Which motherboard manufacturers are the best?

[raverbaby]

first of all i would like to say a big fat bollocks to Asus and their Asus P5B board, all this hoo ha about the ability to upgrade bios when all it does is completely screw up the entire motherboard beyond reasonable repair.

so looking for a diff motherboard make to go with, and a recommendation on one, cheapest possible with 8GB ram capacity, 3 pci slots and a pci e slot, and quad core cpu

[BUFF]

do you need overclocking, RAID, CF or SLI, firewire etc.?

You might want to look at companies that still use socketed, replaceable BIOS chips - in the event of a bad flash it's a lot easier to replace a chip than have to remove the mobo to send it away.

[raverbaby]

i don't do raid but wouldnt mind it, no need for sli or firewire

[psd99]

Definetly GIGABYTE.

I love their boards I got the Gigabyte 7N400 Pro 2 really classy board. They look attractive too.

Thing with Asus is you get all these silly ASUS screens I hate that and of course they look really ugly.

[Nelly.]

I've used Asus over the years but like yourself I dont like the idea of soldered on bios chips, also the fact that Asus RMA is terrible - looking at 8 weeks upon return to Asus.

You will notice alot of system builds at various e-tailors including Yoyotech are done with the Abit Motherboards, thats because of its good reputation of being reliable, easy to overclock, stability, good value for money etc.

Definetly GIGABYTE.

I love their boards I got the Gigabyte 7N400 Pro 2 really classy board. They look attractive too.

I think the Gigabyte boards have a terrible colour scheme, but thats down to each individuals taste but who cares once it's in your case, I've got a window & never look in mine.

Thing with Asus is you get all these silly ASUS screens I hate that and of course they look really ugly.

If you go into the bios you can switch that off.

[mrglue]

I've used MSI for many years, building cheap and cheerful systems for friends and family. Just building a new one for myself at the moment, and I've gone for a Gigabyte this time. I like their passive cooling of the chipset and they use qualitity capacitors and parts. May be a bit pricey, but it's being argued at the moment that their 'green' powersaving features are better than Asus so you may save money in the long run... They've got a gazilion different versions of their cards, so make sure you spend the time finding the one that has all the stuff you need, want,etc..

[daza]

Dfi all the way stable as a rock overclock like no other, put the work in you get alot out.

[mrglue]

I've heard good things about DFI too, although I've never tried them. They don't seem so readily available in webshops, but perhaps I'm just looking in the wrong places?

[jonh17]

gigabyte and MSI make good solid boards, particularly p35 and p45 chipset models. Nvidia chipset boards are pretty much a no no, intel/amd boards are much more reliable.

[Blackmage]

abit all the way

[Kovoet]

ASUS has never let me down yet and highly rated but if you have the knowledge DFI is good as well