mainboard brands comparison

[frantaylor]

Does no one use SuperMicro MB

Yes I have an H8DME-2.

It has explicit support for Linux in the BIOS.

All the sensor hardware is detected and works great.

The on-board video will only work in SVGA mode, but I disabled it and got a real video card.

It's really a server motherboard, so it has no PCIe x16 slot.

You can use a PCI-e x8 to x16 adapter (from orbitmicro.com) to plug in a PCIe x16 video card with no noticeable loss in performance.

Performance and compatibility are OUTSTANDING. It's only SuperMicro for me from now on.

[Biker]

Have you seen the C2SBX+ LGA 775- Intel X48- ATX MB,
I building a newer system using some old stuff; keyboard/mouse, video cd, and new-
SuperMicro C2SBX+, LGA 775, Intel X48
Intel Core 2 Due E8400 Wolfdale 3Ghz-6MB L2
G. Skill (4X 2GB) SDRAM DDR3 1333 PC3 10666
Western Digital, Two VelociRaptor WD1500HLFS 150GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache
MSI NX8400GS
Thermaltake Case VH8000BWS
Tagan BZ 800 watt supply
NEXUS XiR 3500 CPU Cooler
Cooljag Falcon Mini Chipset Cooler
Thermaltake Extreme Spirit II Chipset Cooler
MEDIAPC ZE C98
ACER, Two 20? WS LCD 1680 X 1050
LG DVD RW GSA-H42LI
Logitech Wireless LX 700
ADS DVD XpressDX2
Planar 997-5253-00 Black Dual Monitor Stand for LCD Displays

[xenios]

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12776

not sure why deanjo recommended foxconn, i read they didnt support linux well.

I went with Deanjo's suggestion and have been very pleased with the Foxconn mobo. It runs cool (CPU/27, NB/24, Mobo/28) and quiet (sits 18" away and cannot hear it). My default OS is Lenny, and while I've loaded a number of additional distros, I've yet to run into a hardware related issue.

FWIW: in the referenced thread I mentioned an issue with playing flash videos. Well, the issue was how I'd configured the system. I can now play online videos (flash, divx, etc) with the same smooth clarity as when running native XP.

Can't comment on other Foxconn boards as my experience is limited to this one for general desktop use: it supports Linux.

Comparing the boards:
Gigabyte had the best manual and packaging.
Asus had the easiest front panel/led connector; be nice if all boards had one. Also had an embedded Linux OS to update, go online, troubleshoot, etc.
Foxconn was third on the list in layout, manual and packaging.

Another comparison was NB temp ranges. From my experience, and confirmed by talking to each company's tech support, Foxconn's mobo ran cooler than the other two. Haven't kept up with the latest/greatest so I don't know how much of this is still true.

[Duhorigh73]

mainboard brands comparison

Let us know what kind of mainboard you have.

Please take the poll and select your brand if one is missing, let me know and also post what model you have.

This will give us more insight as to what is out there besides the "big" players

Killeroy.

[energyman]

which poll?

[DanL]

EPoX and Abit - R.I.P (My first standalone board was an EPoX and it's still kicking).

MSI K9NU - ULI M1697-based (remember ULI?), for my mom's Windows PC. It has a broken RAM slot, it doesn't play well with PCIe 2.0 video cards, and a 64-bit LiveCD won't boot because of ACPI issues (yes, the BIOS is up-to-date and I tried all the acpi boot parameters). Of course, my mom doesn't care about any of those flaws, and I'm not surprised at them because the board was dirt cheap.

MSI - I had a 690G (K9Neo2-Digital?) board from them that eventually burned the IGP/north bridge because of undersized and/or poorly mounted heatsink. The board worked pretty well with Linux though; the only Linux-related flaw I can remember is lack of PWM fan sensor/control because it had a Fintek F1882 sensor.

ASUS - after the MSI-690G fiasco, I bought an M3A78 series. It burned my passively-cooled CPU by putting an additional 0.05V into it at "stock" (no undervolting options either). That was partially my fault for having "just enough cooling" to keep the CPU under 60C at extended load under normal voltages. The board also had a load of trouble with seeing multiple SATA drives and hotplugging in Linux, though, so I wasn't keen to try Asus again..

Biostar - I love their T-Force series boards (can't speak for their real low-end stuff). They provide nice touches in the BIOS, like undervolting, and they keep their BIOS's up-to-date with latest CPU's. My current board of choice is a TA770-A2. I've also built systems with a P965, a P35, and a 780G (again, all T-Force series).

[edgan]

Motherboard manufacturers

MSI: I bought a number of them in the AMD was king days. The chipsets where NVIDIA. They were cheap, and all pretty good. They tended to have minor quirks, but overall worked well enough.

Jetway: Cheap with a higher chance of failure. The most fun I had with one was finding they did their motherboard jumpers backward from everyone else's style on at last one motherboard, and shipped them in the clear position.

EPOX: They were ok years ago. They were inexpensive. Don't remember too much one way or the other.

Tyan: Used them back in the Pentium days. Pretty dull in aesthetics and in features. I have also heard of a fair number of issues with their boards over the years.

ASUS: Expensive, but mostly work. My biggest issue with them is they have been using solder on bioses for a while. So if you have a bad flash of the motherboard bios, you can only RMA it. The single ps/2 port on newer boards is annoying. I also couldn't get my Q6600 B3 to work on a newer P5D-E board that was supposed to support.

ABIT: Years ago they were pretty good. My last motherboard from them I replaced with an ASUS within a few days. It has issues with detecting hard drives reliably on boot. Months later a bios fix sorted that out. Recently I started using the board again since it has nine sata ports.

Biostar: Limited use, but good enough from what I have seen. I wasn't a fan of the onboard graphics, but I used one in a server for a year or two.

Gigabyte: Used them a few times. Dual bios is nice for flash safety. Tend to be cheaper than others. Features don't tend to be as nice, and reliability might be a bit of an issue.

Intel: Great for Intel only network cards. That is one major down side of almost any other desktop manufacturer, they use crap NICs from Realtek and Marvell. Reliability is pretty good, but not great. I can say this from working for a consulting company that used nothing but Intel motherboards for customers for years. They used to be pretty generic, but have gotten more into the overclocking scene.

I bought a Media series board of their's, but found it officially didn't support the Q6600 B3 I wanted to use. It did work with a newer Q6600 G0. The board also officially doesn't support Linux, but does work well enough. Just has a minor issue with the USB ports, the Linux kernel works around it.

Supermicro: I will be looking in their direction next time I am looking to make a motherboard purchase for myself. I am tired of the crap the enthusiast market pushes out. I have heard of a fair number of bios issues over time with them.



Overall the biggest lesson I have taken away from all my hardware experience, any company can have a bad product, or even a bad whole line of products. It tends to be when they depend on someone else.

Other lessons are things can radically change in behavior with very subtle changes. Just the other day I was working on a server that was having hard drive issues. I kept swapping hard drive, and had the guts hanging out. It was intermittently having issues with rebooting. Finally after I was all done, and put it all back together the problem went away.

On a related note, bios updates can be both good and bad. Though more likely to be good than bad. Just as big of an issue is proper support by your OS of choice. With Linux I have run in lots of network card driver issues. Especially in relation to jumbo frames, even on better drivers like Intel cards.

[energyman]

Asus will be outsourcing their mobo business soon.

http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/12/17/asuspegatron-saga-continues/

[zhark]

Gigabyte: Cheap & reliable. Has solid state capacitors, and MOSFET transistors, which helps with reliability of power supply to components on (and which draws power from) the motherboard.
Have had 3 gigabyte motherboards in a row without a complaint.

[Biker]

Supermicro: I will be looking in their direction next time I am looking to make a motherboard purchase for myself. I am tired of the crap the enthusiast market pushes out. I have heard of a fair number of bios issues over time with them.


Checkout the X8SAX MB from Supermicro, 1366 socket
or the C2SBX+-O, 775 socket