Overall most reliable brand of desktop motherboards, need help here

[steve2470]

I'm asking this question because my Asus motherboard died a week ago, and now my Gigabyte motherboard may be DOA from Newegg. I'm still troubleshooting it.

At this point, I want RELIABILITY over any other consideration.

Thanks for your time.

[BlueJazz]

1. Look at the reviews on this board >> (247 reviews and still gets 5 Stars)

http://www.compusa.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=782606&Sku=B69-5356

[steve2470]

2. fwiw, best rated Intel mobo ( at 5 eggs or 100% of 21 responses) at Newegg

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157241

ASRock H61M-VS LGA 1155 Intel H61 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

[struggle4progress]

3. Read reviews. I'm no expert: I built seven machines last year, and I've upgraded

a few in the last year and a half. That's my total experience. But I read a lot of reviews to do that. And I'd guess a major problem people are having is power supplies. I saw a LOT of reviews that said: "This company used to make good psus but recently they're all junk." Unreliable outputs, exploded capacitors, fires ...

A mobo can go bad, I guess if you let it get hot (say), but I'd wonder if power surges weren't part of your problem -- and if you've got your machines on a decent surge protector, then the psu might be the problem. Check your psu

When I read Newegg reviews, for example, I read them sorted lowest rating first: if a large number of people gave low marks, that's an issue, even if 85% or 90% of the customers are happy -- generally, I don't like seeing more than a few percent unhappy customers. Then I read then sorted by longest ownership first, people who have had the equipment longer should be happy: I don't like seeing a lot of reviews that say "It died a week after the one-year warranty expired" -- I want happy long-term owners, even if they had to RMA early to get a good unit. Finally, I read them sorted from most recent date posted backwards: if lots of recent customers say "I got a dead piece of junk, so I RMA'd it, and they sent me another dead thing, so I RMA'd that, and now I guess it works," that's a redflag -- if there are lots of reviews over a period of time, most recent customers should be happy; otherwise the company isn't addressing known problems

[hobbit709]

4. I've learned to read newegg reviews with a grain of salt.

I've seen too many bad reviews from people who rated their tech level as high who obviously didn't read instructions.

There was one motherboard once that about 6 people gave poor reviews for being DOA. I had ordered one and the first thing I noticed was the large orange sticker on the static bag stating "This board is shipped with the CMOS jumper in the Clear position."
If you try to power up with it set like that, nothing happens.
Then there was the guy that blamed the motherboard(and newegg) for the fact he was trying to jam a Socket AM2+ cpu into a Socket AM3 board and bent a pin.

Since I pretty much stick to AMD processors, my best overall experience has been with MSI boards.

[struggle4progress]

5. fair enough. on my first three builds, the mobo didn't power on in my original test.

it was always something stupid: oops, didn't get the power connector in completely -- or oops, the ram wasn't properly seated -- or somesuch

so "this was my first build and I couldn't get the mobo to post" might not be the most devastating critique

but if 10% say "I had this psu a few weeks and then smoke poured out and it died," maybe i wonder about that psu

[hobbit709]

6. In the last 5 years I've bought about 60 mb's from newegg.

I had one DOA but that was on an open box item. Newegg sent a replacement and told me to scrap the old one since it wasn't worth it to them to send it back. The replacement is still working on a friend's computer.

Several of the boards I bought had some bad reviews from someone. Every time I was willing to bet the instructions weren't read. One guy claimed the mb smoked after about 10 minutes and therefore it was a crappy board. The fact that he had put a 125W cpu on a board rated at a maximum of 95W had nothing to do with it.

It's like the ones where they buy a $40 board and give it a low rating because there's no overclocking features in the BIOS.

[struggle4progress]

7. Well, you have a lot more experience than I do

I'll agree customer reviews have to be taken with a shake of salt

Newbies like me do make mistakes. For my second or third build, I carefully made up a consistent components list and shopped for and bought stuff in stages. Finally, I set out to buy the cpu and at the last minute ordered a slightly cheaper cpu ... without, um, double-checking the socket. Duh! Fortunately, I tend to triple and quadruple check -- so I knew while the cpu was enroute that it wouldn't fit. The minute it arrived, without opening anything, I contacted newegg: mea culpa! mea culpa! Their official policy for cpus is: straight-up exchange only. And they typically expect a restocking fee for returns. But they let me return it for a full refund and no restocking fee, with a stern warning "if the box is open, we won't accept the return and we'll ship it back to you at your expense." No problem: I sent it back with nothing opened; they refunded my money -- and sent me a gift card that more than covered my costs in shipping it back. I figured they must get a lot of clods who jam a cpu crudely into a socket, bend the pins, then send it back with a rude note -- and were just totally thrilled that I wasn't doing that to them

Sometimes it's easy to tell a review is wrong. I bought a cube case, where several reviewers claimed you really couldn't do much without modding -- one claimed you couldn't get more than one hdd in without modding or buying rails. I looked at the specs and figured the review was wrong. I actually shoved three hdd into that case without effort: the first two were entirely straightforward; for the third hdd, I did have to screw in some rails -- but that's pretty easy: drill no holes, cut no metal, doesn't really count as a case-mod