s775 motherboard recommendation

[ehhhhhhh]

Hello All,

One of my friends motherboard died and now I'm looking for a new one (of course it's asap ). It was a s775 MSI P31 neo mb with an E5200 dual core CPU, HD3650 gpu and 4x1GB DDR2 btw.

hence the new motherboard has to have 4 dimms, a PCI-e slot...

I'm not really familiar with intel boards, so basically I need advice on which MB would be an overall good buy. reliablity is the most important factor, also it won't be overclocked.


I think it wouldn't be smart to spend more than £50ish on this.

I was looking at these so far:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Gigab...TA-II-RAID-ATX


http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus-...SATA-3Gb-s-ATX

It would be nice to stay in the £50-60 region...


Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[12GaugeShotty]

That Asus board would be perfect. I have never had a problem with any Asus motherboard. I have had an A7V133, A7V8X, P4S800D-E, A8R-MVP, A8N32-SLI and currently P5Q PRO Turbo.

[kompukare]

Actually, I'd go for the Gigabyte. My last few builds have been exclusively Gigabyte. Although there's nothing wrong with Asus or MSI, I find Gigabyte a bit more solid and reliable and dualBIOS is a nice feature.

However, if you hate connecting front panel cables the Asus has Q-Connector which makes it a bit easier.
I'd still go for the Gigabyte, though

[Hawker1986]

Actually, I'd go for the Gigabyte. My last few builds have been exclusively Gigabyte. Although there's nothing wrong with Asus or MSI, I find Gigabyte a bit more solid and reliable and dualBIOS is a nice feature.

However, if you hate connecting front panel cables the Asus has Q-Connector which makes it a bit easier.
I'd still go for the Gigabyte, though

+1, been using gigabyte boards for ages, prefer them over the asus equivalents, not that theres anything wrong with those.

Hawker

[ehhhhhhh]

thanks!

I'll go with the gigabyte on this occasion...for amd rigs I've mainly used asus boards, but both companies have decent reputations, though.

in terms of chipset, i hope I won't be dissappointed

[12GaugeShotty]

Actually, I'd go for the Gigabyte. My last few builds have been exclusively Gigabyte. Although there's nothing wrong with Asus or MSI, I find Gigabyte a bit more solid and reliable and dualBIOS is a nice feature.

However, if you hate connecting front panel cables the Asus has Q-Connector which makes it a bit easier.
I'd still go for the Gigabyte, though

If there is nothing wrong with Asus how can Gigabyte be more solid and reliable? Sort of contradictory statement to make and requires proof. I have never had an Asus motherboard fail out of all the ones I listed. Those were personally owned and used for years. Some were overclocked quite a bit and ran 24/7.

DualBIOS is a gimmick feature. It's only useful if you are the oddball person that likes to flash their BIOS with beta or test BIOS releases. I have owned and used single BIOS motherboards for over a decade without a problem.

Here's some proof for Asus' reliability:

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/new...ability_report

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/17/l...-win-hp-fails/

They are also the #1 selling motherboard manufacturer in the world.

[Skulltrail]

I must say I have a dual BIOS Gigabyte (can't fault it) but I've never used it or encountered a situation when it would have helped me. I think its very easy to get sucked into boards which are really over featured. Ideally I would want one with decent metalwork but the minimum of other features which just serve to increase POST time, my pet hate being IDE ports - if you can afford £100 for a new mobo spend £15 on a new optical drive. In fact this would be even easier if they didn't include them and then could take a few £ off the price and give you a better performing product.

Rant over.

[Terbinator]

I think you would be safe with any Gigabyte board. I had a P45 DS3L and it more than served its purpose.

[kompukare]

Here's some proof for Asus' reliability:

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/new...ability_report

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/17/l...-win-hp-fails/

They are also the #1 selling motherboard manufacturer in the world.

Well first of all, naturally everyone in a forum is an opinion but for instance I've build PCs with the same chipset and form-factor (G31 mATX) using Asus, MSI and Gigabyte and I found the GigaByte the best. Now that is my personal opinion and for high-end stuff, Asus may do some good stuff, but I prefer GigaByte. Now there are some manufactures who seem to have a Sony-like approach of making okay high-end stuff but poor quality low-end stuff and then expect their names to just sell, but I always try to avoid that kind of stuff...
Anyway, all your linked stats are pretty meaningless since they refer to laptops. Never having owned or had to fix an Asus laptop I cannot comment too much. But those graphs look a bit suspect to me -I guess stats are always a matter of what's being measured. I mean, 23.3% for Acer who seem to make only cheap and nasty plastic laptops vs 21.5% for Lenovo who make really solid laptops you can roll a car over (well the T400 not all of them!). Something seems strange there. Well the one link does mention that SquareTrade sell extended warranties so it's not a true sample.

Obviously, HP suffer from Nvidia's chip failures so I wonder if Asus and Toshiba were wise enough to not sell too many NV laptops?

[12GaugeShotty]

Well first of all, naturally everyone in a forum is an opinion but for instance I've build PCs with the same chipset and form-factor (G31 mATX) using Asus, MSI and Gigabyte and I found the GigaByte the best. Now that is my personal opinion and for high-end stuff, Asus may do some good stuff, but I prefer GigaByte. Now there are some manufactures who seem to have a Sony-like approach of making okay high-end stuff but poor quality low-end stuff and then expect their names to just sell, but I always try to avoid that kind of stuff...
Anyway, all your linked stats are pretty meaningless since they refer to laptops. Never having owned or had to fix an Asus laptop I cannot comment too much. But those graphs look a bit suspect to me -I guess stats are always a matter of what's being measured. I mean, 23.3% for Acer who seem to make only cheap and nasty plastic laptops vs 21.5% for Lenovo who make really solid laptops you can roll a car over (well the T400 not all of them!). Something seems strange there. Well the one link does mention that SquareTrade sell extended warranties so it's not a true sample.

Obviously, HP suffer from Nvidia's chip failures so I wonder if Asus and Toshiba were wise enough to not sell too many NV laptops?

My sole point here is that you cannot say that one is more "solid and reliable" without proof. I'm not here to say that Gigabyte is garbage. They are a good product for the price. Opinions/personal preferences usually land with board layout or even color. An opinion does not matter when it comes to product reliability. Asus has earned a reputation for making solid and reliable motherboards.