I really think Asus sucks.

[Rifter]

I was a computer tech for a few years and saw every brand fail at one point or another, MB's are like hard drives they all die sooner or later, usually the caps fail. That said in my personal systems over the years i have only ever had problems with MSI and ECS, ill never buy another ECS board in my life, they used to be good 10 years but not anymore.

Since then i have stuck with Asus and Gigabyte for the most part and i have not had one die yet. The only reason i dont buy the cheap Asrock boards is most dont have solid caps. I wont buy a board that does not have all solid caps, in all the dead mobo's i have seen over the years 60% of them had bulging or leaking caps so its worth it to spend the few extra bucks and get a quality board with better components IMO.

 

[alexruiz]

I am not a fan ASUS either, but that is not because they are bad.... I simply think gigabyte makes better boards.

Oh, and for the person complaining about ECS / Biostar or Asrock not having premium features, check the new ECs black series, they are very very good. The last time I checked the ECS 785g board has a total of 8 sata ports (6+2) and a great layout. The BIOS is confusing, but works.
Curiously, the most stable board I have owned has been an ECS (6100GMM-M)

 

[StrangerGuy]

I dunno about the situation nowadays but each time I bought motherboards in the past there are always better alternatives than Asus in terms OCing and price.

Abit NF7 > A7N8X
Abit BH7 > Asus 845PE board
Abit IS7-E > P4P800
Asrock Dualsata2 > Oops Asus don't offer PCIE / AGP combo boards
Gigabyte 965P DS3 > P5B

 

[tcsenter]

Asrock Dualsata2 > Oops Asus don't offer PCIE / AGP combo boards

Actually, they did. P5VDC-X and P5VD1-X, both were very forgettable. ASRock's versions were much better (and received better long-term BIOS support).

 

[Acanthus]

Actually, they did. P5VDC-X and P5VD1-X, both were very forgettable. ASRock's versions were much better (and received better long-term BIOS support).

Isn't ASRock owned by Asus anyway? IIRC it is their own value brand.

 

[djnsmith7]

I've had very good luck with Asus boards & will continue to buy them for years to come.

 

[Joseph Cool]

I've only had one Asrock board the X58 Extreme Tom's loves so much and It was a real pos. I sent it back and got a Gigabyte UD3R and I couldn't be happier.

 

[nitromullet]

I'm a fan of Asus motherboards myself. I think with Asus you have to keep in mind that they are often among the first manufacturers to market with new chipsets, so it may pay to wait for the second revision of a given motherboard to allow them some time to work out the kinks.

I have an old ASUS a8n-sli Premium mobo, Operton CPU and high end powersupply , Kindston ram.. still have problems after several brands of ram, ps. not luck. oh well!

You do realize that the memory controller for that system is part of the cpu, right?

 

[tcsenter]

Isn't ASRock owned by Asus anyway? IIRC it is their own value brand.

Yes., but they're mostly independent.

 

[Acanthus]

My only real complaint about Asus is their website is slow as balls for downloading drivers after a format.

I've had very good luck with Asus boards, but i also do a lot of research, read reviews, and watch out for which brands of chips are being used on the board.

I avoid SiS, ALi (they are dead now), and VIA chipsets. I also dont like realtek for integrated NIC.

Nvidia, AMD, and Intel chipsets with good reviews on premium brands like Asus and Gigabyte are almost always fantastic.

 

[Texun]

I've had no major problems with ASUS. I think one board a long time ago was a little twitchy for a couple of days but fine after that. The rest have all been rock solid but lately I've been using Gigabyte boards with equal success. The reason I moved to Gigabyte was due to a particular mATX they offered that had slightly different dimensions than ASUS. It was for a modded case and 1" narrower than what ASUS had so I made the switch and have been using them more often. I've had a few MSI's and maybe a couple of ECS boards and they did fair but were not great nor as stable. I wouldn't have another one.

As many others have said: All brands send out a dud now and then. It happens, but from my limited experience I find it happens less with ASUS. I was a long time Abit user before ASUS. Too bad Abit went "Tango Uniform."

 

[jiffylube1024]

I've had VERY good success with most ASUS boards, but they do have a few models that I've seen have a disproportionate number of problems.

One of my first builds ever was a Pentium 3 with an ASUS P3V4X motherboard (Via chipset!). It was rock solid and the board lasted over 5 years.

Anyways, in the past, I've built about 12 systems with AM2 dual cores on ASUS M2A-VM motherboards; Maybe 4-5 of them have had problems with the onboard video. The cooling is inadequate and the northbridge overheats. Adding a PCI-e graphics card usually fixes the problem. I had a rash of M2A-VM's with issues recently that I replaced with M3A78-EM's recently. The M3A78-EM is a fantastic integrated graphics board with everything - DVI, VGA, HDMI and Display Port!

I built about 5 machines with ASUS P5KPL-CM boards (Socket 775) - no problems but overclocking sucks on that board and the onboard video is weak as well.

I built about 10 machines with A8N-VM motherboards (Socket 939, Nvidia Nforce 4 chipset) as well for people, and have had 2 fail on me (but one I had to RMA three times to get a working board!!). They also had minor video issues and also instability issues.

Of the 7 recent machines I've build with ASUS M3A78-EM (Socket AM2, AMD 780G) boards and two machines with M4A785-M boards, ZERO have had problems so far. IMO ASUS has been improving quality on their boards with integrated graphics lately.

I currently run an i750 on an ASUS P7P55D Pro and it's been a fantastic board so far. ASUS makes solid boards and what sets them apart is the frequency that they update their BIOS. They really do a fantastic job supporting old products with new BIOSes and drivers.

 

[evident]

I really think you are not seeing the big picture.

Fact: most of the big names make some really nice mobos.
Fact: most of the big names make some really crap mobos.

If you are looking for a problem with a brand, it can be found with all of them.

I'd suggest researching more, perhaps.
User feedback on forums is often better for accurate information than a review is, as you get to hear from a lot of different people over a longer period of time.

As an example, today, it seems my roomie's brand new Gigabyte P55M-UD2 just crapped out, & he's only had the system running for 2 days.

I was the one who recommended it specifically to him, & while it's disappointing, bad luck doesn't mean Gigabyte sucks.

Like i said, look at the big picture, & you'll soon realize they all suck :\

this pretty much sums it up, although i've never had a single bad asus or abit motherboard. but i've heard stories of people who have.

I had the worst experience with my gigabyte ep35-ds3r though, but other people swear by gigabyte. it all goes around.

 

[alyarb]

my 'favs' have gone from abit to asus to epox to evga and gigabyte. i think gigabyte and evga are the best brands for quality boards (and DFI) and asrock and biostar make the best cheap boards. the boards that have failed on me have been asus, msi, ecs, but mostly asus.

sucks about that gigabyte p55.

 

[wanderer27]

Erm. I've never had more trouble with Asus than anyone else. Asus probably gets more 'problem' hits from searches because they sell a bazillion boards.

Not in my experience:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=186822&highlight=

 

[DivideBYZero]

Not in my experience:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=186822&highlight=

You're right. We should all stop using our rock solid motherboards because you had one that sucked.

 

[manimal]

one time at band camp I ate at a ponderosa and it made me sick. True story..

 

[deimos3428]

The only problem I ever had with an ASUS board was driver support for Linux. (I don't know about today, but it was non-existent in 2003.) So I ended up writing code to support the onboard ethernet myself...fun times.

 

[rancherlee]

Boards I like and haven't had many issues with are ASUS, MSI, and ABIT. Don't get me started on DFI and ECS though.

 

[imaxcpu]

Been using Asus for the past ten years, from AMD-athlon to latest Intel I7 I have not had any issues that were a matter of quality or defect. As abusive as I have tried to be they just wont die for me.

I am trying really hard to kill this one right now...Die you @#$% Asus MotherBoard die!

 

[wanderer27]

Quote:
Originally Posted by wanderer27 View Post
Not in my experience:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthre...822&highlight=
You're right. We should all stop using our rock solid motherboards because you had one that sucked.

LOL.

Did you even read it?

Try 5 bad MB's of the same Make & Model.


I am still running two of these, but when they die I have serious reservations about using ASUS again . . . .

 

[JaYp146]

I've had good luck with ASUS boards, but sometimes their website is just inexplicably slow and half the time, some of the features on it don't even work.

Example; my motherboard, http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=0e9NyGEDLjtBRtyB

Clicking on the download tab leads me to a dropdown menu where it just says "select OS." The list never appears.

Typical ASUS website ineptitude.

 

[kranky]

I had an ASUS P2B-F from 1998-2004, an ASUS P5GDC-V from 2004-2009 and as of two months ago an ASUS P7P55D EVO. Never a problem.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Never had an issue with Asus. MSI on the other hand... wow. Never again!

 

[Mide]

I've never had a problem with Asus boards.