# Which motherboard brand has failed on you the most?



## tkpenalty (May 18, 2008)

So anyway, this poll is just to clear up some things I have been wondering about several motherboard manufacturers and their apparent "quality". Take note I am not using this thread to bash any specific manufacturer.

Basically the common manufacturers and the ones I'm most curious about (Namely, Gigabyte and ASUS) will be options, others will be in the "others" option.

So yeah, vote for whichever brand that has completely failed on you the most. Don't vote if nothing has happened to you as you are just screwing around with the reliability of the results. 

(No fanboi flame wars too).

Please mention which brand failed on you if you chose "Others"

*Do not vote if you have never had faliures. It is advised to vote based on a board that broke at the oldest, five years ago.*


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## Duxx (May 18, 2008)

Used ECS, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, and none have ever failed on me to date.  ECS is going on i think 4 years, the rest have been within the last 2.  Is there supposed to be a poll at the top?  I dont see one 

There it is!


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## tkpenalty (May 18, 2008)

Duxx said:


> Used ECS, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, and none have ever failed on me to date.  ECS is going on i think 4 years, the rest have been within the last 2.  Is there supposed to be a poll at the top?  I dont see one
> 
> There it is!



Note, do not vote unless the board has failed on you.


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## btarunr (May 18, 2008)

Tk, you made the blunder of missing out ECS, talk to a mod, add that option, sit back with popcorn to see the graphs shoot up.


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## Duxx (May 18, 2008)

tkpenalty said:


> Note, do not vote unless the board has failed on you.



Haven't voted on anything...  Didn't plan on it anyways, just giving my .02.


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## imperialreign (May 18, 2008)

btarunr said:


> Tk, you made the blunder of missing out ECS, talk to a mod, add that option, sit back with popcorn to see the graphs shoot up.





funny . . .




I've only ever had one mobo die, and it was an ABIT.

I've used quite a few different brands over the years, but I've had more ASUS boards than any other, and have never had one fail.


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## DaedalusHelios (May 18, 2008)

*Biostar* is the manufacturer with the most I bet.

*Biostar's recent offerings haven't been bad *but a while back they were awful.


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## Silverel (May 18, 2008)

I've had two socket A Asus boards that could never get the AGP slot to work for more than a couple days. It'd always revert to the PCI-bus. Not to mention half the ports would die off over time. My socket A rig at the moment doesn't have working PS2 ports, and 3 of 6 dead USB ports.


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## ShadowFold (May 18, 2008)

Gigabyte is on my "Do not buy unless its 100% off" list.


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## ShadowFold (May 18, 2008)

ASUS and Gigabyte, two of the bigger names are duking it out right now in the polls


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## francis511 (May 18, 2008)

I had a gigabyte board explode on me recently, tho it was prolly a problem with the psu !


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## zCexVe (May 18, 2008)

The .02 from mine is the more the mobos you use from a company,the higher will be their graphs here.There is always a chance to fail 1 from 100k rather than 1 from 1k.Anyway I've been like parttime in my friends PC shop,We do ASUS,FOXCONN,ASrock,Biostar.Others time to time.Most failures will be Mercury(Rebadged ECS),ECS,gigabyte(2004~06).We only had 1 failure for Asrock for 1000 mobos.Since we do not do ASUS very much(They are expensive)I cant have a good opinion on them.FOXconn had some performance issues with 945CM-S and it is fixed in CMX.


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## zCexVe (May 18, 2008)

btarunr said:


> Tk, you made the blunder of missing out ECS, talk to a mod, add that option, sit back with popcorn to see the graphs shoot up.


We Asians seem to have good knowledge on ECS and Mercury(Rebadged ECS,although they forget to remove the ECS part from onboard GPU vendor ID ).


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## vega22 (May 18, 2008)

i cant add more than 1 vote but i have had 1 board from a few different makers fail on me.

1 nvid ref
1 asrock (i knew it was going to fail but i still let the temps get out of hand :twisted)
1 asus


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## tkpenalty (May 18, 2008)

I assume that most of you guys are male...but I remember we only had "on/off" switches and not "on ,maybe, <stuff in between> then off"

Only vote if a board is dead. end of story! Don't vote if you hate a manufacturer but never had a dead board.


Even though its too early to decide, I will predict that intel has the lowest amount of faliures. Pretty easy to know why.

I've had 3xx Dead gigabytes, 2x dead GA P31 DS3L in the store I worked at (I'd blame bad shipping practises as the box containing the boards ended up pretty battered), and one dead GA P965 S3-as a result of the marvel yukon NIC taking out the board.


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## zCexVe (May 18, 2008)

tkpenalty said:
			
		

> Even though its too early to decide, I will predict that intel has the lowest amount of faliures. Pretty easy to know why.


Yeah  What is there in them to fail?So less stuff built in.


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## puma99dk| (May 18, 2008)

last year between christmas and new year my AsRock ALiveNF7G-HDready Bios chipped died, just for an update so AsRock shipped me a new one, that was not the greatest moment of my life. and my dad's AsRock 4CoreDual-SATA2 can only run he's Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 at 2300mhz but it say at bios 2400mhz even with the newest bios, and not the internet has start to go if u connect a usb harddrive in the usb ports in the motherboard 

picture of Bios P1.90: AsRock.4CoreDual-SATA2.bios.jpg and XP with CPU-Z AsRock_4CoreDual-SATA2.jpg
(So if anyone have a idea how to fix it, other when to say go out and buy a new motherboard, p.m me or something. i had tried to disable and enable "EIST" and "Advanced Host Conf: Pipeline DRQCTL", but if i just try to set the multipler from 266 to 267mhz XP will not start.)

and last time i had Asus was at socket 939 where both PCI-E was dead, so now i'm going with DFI or Gigabyte they have never failed for me


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## echo75 (May 18, 2008)

this vote will not be objective enough, ofc the mobos that are bought most will be the ones with the highest episodes of  problems.

 Look at the poll results, no one / very few buy intel boards ofc the rate of "failing" will be less since there arent many to expirience failures.


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## tkpenalty (May 18, 2008)

From a logical standpoint its obvious why Intel boards generally are the most reliable in server environments/normal usage. Take for example, their 865 boards to this date still work fine, and they are abundant in that form of usage. However when you compare to other manufacturers, 865 boards are something that usually are dead. Its to do with the fact that Intel designs their boards to work well, and obviously comply with the standards that they impose themselves, as opposed to the other manufacturers who may avert that. 

Its like their CPUs.


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## ShadowFold (May 18, 2008)

I dont think Intel boards can even OC for a crap anyway so why would enthusiasts buy them


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## tkpenalty (May 18, 2008)

ShadowFold said:


> I dont think Intel boards can even OC for a crap anyway so why would enthusiasts buy them



Narrow minded...Enthusiasts make up less than 1% of PC users. Don't OC for crap? Its mainly their bios limits that impose that...


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## Scheich (May 18, 2008)

My last 939 gigabyte died after half a year for unknown reasons, but thats not much compared
to the 15 others i used, which mainly came from asus.


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## Kursah (May 18, 2008)

The ONLY motherboard failures I've ever had to deal with were from ASUS based boards...still love using em' tho. But I've gone through ECS, Gigabyte, DFI, Foxconn, Gateway OE stuff, Packard Bell OE stuff, Compaq OE stuff...and when I purchased a Non-OE ASUS board it failed during OC purposes, the DFI, ECS and Gigabyte boards all have done quite well in OC purposes, the ASUS stuff was damn good, and I still think they make good products...but I go for best-bang-for-the-buck...they don't win me over as much anymore on that standpoint.


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## Wile E (May 18, 2008)

The only board I've ever had die on me, is a reference 680i. I had it running for less than a full day. Went up in smoke when I started 3DMark 06.


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## GLD (May 18, 2008)

None have died on me. I did murder an ASUS A8N5X when a screwdriver slipped and nicked a trace while removing a oem 939 hs.


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## Deleted member 38767 (May 18, 2008)

My to latest MB are ASUS and I had only problems with them - both went RMA over 6 months. 
I'm dealing with RMA every day (thats my job) and from what I've seen ASrock are at the bottom.


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## btarunr (May 18, 2008)

Guess I was wrong, not many vote for ECS. Could be because not many made the mistake of buying them.


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## Wile E (May 18, 2008)

btarunr said:


> Guess I was wrong, not many vote for ECS. Could be because not many made the mistake of buying them.



I did, once. The reason I can't vote for it is, it didn't stay in my rig long enough to fail. lol.


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## oily_17 (May 18, 2008)

Asus A8N32 last week.Well maybe not died but think it is on it's way out.Been getting loads of BSOD's and  bios checksum error last week.

Although this could be due to the fact my PSU died on me lately in this PC.


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## btarunr (May 18, 2008)

Wile E said:


> I did, once. The reason I can't vote for it is, it didn't stay in my rig long enough to fail. lol.



But it did fail, didn't it? I used a KN1 Extreme on a 3500+, no OC, winter, the capacitors suffer diarrhea in two odd months' use. :shadedshu


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## Wile E (May 18, 2008)

btarunr said:


> But it did fail, didn't it? I used a KN1 Extreme on a 3500+, no OC, winter, the capacitors suffer diarrhea in two odd months' use. :shadedshu



No, didn't fail. Only used it for a short time. I replaced it because of my severe disappointment in it. lol.


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## Judas (May 18, 2008)

If we are talking about Dead boards then Asus....  for me had 2 dead A socket boards  can't remember version number lol,had also 2 faulty ones the Asus crosshair and the XFX 790i but they weren't dead


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## AsRock (May 18, 2008)

Gigabyte with a VIA chipset. And a PC Chips mobo with Intel chipset.  I learned my lesson NEVER again.

This was back in PII days i'll never try them again well maybe VIA if they can prove they can do better than INTEL HA.


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## CDdude55 (May 18, 2008)

Gigabyte failed on me. It was a nforce3 motherboard, but i really think it was my fault since i didn't use any caution(it was my first build). Now i have a 680i SLI SE motherboard and people have said they are bad and die alot. But i have not seen it fail to this day. Maybe it is because i don't OC or maybe i just got lucky and got me a good one.


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## onry (May 18, 2008)

i have had more pcchips boards die on me than anything else. 
BUT as for when i was workin in a local pc shop it was ecs and biostar boards i saw that failed


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## [I.R.A]_FBi (May 18, 2008)

None died on me but the hardest to work on and identify to get drivers was P Chips.


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## CrackerJack (May 18, 2008)

Same why here, never had one to die on me. The worst board i've every had was a sapphire x580. Bad drivers and little to no overclocking.


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## HTC (May 18, 2008)

With the exception of the one that came with my pentium 100 MHz, every board i have ever had was an Asus board.

Thus far, i had problems with the first: 1 of the COM ports didn't work. Took it to the store i bought it from and had them take care of it (found the problem 1 week before warranty ended): had it back 1 month later working perfectly.

None of the others gave me problems except my current one, though i'm not sure if it's a software or hardware related problem.

Dead motherboards? Nope: i have been lucky, so far!


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## ghost101 (May 18, 2008)

So Asrock > Gigabyte or Asus? Lol.

This survey is completely flawed.


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## AsRock (May 18, 2008)

ghost101 said:


> So Asrock > Gigabyte or Asus? Lol.
> 
> This survey is completely flawed.




HEHE i think that too.  I'd say stay away from VIA chipsets and PC Chips. ASUS for me been ok they finally fixed my det ram issue.

Best mobo i've had has to be ABit and this ASUS mobo i am using next to be honest how packed this mobo is they have done a good dam job with it.

I vote PC Chips THE WORSED.. Maybe put ECS there too ?/  Never tried them my self but heard some crap about them.


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## allen337 (May 18, 2008)

You will find the most popular (motherboards bought) will have the most failures. If asus sold 100 motherboards and foxconn sold 10 how can you compare them for being good or not? Ive had dead Asus,Ecs,Gigabyte,Abit,Soyo,and MSI. The most dead were gigabyte probably because Ive had over 60 gigabyte boards.  ALLEN


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## imperialreign (May 18, 2008)

allen337 said:


> You will find the most popular (motherboards bought) will have the most failures. If asus sold 100 motherboards and foxconn sold 10 how can you compare them for being good or not? Ive had dead Asus,Ecs,Gigabyte,Abit,Soyo,and MSI. The most dead were gigabyte probably because Ive had over 60 gigabyte boards.  ALLEN



I just realized that too, looking at poll results so far . . . the most popular board makes are leading in failure rates


in hindsight, I think this poll might be inherently flawed


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## Threeflow (May 18, 2008)

Over the years I have had:

2 Abit boards
3 Gigabyte boards
5 Asus boards
1 DFI board
1 MSI board
1 Intel board


Of those, I have had the following fail:
2 Abit boards (both Socket A)  --  No Post
2 Asus boards (both Socket A)  --  No Post
1 Intel board (Socket 775)  --  No Post
1 MSI board (Socket A)  --  No Post
1 Gigabyte board (Socket 775)  --  Dead IDE port


As you can see, and I'm sure anyone who remembers can attest to this, the Socket A days were filled with unreliability!

Overall I have been quite please with all the ASUS and Gigabyte boards I have owned in the past, and own to this day.
My higher end machines that currently use ASUS and Gigabyte boards, use the ones with all solid state capacitors (ftw!)


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## Darknova (May 18, 2008)

Asus.

I've had 4 Asus boards in the past, 3 Socket A, 1 939.

The socket As all had the same issue. AGP died. 939 lost all USB ports and LAN.

Those were the last Asus I've ever owned (they were bought one after the other).

Since then I've had MSI, Abit and Foxconn. Never had any of those fail, and the only one I wouldn't buy again is MSI due to it's piss-poor BIOS support.


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## jonmcc33 (May 18, 2008)

Asus will probably be on top because it's the most popular selling. 

I ruined an Asus A8R-MVP when I flashed the BIOS so I don't blame Asus for that one. An ECS K7S5A just up and failed on me.


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## Gam'ster (May 18, 2008)

A fujitsu-siemens D1625 skt 478 generic O.E.M board, weird stuff started happening, usb ports on/off when they felt like and no O/C options well it wouldn't but still lol. It run very well for 3/4 years or so.

Cheers 
Gam


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## bretts31344 (May 18, 2008)

jonmcc33 said:


> Asus will probably be on top because it's the most popular selling.



Exactly. Even if all the companies had the same failure rate (which is unlikely), the most popular brands would lead the poll since there are so many motherboards sold.

I didn't vote since none of my motherboards have failed. I use three Asus boards and one Asrock board. Everything has been flawless and is still in use.


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## Gam'ster (May 18, 2008)

jonmcc33 said:


> Asus will probably be on top because it's the most popular selling.




Yeah pretty much, its like when these Car reliability surveys are done and the most expensive usually German or equivalent  cars are bottom and cheap rubbish at the top why??, cos most German and the like exec cars are usually sales rep or company cars 40 -50K miles a year ( how many of those are looked after properly without a service contract ) and mostly retired ppl use the cheap rubbish and do 2k a year hmm i wonder which one will give up the ghost first and of course units sold come into it, more will break out of 10k than 1 k u get the idea.
Sorry for off topic but J.D Power and other surveys do my nut in.

Cheers 
Gam


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## molnart (May 18, 2008)

I never had a failed board, I still have a working Socket 7 Intel board from 1997 (at least it was working when i tried it last time, 6 months ago). 
btw, i'm surprised MSI isnt on top. quite popular and quite crappy boards IMHO. or if a board is bad out-of-the-box it does not count as failure ?


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## DaedalusHelios (May 18, 2008)

I think *Asus fanboys *just inflated the Gigabyte number, because they are mad that Gigabyte called their favorite company, liars. LOL Its pathetic. :shadedshu


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## ShadowFold (May 18, 2008)

DaedalusHelios said:


> I think *Asus fanboys *just inflated the Gigabyte number, because they are mad that Gigabyte called their favorite company, liars. LOL Its pathetic. :shadedshu



Or maybe Gigabyte just sucks at QC.


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## Basard (May 18, 2008)

I've owned, in order of appearance: tandy?, intel, compaq, dell, biostar, msi, and gigabyte... played around with some asus and asrock.  The only one it seems i've had a problem with was the ASrock, and I'm not even sure if that asrock has a problem... 

the only bad luck i've had so far is with ram, hard drives, psu's, and cdroms.... thats crucial, mushkin, seagate, and asus--respectively.... crucial being the most disappointing, based on only their reputation i guess.... and the TWO asus DVD-burners out of three isn;'t very good either.  although MY asus dvd burner does just fine with cat hair and nicotine surrounding it, the two other's my friend and sister-in-law owned died.

never really had a problem with a mobo though, thank god.


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## philbrown23 (May 19, 2008)

these are the boards and amounts I have had fail on me

Gigabyte=10 a few fried  northbridges and a few caught on fire from the capacitors
evga 680i= 7 mostly bad cpas that caught on fire upon initial startup
ecs= 4 just all around crappy boards and knew they would die eventually
dfi= 2 not sure the cause for falure but I think it was the pci-e lanes just stopped working correctly


thats it all together I have owned 15 Asus boards and not one has died on me EVER


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## spearman914 (May 19, 2008)

I think popularity matters for dead mobos. Like the more mobos of that brand is sold the more likely the rate it will be dead. For me its ECS. That company should've made something better.



> Originally Posted by philbrown23
> thats it all together I have owned 15 Asus boards and not one has died on me EVER



Eventually it will


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## DaedalusHelios (May 19, 2008)

I have owned many Asus boards, and many have also died.

I have owned a few Gigabyte boards and none have died.

Same with MSI, out of the three MSI boards I have bought, none have died.

I own two Asus 750i P5N-D SLI motherboards right now.... I hope they don't kick the bucket.


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## VroomBang (May 19, 2008)

You'd have to compare the number of failing units divided by the number sold (=failure rate) , otherwise, this poll is massively skewed. Asus and GigaByte sell more than other brands, and will therefore most likely have more failures (in absolute numbers) than their competitors.


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## spearman914 (May 19, 2008)

VroomBang said:


> You'd have to compare the number of failing units divided by the number sold (=failure rate) , otherwise, this poll is massively skewed. Asus and GigaByte sell more than other brands, and will therefore most likely have more failures (in absolute numbers) than their competitors.



Yea its just like every freakin person on earth bought only asus boards and everyone will vote for asus but no one voted for others since they never bought from that brand. But higher rate doesn't depend if the brand is screwed up or something.


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## cdawall (May 19, 2008)

i have 1 dead MSI and one dead ECS but both are from socket A days also one dead Machspeed but that was replaced for free thanks to lifetime warranties woot machspeed


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## hat (May 19, 2008)

I killed an Intel D865PERL... but that was my fault cause my antec smartpower was driving me crazy


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## department76 (May 19, 2008)

for the record, the only two DOA and/or bad boards i've ever encountered ber both ASUS.  the first was an old VIA KT133 based board (my first build) that caused endless issues with the system until the problem was identified as the baord, which solved all problems with the system when the bad board was replaced.  the second was an A8N-SLI Premium that had bad power regulators or something, it killed TWO psu's before we decided it was the board that was causing it.  replaced it and that rig has run flawlessly for the last 3 years.


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## Pandaz3 (May 19, 2008)

I voted ASUS and I have Bought my last ASUS Motherboard, ( I like their Video Cards though)

I did have to RMA an Abit and a MSI, but both companies were very reasonable with their RMA's (The Abit had a voltage problem with the Dimms and the MSI was not rated for the CPU I used and went up in smoke, very professionally repaired)

ASUS was just a pain, ever increasing pain and finally unusable.  Their RMA system is the absolute worst I have encountered.  I had a A8N-E which they eventually (Last month) replaced with a A8N SLI SE, which is a big downgrade to me.  I won't use SLI and be forced to use a sound card (Yes I have spare sound cards)  

I was planning on upgrading the computer at my Mom's using this board and a 3800 Venice, XFX 6800GS to replace a NF7-S and 2600 Mobile, 9200 SE.  I have found it has a bad Dimm slot (Nearest the socket) and now reliability worries make me hesitate.  I don't care for the 1,000 mile drive one way to repair her computer.  She's 85 and doesn't want to be without a computer.

It is bad when reliability becomes a concern.

Might have to use an ASRock.


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## stolennick (May 19, 2008)

several boards died in my cases 

6 asus ( 3x p4p800, 1x a8n, 2x m2nws)
3 dfi (1x x38, 2x lp nf4 sli)
1 abit ( the last one with via chipset for 939)

this is not including the number of boards, which were killed in oc action


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## DaedalusHelios (May 19, 2008)

Pandaz3 said:


> I voted ASUS and I have Bought my last ASUS Motherboard, ( I like their Video Cards though)
> 
> I did have to RMA an Abit and a MSI, but both companies were very reasonable with their RMA's (The Abit had a voltage problem with the Dimms and the MSI was not rated for the CPU I used and went up in smoke, very professionally repaired)
> 
> ...



Yeah I have RMA'ed the same motherboard 4 times to ASUS and they never repaired it fully. They refused to replace it..... I didn't even OC on it and it was a 780i board that had cost me a ton!

They really don't care.

Gigabyte chooses motherboard colors like Asian preschool kids, but at least the boards don't break on me.


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## tkpenalty (May 19, 2008)

Gigabyte and ASUS have relatively the same amount of motherboards being sold... ASUS has two ranges, their vanilla and black boards, I think their vanilla are the boards that suffer from the most problems... The store that I worked at avoided ASUS like a sore thumb due to the amounts of quirks, versus Gigabyte.


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## Deleted member 3 (May 19, 2008)

ShadowFold said:


> I dont think Intel boards can even OC for a crap anyway so why would enthusiasts buy them



Bad axe, Skulltrail.


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## btarunr (May 19, 2008)

ShadowFold said:


> I dont think Intel boards can even OC for a crap anyway so why would enthusiasts buy them



That doesn't imply that they fail the most. My ECS board failed at stock speeds. 

Intel BoneTrail gives you ample OC options on par with any X38/X48 board. All boards in their Extreme Series have OC options. Its just that apart from Extreme Series their other boards are those with integrated graphics that are targetted towards users who would probably never OC. There's a P35DP media series board (P35 + ICH9R) that comes with no OC options and very picky with memory. But that still doesn't amount to fail.


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## Black Panther (May 19, 2008)

I had an ECS which failed after 6 years, and two Asrocks which gave up after 4 years.


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## UnkAsn93 (May 19, 2008)

tkpenalty said:


> Gigabyte and ASUS have relatively the same amount of motherboards being sold... ASUS has two ranges, their vanilla and black boards, I think their vanilla are the boards that suffer from the most problems... The store that I worked at avoided ASUS like a sore thumb due to the amounts of quirks, versus Gigabyte.



The store I work for differs. We have had no problems with Gigabyte or Asus, but we've used Asus for the past 3 years. No troubles.


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## paybackdaman (May 19, 2008)

Not sure of the original manufacturer, but I had 4 Dell motherboards fail on me from people's computers I worked on. Each time it was the IDE controller that went. It wouldn't recognize anything. Jumper settings were correct, in bios the IDE controller was turned on. Yet, none of the drives I put in it were detected on either one. I tried reflashing using a bootable USB drive, but even after the flash it still didn't detect them. Then again, I have two DELL Optiplexes and 1 Dell Dimension personally, and I haven't had any problems with them at all. In fact, they are the easiest to upkeep. So I am pretty sure that these people just got a bad batch...and lived in the same area...and all needed them fixed in the same month...Now that I think about it...it was probably the bios revision that did it in. =/. Oh well.


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## rick22 (May 19, 2008)

Asus....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................another .....................RMA


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## Evo85 (May 19, 2008)

I have had 2 MSI boards go bad on me.. Kinda soured my taste for them.


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## spud107 (May 19, 2008)

iv had one msi board die, my ms-6373 k7n420pro, but that was my own fault for being too rough taking the nb cooler off, the rest in my sig still run to this day,
had a gigabyte die, but it was found in the street so probably already dying when i got it lol.


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## allen337 (May 19, 2008)

I didnt mention all the boards that died after 4 years of use because 4 years is kinda like end of life for a motherboard. Matter of fact if I have one that last 4 years Im very happy with the company and will do business again with them. Just pisses me off with asus putting out motherboards that are quirky and needing a bios update from the original box, then you spend the rest of your life waiting on them to release another bios to make everything else work on it. I have a p5wd2-e premium board ive had 4 years and the marvel raid still dont work on it. It is a good motherboard though.  ALLEN


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## msgclb (May 19, 2008)

I've had two ASUS boards fail. One failed the smell test and the other just wouldn't boot.


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## Solaris17 (May 19, 2008)

gonna have to say ECS


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## jonmcc33 (May 19, 2008)

DaedalusHelios said:


> I think *Asus fanboys *just inflated the Gigabyte number, because they are mad that Gigabyte called their favorite company, liars. LOL Its pathetic. :shadedshu



If you've been around computers as long as I have you'd know how long Gigabyte goes back to making very poor motherboards due to bad QA. It might not be that way anymore but that doesn't erase the past. This goes back to Pentium III and Athlon timeframe. 

My ECS K7S5A came out in 2001 and died after 6 months of relatively moderate use (e-mail, web browsing). That was 7 years ago but I'm still going to mark them off in the poll. 

My Asus A8R-MVP was working fine till I got stupid and decided to flash the BIOS. I killed it but hey, it's a failed product and I still mark them off in the poll. 

Nobody is a fanboy so drop the kiddie talk.


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## jonmcc33 (May 19, 2008)

tkpenalty said:


> Gigabyte and ASUS have relatively the same amount of motherboards being sold... ASUS has two ranges, their vanilla and black boards, I think their vanilla are the boards that suffer from the most problems... The store that I worked at avoided ASUS like a sore thumb due to the amounts of quirks, versus Gigabyte.



No, not even close. Last time I saw Asus had a 33% market share as opposed to Gigabyte at 13%.


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## DaedalusHelios (May 20, 2008)

jonmcc33 said:


> If you've been around computers as long as I have you'd know how long Gigabyte goes back to making very poor motherboards due to bad QA. It might not be that way anymore but that doesn't erase the past. This goes back to Pentium III and Athlon timeframe.
> 
> My ECS K7S5A came out in 2001 and died after 6 months of relatively moderate use (e-mail, web browsing). That was 7 years ago but I'm still going to mark them off in the poll.
> 
> ...



Unless you are talking pre-windows 95 I got ya covered. You are known as the biggest asshole on these forums, and I suggest you quit while your ahead.


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## sneekypeet (May 20, 2008)

DaedalusHelios said:


> Unless you are talking pre-windows 95 I got ya covered. You are known as the biggest asshole on these forums, and I suggest you quit while your ahead.



wow no sugar on that comment!


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## Pandaz3 (May 20, 2008)

jonmcc33 said:


> If you've been around computers as long as I have you'd know how long Gigabyte goes back to making very poor motherboards due to bad QA. It might not be that way anymore but that doesn't erase the past. This goes back to Pentium III and Athlon timeframe.
> 
> My ECS K7S5A came out in 2001 and died after 6 months of relatively moderate use (e-mail, web browsing). That was 7 years ago but I'm still going to mark them off in the poll.
> 
> ...



I have only had two Gigabyte boards a Socket A 7DXR which I finally gave away...working and a Via based 754, which I still have.  ASUS is the only one unexplained for me.  I don't know why I haven't bought more Gigabytes, probably price


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## erocker (May 20, 2008)

Asus has been around (and popular) for many years.  Of course it's going to win.  In this "modern" age, I've owned nothing but Asus and Gigabyte, both excellent manufacturers.  In one Asus board, I lost the IDE controller, in two Gigabytes, I lost the onboard sound and on one I had a cap blow-up.  Since '99 I'm pretty sure I've owned four Gigabyte's, and seven Asus boards, and even the ones that eventually failed served thier pourpose very well.  A lot of times it's the chipset (nvidia, ati, via, and extinct others) that fail.


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## DrPepper (May 20, 2008)

I had 3 asrock boards die on me all from sudden crapness failure. Never figured out why they broke as well just when I turned the pc on it refused to boot and there was a smell of burning.


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## JrRacinFan (May 20, 2008)

I had voted ECS, It's the only motherboard that has ever failed on me. It was a K7S5A. I have used Abit, Asrock, Asus and Gigabyte boards previously.


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## Wile E (May 20, 2008)

btarunr said:


> That doesn't imply that they fail the most. My ECS board failed at stock speeds.
> 
> Intel BoneTrail gives you ample OC options on par with any X38/X48 board. All boards in their Extreme Series have OC options. Its just that apart from Extreme Series their other boards are those with integrated graphics that are targetted towards users who would probably never OC. There's a P35DP media series board (P35 + ICH9R) that comes with no OC options and very picky with memory. But that still doesn't amount to fail.



I have one of those (it's actually a DP35DP, btw). My dad made the mistake of buying it. I gave him the GB P35-DS3R that I got from an RMA on a discontinued 680i from Newegg, and I took the DP35DP off of his hands for him. Thing is a piece of crap.


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## jonmcc33 (May 20, 2008)

JrRacinFan said:


> I had voted ECS, It's the only motherboard that has ever failed on me. It was a K7S5A.



Ah, a very popular selling (and failing) motherboard.


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## cdawall (May 20, 2008)

all of you who had a K7S5A do know that even after the warranty ended if you called ECS and had a K7S5A with bad caps they sent you a replacement free of charge correct?


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## tkpenalty (May 20, 2008)

From the results, considering how ECS is not really a popular brand these days, ECS has more faliures on average than other manufacturers.. ASUS, and Gigabyte have typical numbers as they are more popular. I'd advise you guys to vote, based on boards which have broken down on you in the *last five years*


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## Thermopylae_480 (May 20, 2008)

Please treat each other in a polite and respectful manner or this thread will be closed. 

Thanks


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## Thermopylae_480 (May 20, 2008)

tkpenalty said:


> From the results, considering how ECS is not really a popular brand these days, ECS has more faliures on average than other manufacturers.. ASUS, and Gigabyte have typical numbers as they are more popular. I'd advise you guys to vote, based on boards which have broken down on you in the *last five years*



I agree.  You're numbers will be more accurate and less influenced by rumor and speculation if you only vote from personal experience.


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## thebeephaha (May 20, 2008)

I voted ASUS because thats all I really buy and I'm on my 3rd Striker Extreme so... eh, its hard to tell. Though my gut feeling says ECS as I replace tons of those at work at my shop. Back in the day I had two Soyo boards die on me, but they stopped making motherboards, guess there was a reason huh?


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## niko084 (May 20, 2008)

I blew up an Asus, but I had the northbridge volted all the way up and was trying for an insane overclock....

Had 2 Abit IP35-Es fry on me within a month each, finally replaced it with my new P5K-E.

Didn't vote, but at work I get a TON of blown Intel boards, and well every E-Machine that comes in the door, okay about 75% of them, whoever makes their boards I don't want to know.


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## HTC (May 20, 2008)

thebeephaha said:


> I voted ASUS because thats all I really buy and I'm on my 3rd Striker Extreme so... eh, its hard to tell. Though my gut feeling says ECS as I replace tons of those at work at my shop. Back in the day I had two Soyo boards die on me, but they stopped making motherboards, guess there was a reason huh?



Isn't that board one of those that uses the 790i chip? If so, the problem is the chip, from what i've read: not the board.

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=60198&highlight=790i


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## JrRacinFan (May 20, 2008)

cdawall said:


> all of you who had a K7S5A do know that even after the warranty ended if you called ECS and had a K7S5A with bad caps they sent you a replacement free of charge correct?



Knew that but didn't even bother. It was at the time when I was switching over to LGA775.


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## Smartbomb (May 20, 2008)

Just had an Asus P5N32-E SLI bad right outta the box. Had to swap a few different sets of memory in it to confirm as it would take no bios changes without corrupting the bios. The bios would crash and freeze. Flashed it several times in the process of determining the bad product in this build. It is on it's way back and a gigabyte p35 is replacing it


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## pagalms (May 20, 2008)

Abit for me. I'm wondering why didn't they marked KN9-SLI as "Epic failure board".


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## ntdouglas (May 21, 2008)

I had 3 gigabyte 965-dq6 boards die on me in 6 months, the last one they refused to cover under warranty. Best thing they could have done to me. Bought the legendary Asus p5b deluxe and loved it. Now I have an Evga 780i board. Best board I have ever owned. I will continue with evga and nvidia, period.


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## jonmcc33 (May 21, 2008)

cdawall said:


> all of you who had a K7S5A do know that even after the warranty ended if you called ECS and had a K7S5A with bad caps they sent you a replacement free of charge correct?



It was $50, I needed a replacement ASAP and ended up with a Shuttle AK38N motherboard and didn't really want to put another ECS product in my wife's computer. That Shuttle lasted my wife until I upgraded her with my Asus P4S800D-E and Pentium 4 2.8C hand-me-down.


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## thebeephaha (May 21, 2008)

HTC said:


> Isn't that board one of those that uses the 790i chip? If so, the problem is the chip, from what i've read: not the board.
> 
> http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=60198&highlight=790i



Naw its the 680i, funny thing is my P5N32-E SLI, almost identical to the Striker only technically less sophisticated, is WAY more stable only just not as good of an overclocker.


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## btarunr (May 21, 2008)

ghost101 said:


> So Asrock > Gigabyte or Asus? Lol.
> 
> This survey is completely flawed.



No, it's no flawed since not many own an ASRock board in the first place, not that they own it and didn't face fail. 

ASUS and Gigabyte gets more votes because of the sheer number of people who buy them.

If 100 people buy ASUS and 20 boards end up DOA, 10 people buy ASRock and 3 end up DOA, ASUS is the better brand.



DaedalusHelios said:


> I think *Asus fanboys *just inflated the Gigabyte number, because they are mad that Gigabyte called their favorite company, liars. LOL Its pathetic. :shadedshu



I don't think so. If fanboy inflation was the case, AMD fanboys could've easily inflated the Intel Desktop Boards bar in the poll. Before they started with 'Ultra Durable', they really made bad boards that failed in style.


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## ktr (May 21, 2008)

For me, the bad are (in order)

1. Intel (the bios is nothing but fail. I haven't had much posting issues, but these boards are nothing but fail for me. They lock up, they take ages to boot, they suffer many issues, etc)
2. ECS / PC Chips (ironically, only like 5% had posting issues, but these boards don't have longevity...poor peformance)
3. ABIT (had many dead boards that don't post, around 50%)


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## tkpenalty (May 21, 2008)

ktr said:


> For me, the bad are (in order)
> 
> 1. Intel (the bios is nothing but fail. I haven't had much posting issues, but these boards are nothing but fail for me. They lock up, they take ages to boot, they suffer many issues, etc)
> 2. ECS / PC Chips (ironically, only like 5% had posting issues, but these boards don't have longevity...poor peformance)
> 3. ABIT (had many dead boards that don't post, around 50%)



As I said, if you haven't had one board die on you yet, *DO NOT VOTE*


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## tkpenalty (May 21, 2008)

btarunr said:


> I don't think so. If fanboy inflation was the case, AMD fanboys could've easily inflated the Intel Desktop Boards bar in the poll. Before they started with 'Ultra Durable', they really made bad boards that failed in style.



+1. Gigabyte boards before they started using the ultra durable stuff usually had capacitors blowing up left and right. Well they were the first to have a board with 8 phases though (when they realised the normal components sucked), and as a result of their solid caps/shielded ferrites, other manufacturers did the same


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## malware (May 21, 2008)

Definitely EPOX here. I'll always remember my last year adventures with their motherboards. I had to assemble a machine for a collegue of mine, and decided to go on with an Epox 945Pro something motherboard. All parts were new and for the first time I decided not to test them outside the case, but just assemble them in it and fire it up. When I first started nothing came up ... blank screen. After a quick check and disasembly of the motherboard there was a black spot on the back of the PCB. OK, so I got a defect mobo (it happens), yes but it fried the CPU (c2d), memory, and the video card .... holly sh@t. Fortunately all parts had warranty, so they were replaced in no time with a brand new EPOX mobo. The story continues ... the second Epox mobo had a bad chipset. The whole system was working fine "until you place your arms near the PC case" that's what my friend told me ... haha. After hours and hours trying to find where the problem is, I started tapping on the motherboard with the back of a screwdriver ... so when a vibration occured near the north bridge, the system immediately restarted. Every time there's little vibration (you place your arms on the desk where the PC sits) it restarts ... poor Epox. Second motherboard gone RMA. That's not the end of the story ... they sent me a third motherboard, yay ... no boot again, fortunatelly all parts where alive after the first start. Eventually I changed the mobo with an ASUS equivalent and my friend was happy after almost two weeks with crappy Epox motherboards.


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## tkpenalty (May 21, 2008)

malware said:


> Definitely EPOX here. I'll always remember my last year adventures with their motherboards. I had to assemble a machine for a collegue of mine, and decided to go on with an Epox 945Pro something motherboard. All parts were new and for the first time I decided not to test them outside the case, but just assemble them in it and fire it up. When I first started nothing came up ... blank screen. After a quick check and disasembly of the motherboard there was a black spot on the back of the PCB. OK, so I got a defect mobo (it happens), yes but it fried the CPU (c2d), memory, and the video card .... holly sh@t. Fortunately all parts had warranty, so they were replaced in no time with a brand new EPOX mobo. The story continues ... the second Epox mobo had a bad chipset. The whole system was working fine "until you place your arms near the PC case" that's what my friend told me ... haha. After hours and hours trying to find where the problem is, I started tapping on the motherboard with the back of a screwdriver ... so when a vibration occured near the north bridge, the system immediately restarted. Every time there's little vibration (you place your arms on the desk where the PC sits) it restarts ... poor Epox. Second motherboard gone RMA. That's not the end of the story ... they sent me a third motherboard, yay ... no boot again, fortunatelly all parts where alive after the first start. Eventually I changed the mobo with an ASUS equivalent and my friend was happy after almost two weeks with crappy Epox motherboards.



That suggests really poor manufacturing equipment if the solder balls on the NB weren't properly done...


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## mitsirfishi (May 21, 2008)

i had a bad spell with asus with there P5lD2's three went boom 1st one just died 2nd had a cold boot problem third one never worked then they sent me the P5ld2-se went on fire  only other board's i know to go haywire of mine was my M2R32-MVP(AM2) gigabyte wise and msi never had one go wrong


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## tkpenalty (May 21, 2008)

Intel and DFI seem to have the lowest amount of faliures... then again, not many consumers purchase their motherboards.


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## jonmcc33 (May 22, 2008)

tkpenalty said:


> Intel and DFI seem to have the lowest amount of faliures... then again, not many consumers purchase their motherboards.



Actually, Intel motherboards are in quite a bit of OEM computers (HP, Dell, etc). DFI is more popular with the hardcore tweaking people. Everyone was buying their nForce4 S939 boards.


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## spud107 (May 22, 2008)

dfi mobo's dont fail, its the components that they push to the max that fails . . .


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## mortal (May 22, 2008)

During sck. 939 era abit gave me a lot of hedache with tccd and bh6 memory modules.


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## jonmcc33 (May 22, 2008)

spud107 said:


> dfi mobo's dont fail, its the components that they push to the max that fails . . .



Usually it's the fan that fails, not the motherboards themselves. From what I've seen and experienced, DFI puts a lot of QA into their product.


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## mon74 (May 22, 2008)

WOW! The chart almost makes me believe that ECS is better than ASUS or GYGABYTE...

I guess nobody buys ECS, i find it a terrible brand.


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