I'm sick of mobo makers!

This is my two cents! I don't want to start a war, just want to expose you
my opinion.

I'm in computer industry for 10 years, working as network manager and
technician. I'm sick of all those mobo manufacturers who produce flashy,
but poorly designed boards. I don't want to look my board, I want to use
it! Today's board are about all deficient: bad capacitors and poor voltage
regulation. 50% fails in 2 years or so. The only mobo maker that produce
board that last long is Intel, they use really good quality capacitors,
coils, mofsets... Aopen, Asus, Abit have all RMA % between 15% to 30%
during the first year while Intel have an RMA % that is less than 5%. But
Intel don't produce AMD board. When you are an AMD Athlon user as me, what
compagny can offer me boards as good as Intel Desktop Board? I had problem
with Asus board (A7V266-E and A7V333), Aopen board (AK77-333), abit (KD7 and
NF7). Always the same problems, capacitors leakage or burned chip. Voltage
are good and used those board were working on different kind of power supply
(mainly Enermax and Antec, but some Sparkle).

I have just one thing to say to mobo makers: I don't want a board that flash
and can overclock to hell, I WAN'T A GOOD BOARD!!!!

Wizza

 

I'm using Epox boards. I haven't had a problem. I decided to try and save a
little money and bought an Aopen board but it doesn't work too well. I'll have
to wait and see if the Epox boards last. They're very stable I'll give them
that, even if I overclock the crap out of them they work fine. For what they
cost A failure isn't too big a deal except having to repair the machine. If I
couldn't do it myself then it would be a big issue.



Roger

 

Yeah. That why I still stuck with my belove AOpen AX6BC I've got 3 working
AX6BC - NEVER LET ME ONE DOWN NEVER!

I did bit off to AMD Jetway & Abit both gave me absolute nightmare - too
many crashes freeze etc etc - I lost my temper with them and threw them away
and bring back my old AX6BC to working again for more many years

Only ageing though


I've learn my lesson - DON'T TOUCH ANY MOBO WITH VIA CHIPSET - VIA IS EVIL!

I HAD 4 BAD LUCK WITH AMD

 

In the past year I've had 6 Abit AT7 max2 boards. Two were DOA, two
never completed a windows installation and were returned, and two were
returned due to misc and multiple problems, all confirmed as board
faults and nothing to do with any peripheral attached. I have now
washed my hands of Abit.

In desperation I got a Gigabyte VAXP7, but it was was returned after 3
months due to hanging at boot up prior to displaying the cpu speed.
The dealer confirmed a fault. He replaced it with a later GA-7N400
Pro2, which I haven't installed yet. This will be my reserve pc. For
my main pc I have just ordered an Asus P4P800 Deluxe in a move back to
Pentium based boards. If this doesn't work then it will be an Intel
board next.

I've also got an Aopen AK77 600 which was the worst board I've ever
had to install. It took me the best part of 2 weeks to get it running
because it wouldn't detect drives on the raid and sata ports. It won't
detect drives jumpered cable select, which I want because I have
removeable drives and multiple locations for them. Last week it
started hanging on boot up at memory test. It would read "Memory T"
for 2 minutes before continuing. Reflashing the bios fixed it, but why
should I have to do this? I cannot get any sata ports to work now.
I'm leaving it running 24/7 at the moment because I cannot afford to
turn it off and have something else fail on boot up. I thought any
manufacturer other than Abit would be an improvement, but I guess I
was wrong.

MJ

 

I've built a few AMD based systems in my time and everyone I've built for
family and friends is still working today.
The oldest system build still in operation is an Epox Super Socket 7 running
an AMD K6-2 500MHz with 256MB of
PC 100. My in-laws are using it for word processing, Chess, emailing and
surfing, and they are quite happy with it. This mainboard is 7 yrs old!
Outlasted the HD, Floppy, PSU and a couple of case fans.

Other builds include Shuttle AV30 (only non AMD-it's running a V3 Ezra
900MHz), FIC SD-11, Asus ??? Slot A,
PC Chips ???, ECS K7S5A, and most recently my exceptionally well behaved
AOpen AK79G Max.

None of the systems are OC'd. All were built for stability. Do you OC?
Maybe you have a poor supplier of mainboards.
I couldn't be happier with all my babies. They have matured well.

Nystagmus

 

I don't think the AMD chip is the problem, just the boards that are
designed for it. I've bought 3 AMDs, and had around 8 Pentiums. The
only failure was an AMD 1400. I've never overclocked a board. Prior to
the string of failed Abit AT7s I had an Abit KG7-R which failed after
18 months. Before that a couple of Abit BH6s, which are still working
if I wanted to use them, and also a couple of Abit VH6s, again still
working. It was the AT7 which crippled me last year. I bought 3 from
one supplier, and to break the return/replace cycle I got one from
another supplier. I eventually had 3 from each supplier. The last one
is just being packaged up now for return and has had barely a month's
use. I'm careful in handling and building. I know all about static. I
use a UPS with surge protection. I've just had the most unbelievable
run of bad luck for most of last year with just about everything I
buy. From a batch of Canon 9100 printer cartridges which are supposed
to be transparent for the printer to read the contents, which turned
out to a opaque, to buying a safe with a digital lock, with the
combination locked inside. Then there are 4 Canon printers (2
different types), all faulty, and dvd player which turned out to have
been used and returned. And I mustn't forget the box of 4 brake pads
for the car which had one missing because somebody had bought it
previously, taken one out and returned the rest for a refund and got
away with it. I could go on......

MJ

 

[snip]

Unlucky, because with two exceptions (a failed CDRW drive and a failed
GF4 ti4200 card) I haven't had a component failure in many years. The
maker of the videocard replaced it immediately without quibble. The
maker of the CDRW started to quibble, so I put it in the garbage and
will never use that brand again.

IMHO, a way out this is to stay at least six and preferably nearer 12
months behind the curve. Never buy revision 1 of anything. Only buy
equipment that's been out for long enough to be tried, tested, revised
and have a serious amount of user feedback on it. If you do your
research on this basis, it soon becomes fairly clear whom to avoid and
who seems to be producing decent stuff. Where I live, for example, I
would never consider an Abit board because their reputation for customer
service is shall we say less than stellar. Nor would I ever consider a
mobo that had some kind of proprietory gizmos on it (beloved of Abit and
Aopen, too), or which had a Via chipset.

The list of those I now avoid is a long one, including Asus (they rush
boards to market knowing they are unfinished), SMC (nightmare firmware
upgrade on an FU basis) and Creative (nightmarish drivers, spyware, a
useless webcam, among others). But hey, that still leaves loads of other
decent and imho superior brands like Epox, Intel, Liteon, M-Audio, etc.

Unless you're a rabid gamer who's buying the upgrade crack, most of us
don't need high-end power anyway. Those that do, for professional
reasons, can prolly afford service contracts and truly high-end gear in
the way we can't.




Fish

 

Well stated Fish.

Nystagmus

 

I'm still using an ax6bc as my main board because it's solid as a rock. I
got a promise ata100 card for it, and a tualatin 1.2g celeron and slocket.

However, I've built a couple of machines this past week with nforce2-400
mainboards and xp2500+ cpus. Damn, those things are fast, especially since
they'll both happily run at 3200+ (400mhz cpu speed) all day long without
changing the stock voltage or cooling. Not bad when you can get the board
and cpu for less than $150.

Probably at some point I'll do the transplant, though it's not really
necessary.