there now. They
still don't have the optimizations that professional cards have, but the
raw power is there. These improvements (engines, processors) do get
passed along to the professional cards (the main difference between them
is software more often than not). Thanks to PCI-E, the power
requirements can now be met without having to have a workstation board
as well.

If you did mostly 2D work, you could make the jump a lot sooner. If you
needed 3D, you had to wait.

The other area workstations compete is on memory & storage systems. You
wont find a desktop that allows you to have more than 4GB of memory
easily, you can buy a workstation board that will let you have 8-16GB of
memory. The board will typically also have SCSI 320, and fast PCI-X
slots for additional SCSI raid controllers. Heaven forbid you have to
access the slow substorage system though, even with 320 it's still
thousands of times slower than main memory - even when you have to use
slower memory to get huge sizes it still works out in your favor.

I think they still have a place in people working with 3D models,
medical imaging, certain kinds of people working in animation and film.
Most of the software development people will probably end up turning to
distributed computing and dual core desktops to fill their needs, many
of the CAD people can already switch without pain provided they can get
enough memory and make intelligent motherboard decisions & select the
right graphics card. Heavy multitaskers like myself will wait on dual
cores to switch. I'm trying to hold out for a A64 4400...
 
Back
Top