Hardware & Technical Motherboard reliability

Chainguns

C
So I was going to go shopping for components in advance of the 1080 and tried to start with the z170 chipset with 6700K...

However looking at the user reviews on Newegg even the most expensive motherboards with top end pricetags come full of DoA/RMA horror stories.

I know some people screw up their build (overclock to a crisp whatever) and try to blame it on the manufacturer and that those who are happy are less likely to leave feedback than those who are unhappy... But these reviews are a bloodbath - it seems manufacturers are using customers for QA and even buying the Big 2 (Asus Gigabyte) is no reassurance. I saw one French site that showed some Big 2 gaming boards with RMA rates of almost 10%.

Whilst it is nice to have the latest and greatest, if it is this unreliable (or poorly designed), I'd rather go with an older proven design. From what I read the 4790K isn't too shabby. The whole point of a PC is that you can upgrade in increments, and if the mobo fries a bunch of your components that sort of puts an end to that.

Can anyone suggest a chipset or manufacturer whose design seems to be solid over the last year or two? Or a skylake with relatively little horror...
 

Zieman

Zieman
Well, my Asus P5B-deluxe build from 2006 is still going strong...

So is my gaming rig from 2013 with Asus z87-pro, though you might want to go with z97 if you go down the Haswell 'refresh' route.
 
Last edited:

Zetta

Zetta
Never really had a problem with Asus or Gigabyte, although my next one will almost definitely be an MSI board.

What's turned me away from Asus was how they dealt with that fiasco regarding router backdoors.
 

Porina

Porina
Skylake is relatively new still, only coming out last summer. I did a build in August, with the Asus Maximus VIII Hero, and they were releasing on average a new bios update per month! On the plus side, it is more stable in compatibility with higher speed ram now. If you run standard ram, there wasn't any problem. So on that note, I'd suggest looking for a board that's been on the market a while and thus have had more optimisation opportunity. Also note that higher end boards seem to have more effort applied to them. If I were to build another higher end 6700k box today, I'd probably go for another Asus in that range, not necessarily the Hero just to be different.

The other alternative of going for Haswell era kit would also be pretty safe. If they haven't sorted it out by now, they never will.

I don't have a massive amount of kit, but still more than most (3 Haswell era desktop systems, 1 Broadwell, 3 Skylake). I do like Asus mobos overall. MSI seem ok on the lower cost non-OC end but I'm not keen on the OC boards I have from them. I've not had to RMA, which I would have thought would also be impacted by who you bought it from.
 

CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE

CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE
Had MBs from ASUS and Gigabyte and no issues with any. The Gigabyte BIOS is a little more user-friendly IMO. In my main gaming PC have an ASUS Maximus VIII Hero, superb build quality IMO. In fact the only issue I have with ASUS is on the software side not the hardware. In particular their AI Suite is a little flakey (and their support website is painfully slow but that's not a reason to not buy of course). And their release notes are rather cryptic. I would quite happily buy a top-end ASUS MB today.

My recommendation would be to use a reputable retailer where returns are hassle-free.
 

Chainguns

C
Zetta said:
Never really had a problem with Asus or Gigabyte, although my next one will almost definitely be an MSI board.

What's turned me away from Asus was how they dealt with that fiasco regarding router backdoors.
Click to expand...

Never knew about the Asus thing - have an ac68 myself... must review my tech website diet. Mind you, with 'privacy' I looong ago assumed we don't have any (Snowden, Huawei, 'telemetry' on everything you use), nor do we appear to want it judging by our boundless faith in android/facebook, but that's slightly off topic!

So slight update - I called the big 2 to ask which model was the best from an RMA perspective and got some surprisingly candid answers. Gigabyte seems to offer an extended warranty scheme on its 'Ultra Durable' range where if you don't make a claim they deduct the cost of the insurance from any future mobo you purchase off them, so would appear that they at least have faith that that range will go 4 years trouble free. Only in Germany at the moment though, but the idea seems promising.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom