QOTW: Who makes the best motherboards?

[HEXUS]

Which is your go-to brand, and why?

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[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

No one - its best to check the individual board you are looking to buy and see if the hardware and firmware is up to scratch,and whether the manufacturer are bothering to keep BIOSes up to date. Sadly sometimes companies which might have been good in the past do sometimes lose the plot and release buggy boards.

[meuvoy]

Asus does! There's really not much to discuss here.

[watercooled]

I agree with CAT, it comes down to the individual board - I've had odd issues with all four major manufacturers and there's definitely no safe bet in my experience.

[aidanjt]

Agreed with CAT and watercooled. Although I'm partial to Asus boards.

[3dcandy]

I miss Abit

[nar53]

I would normally go for Asus but I've been using a Gigabyte for the last couple years with no complaints.

[Iota]

whether the manufacturer are bothering to keep BIOSes up to date.

Not Gigabyte, considering they've had microcode available for ages for patching that whole Spectre and Meltdown yet still don't release a small update. I'm partial to Asus, although I'm not entirely convinced on any of the manufacturers in terms of reliability.

I know I will not buy Gigabyte again.

[Strawb77]

i`ve always thought it best to find something you like and stick with it.
hence, i always use

[outwar6010]

Probably asrock. I think I will go for them next time round.

[Output]

As with CAT and watercooled, it is whatever I deem to fit my requirements rather than a specific brand.

[big_hairy_rob]

Brand loyalty is only relevant to the product that still works. Each generation test are different hence no one manufacturer.

Ps. 'Best'? I think you'll need to serious narrow this down to get any kind of sensible/usable answer.

[Lorcaran]

I miss Abit

I still have at least 3 machines that I built still going strong on old abit boards.

I tend to use Asus and gigabyte boards, I had a spate of failures with MSI a while back and haven't dared to try them again.

[peterb]

Sadly I don't have the resources or the time to test all the boards available, so I cant really help - try a review site like Toms Hardware or HEXUS... oh - wait a minute..

I used to use ASUS but the quality seemed to go down a bit - the last two few builds have been Gigabyte and Zotac, but it depends on the board spec rather than a particular brand as I build for a specific purpose (usually Linux based servers) so SFF with lots of SATA ports, onboard graphics (for set up) and a PCIe slot are my must haves - regardless of brand name. Oh, and NO RGB is a big plus too.

[Tabbykatze]

I have been using Asus for personal machines for years and had less issues with Asus than my friends whom have equivalent Gigabyte

[Nifl]

Depends on the individual board and what you need. ASUS hates to update their drivers in general. With Gigabyte it's pure luck if your mainboard gets updates. Hardware quality is the same most of the time.
I consider those the top brands. ASRock and MSI can be good. Had good and bad experiences with both of them... usually bad though.