What motherboard and company to buy from?

[tspengel]

Hello. Well I am looking at buying a 4th motherboard. I bought 2 Asus Sli deluxe mobo's, (one was a replacement) they both lasted a week beforing going dead. (no signal, no beep codes, no post) I bought a Dfi next, and it lasted 2 weeks. All these I bought through Newegg. I have had no other hardware issues from them. I talked to 2 computer stores in my area, and they have both quit doing new builds because of the mobo issue. They say it is getting worse everywhere. To make a long story short, can anyone recommend a quality socket 939 board with dual 16x SLi support, and from where, or am i stuck with "Dude, your getting a Dell!" I am a hardcore gamer who does not relish that idea.

P.S. No I have never overclocked these boards.

 

[o1die]

Believe it or not, I've had the fewest problems recently with ecs. They build almost as many boards as asus, so their quality must be pretty good. My open box asrock dual sata II works ok now, but I had to try numerous memory timings and bios versions before it was stable. Don't know why you want sli; it gives you the least bang for the buck, and frequently requires the best quality power supplies you can buy. I would use a minimum of 650 watts with only the following brands: ocz, pc power and cooling, seasonic, antec, enermax, or fortron.

 

[tspengel]

Very good, thank you for the reply. I have two 7600 gt vids I run in SLI. To tell you the truth, I believe you are right. I have not noticed a great deal of WOW!!!

 

[Bache]

Hello. Well I am looking at buying a 4th motherboard. I bought 2 Asus Sli deluxe mobo's, (one was a replacement) they both lasted a week beforing going dead. (no signal, no beep codes, no post) I bought a Dfi next, and it lasted 2 weeks. All these I bought through Newegg. I have had no other hardware issues from them. I talked to 2 computer stores in my area, and they have both quit doing new builds because of the mobo issue. They say it is getting worse everywhere. To make a long story short, can anyone recommend a quality socket 939 board with dual 16x SLi support, and from where, or am i stuck with "Dude, your getting a Dell!" I am a hardcore gamer who does not relish that idea.

P.S. No I have never overclocked these boards.

I have had a good run with ASUS in the past. although I have noticed that there quality control is low now, ie. the recent 2 MB's I bought had some of the capacitors lying over at 45' and other caps were straight as they should be.

They (caps) seemed to be soldered in roughly without due care.

But they still worked OK with no problems.

I like gigabyte now with there solid caps and build quality.

Gigabyte did have a bad reputation in the past with caps blowing, but now OK.

By the way, Dell are known to have blown cap problems, and builds are not realy performance rated, eg. BIOS has only a few options.

 

[ira176]

I've purchased two Asus motherboards in the past, and A7V and an A7N8X DX. Both were excellent as far as features and stability. I've also purchased and ECS K7S5A board for AMD socket A. I was disappointed with its stability. I've also purchased a gigabyte GA-5AX, which suffered stability issues as well. Gigabyte, though, I've heard has come a ways since the old socket 7 days. I also had an MSI board in the past, for socket 7, which had horrid stability problems, can't remember the model though. Recently I purchased an MSI K9A Platinum and it has been working very well, no problems to speak of.

The point is that motherboard manufacturers seem to have some fluctuation to their quality occasionally. Some manufacturers tend to have a longer stretch of quality products than others. On a whole though the industry altogether appears to be building their products better than a few product generations ago. The reason I went with MSI again was because they had the features I needed. I built the rest of my system using quality components to top it off.

I know this doesn't really answer your question, it's up to you to do some research on certain items that have caught your eye or choosing from another manufacturer who didn't leave a sour taste in your mouth recently.

 

[croc]

Try a dfi... I prefer the lanparty series, but others might fit your needs better.

Welcome to the "I got burned by ASUS" club.

 

[BUFF]

abit AN8 32X.
Remember that your system is only as good as the weakest link & especially if running SLI make sure that you have a quality PSU.
It's amazing how many people trust $000s of hardware to a $30 generic POS.

 

[Newf]

:Well I am looking at buying a 4th motherboard. I bought 2 Asus Sli deluxe mobo's, (one was a replacement) they both lasted a week beforing going dead. (no signal, no beep codes, no post) I bought a Dfi next, and it lasted 2 weeks...

Well dude, you got issues, and it not about motherboards. The failure rate you have experienced means to me that either your power supply is not up to the task or you have assembly problems. What power supply are you using?

 

[tspengel]

Thermaltake 500W. The motherboard requires 480.

 

[Newf]

That psu has no SLI support, no PCI-E connectors and 12v1=14amp, 12v2=15amp. This is marginal at best for a dual card setup. Do you use adapters for the videocards' extra power plug? I assume you are talking about this psu:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817153028
What videocard(s) are you running?

 

[tspengel]

The two asus 7600 gt cards do not have the extra power connections like my old 9700 pro did. Thank you for the info. You are not the first that said to get a better PSU. Do you think this will do the job?Power supply

P.S. Yes that is the PSU I have.

 

[Newf]

Yeah, Enermax makes good stuff.

 

[smitbret]

Let me be the second to recommend the Abit AN8 32x. Picked an open box from New Egg a few weeks ago, and this thing is awesome. 100% stable from the get go, everything is passively cooled so it is quiet. Next best overclocker to the DFIs from what I've seen. Lots of headers for USB, Firewire, SATA, PATA, etc. That PSU should be plenty good for a pair of 7600GTs. You could get by on less if you're on a budget.
-Brett

 

[tspengel]

Great info people, thank you very much for the help.