Where do MSI motherboards stand? Any good?

[Shephard]

Originally Posted by Rvenger

Asrock Z77 Extreme 4
Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H
Biostar TZ77XE4

ok as I have said before. I am in Canada. I wanted the Asrock Extreme 4, my friend has it. In USA it's $120. In Canada it's $160 the cheapest, $180 normally BEFORE takes and shipping.

My MSI board came today. I arrived in 1 day... basic amazon shipping. Never seen something arrive so fast.

I am gonna try this overclocking and if I am not happy I will send it back.

I can at least say it arrived working. I set everything up and it posted. My SSD boots the computer in 13 seconds which is amazing my first.

no bent pins or any damage I see.

I will report back.

[nature1ders]

Personally MSI is my second choice next to Gigabyte, I think ASUS is ok but I remember the old days when nothing seemed to work on their boards and the software was lacking so I'm bitter now.

[Maximilian]

Originally Posted by fustercluck

I like my MSI mobo ok so far (Z77A) but who knows, it could stop working in less than a year, with the luck i have with computer parts it most likely will. Not planning to overclock so can't speak on the abilities of that. Boot up is slower than I would like, it hangs for a few seconds on bootup with some screen that just shows an "A2" in the bottom right corner. I wonder if there is anything I can do to speed up the boot up process.

I've had really bad luck with ASrock boards but it's all a crapshoot really.

ps: does anyone else see a page 5 on this thread but it's not actually there? :p

Yes! Although it appears to be here now

[Renegade_09]

I've had the MSI Z77A-GD65 for 9 months and I haven't had any problems with it yet. It was the best board with the most features for the price point I was willing to pay at the time. I don't do any overclocking so not sure how they affects it. I paid $180 - $20 rebate at the time.

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally Posted by theman12

For me I was burned by MSI back in the day. Had a K7T266 Pro mainboard and a kt333 ultra board and they did not last even 2 years without some sort of problem. Yes it was a longtime ago but it made me swear off MSI permanently. To me the products are crap.

I was one of the members here leading the crowd with torches and pitchforks at that point in time. I do not know if it was their power regulation design or what, but they definitely seemed to suffer worse than most the other board makers during the bad cap days. Despite my reservations, I tried them again a couple years later and have been happy with them since. I just last night replaced a MSI K8N Neo4 SLI with stuff I bought here in FS/FT. I built it in 05, and it ran flawlessly with a X2 3800+ OC all that time. The board was priced well for that gen and feature set, and came with SBL 24-bit Hardware audio built in. I used some of their boards for customers, and all were issue free right up till the client upgraded systems.

I have not used them in a couple years so cannot comment on current quality and stability. I really miss Abit and DFI they were really great OC boards for me.

[chetansha]

Sigh!!! These are times when I miss dfi

[Shmee]

I have the MSI Z77A-GD65. Very solid board, nice amount of features, good OCer. Got mine for about $150

[bigystyle84]

Just sold my gaming rig for a cheaper HTPC build

Used yet another cheap MSI board

Works great - no issues yet with mild overclocks on stock cooler. Detects my 1866 Ram fine.


Probably the 6th MSI board I've bought in a row I believe. Not a single issue.

[piasabird]

I think all motherboard brands had issues with bulging caps. There were even issues with Via Chipsets on the ASUS motherboard line. I dont think Asus is that great of a brand. In recent times almost everyone uses the solid caps.

[Arcanedeath]

Originally Posted by theman12

For me I was burned by MSI back in the day. Had a K7T266 Pro mainboard and a kt333 ultra board and they did not last even 2 years without some sort of problem. Yes it was a longtime ago but it made me swear off MSI permanently. To me the products are crap.

I had the same experience except it was with the KT266 based boards and I went through 4 before I gave up (the reseller I bought from folded and MSI would not do a direct RMA at the time) Never again will I risk using an MSI motherboard.

[Deders]

I believe MSI had a lot of problems back in the day when caps were failing all over the place but now a days they are using rock solid digital military class caps so no issues. 2 of my favorite boards that I've used have been MSI mostly because of the features they keep on, at the time of getting my current board I still needed a floppy drive (for installing Drive controller Drivers at XP setup,) and a PCI slot for my X-FI.

The board is still going strong at a healthy overclock of over 1GHz on each core and is overall very power efficient when compared to other P55 boards. They may not clock quite as high as Asus and Gigabyte but they offer many features for a decent price.

After 2 bad experiences with Asrock boards I'm never using one in a system I build again.