Soyo's any good anymore?

[Hyperlite]

i thought soyos used to be pretty popular...i hadn't even heard the name in longer than i can remember until i walked into compusa the other day. how come no one uses them?

 

[smokewarlock]

i would like to know the same thing....i have a soyo 6ba+VI and it was like the 440 overclocking marvel...but know i dont hear nothing about soyo...what's up? have the gone to crap? or was a one hit wonder?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I had the SOYO K8USA with the AMD8151 chipset and it was a bit quirky, but once I tweaked things properly it would run my 3000+@2.3ghz and the system and especially PATA disk performance were very impressive. The only reason I returned it was that the ALi SATA controller wouldn't work with raptors. Had they included a better SATA controller I'd still be using it because I really loved that chipset, the black PCB, the full feature set and card reader, as well as performance using PATA.

Unfortunately for SOYO they have nothing to attract enthusiasts to their products right now IMO because a number of other board makers are offering every thing SOYO does and more, but@ better prices and more consistant quality.

 

[niall]

Hmmm.. Interesting question. I'm wondering about Soyo's quality myself as I've been offered a KT400 Dragon Lite for free, and with computers you do look a gift horse in the mouth.

 

[o1die]

Soyo gets mixed reviews for quality versus price. Whatever you get, be sure to download the mobo manual off the website and check the bios settings, if you overclock or have any special features you're looking for. It only takes a few minutes. I've owned 1 soyo board, and it died after a faulty bios flash.

 

[AnnoyedGrunt]

I am currently using a Soyo K7V Dragon Plus. At the time of purchase (2.5 years ago) it seemed to be one of the more popular boards out there with many features at a low price. I really like mine, and I haven't had any problems except the CPU temp sensor isn't working properly. When my case is open it reports a temp of 42C or so, but when I close the case the temp goes to 22C (and will sometimes jump back up to the 40's for a split second). So, other than that temp issue, mine has been very good.

If I look now though, they don't seem to have much of an offering in the 764 socket. Two boards: an NF150 and an AMD8151, neither seems to be good @ setting up raid, both only have 6USB (which bugs me becaue most cases have 4 ports in back, 2 ports in front, and I will have a card reader which is 7 and it would really bug me to have a port that doesn't work).

If they made a GF250 or 250Gb board w/8 USB, I might be more interested.


-D'oh!

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: smokewarlock
i would like to know the same thing....i have a soyo 6ba+VI and it was like the 440 overclocking marvel...but know i dont hear nothing about soyo...what's up? have the gone to crap? or was a one hit wonder?

I had the same mobo, yeah it kicked ass, I miss it

 

[sumrtym]

As some guys I know say, "SOYO stands for so you want a mobo that works"....in other words, go somewhere with better quality.

 

[NathanTX]

I have built three home computers over the past three years, in my spare time. Each home computer has a SOYO motherboard. I built two based on SOYO SY-P4I Fire DRAGON motherboards in early 2002, when they were new and available on sale. These were considered fully featured motherboards at the time, and I have used everything they have to offer, including RAID & Firewire. I flashed the BIOS on each several times without a problem. Now they belong to my family, and they are still running strong.

Last June, I built my computer with a SOYO SY-P4I875P DRAGON 2 Platinum Edition motherboard. IMHO, this is a sturdy motherboard, and it has every upgrade option I will need for the next several years, all in a very nice package. I have flashed the BIOS several times without a problem, and I have upgraded to a P4C 3.2GHz CPU, overclocked to 3.6GHz with retail cooling, and it still has some potential left untapped. The PCI bus and AGP port operate at 37.5MHz and 75MHz, respectively, without any problem. This motherboard has taken more abuse than any other I have used.

In my experience, SOYO's technical support is good, and they are always responsive to me. However, at times it seems that I know more about their products than they do. Also, these are not true enthusiast motherboards. The Fire DRAGON has never been an impressive overclocking motherboard, and BIOS support for it disappeared after the board had been out for only about 9 months. I have been more impressed with the DRAGON 2 PE, which has been given much better support. Online reviews of this motherboard have been mixed, since it is not the fastest 875P based system available. It suffers from lower than expected memory bandwidth, which is its only flaw. Otherwise, it does everything that SOYO claims that it will do, and mine has done it well.