Don't buy a Soyo Dragon Plus MB

[Ganryu]

This is absolutely the most unstable board I've ever dealt with. Both versions of the bios are extremely unstable. I get random lockups every few minutes no matter what I am doing. I have tested all of the other components in my rig and they all work perfectly.

 

[ogn]

Nevermind. I see that you have tried the other bios.

 

[Ganryu]

Yeah.. I'm sending the MB back and buying an Abit KR7-RAID instead..

 

[DARTHSINDER]

I have one...but have only good to say about it. Maybe you have a bad board! I can only give Excellent review for it.

 

[Parser]

Yes there is such a thing as bad boards you know. Take a spin around the forums and take a look at all the people who seem to be having no problem and then maybe think of a more constructive title to your thread.

If you're having problems(and you haven't been very specific as to what they are) then maybe someone here can help you but I can tell you that the dragon is not an unstable board as I haven't had mine crash once since I flashed to the new bios three weeks ago.

 

[Ganryu]

According to the boards here at anandtech and at amdmb.com, quite a few people seem to have "bad boards." I can understand a few people having problems but this seems like too many... i don't see nearly as many people posting about similar problems on the asus or abit boards there..

 

[Parser]

Well the abit board just came out and there hasn't been much time to find problems with it and from what I've seen not too many people on the boards are jumping at paying the rather heafty price that asus is demanding.

Now, I'm far from saying that that the asus or abit boards will be unstable but there's no reason to start a thread that says "Don't buy a Soyo Dragon Plus MB" just based on you're bad luck with one.

Hope your new board makes you happy.

 

[DARTHSINDER]

There are many who have this board and are very happy with it, I would definately check around the other threads to maybe get some info on your problem.

 

[Jayczar]

The Soyo Dragon rocks, you definitely have a bad board or bad components
to compliment it. Good luck trying to find something better.

 

[Jeff7]

No problems with Abit boards you say? Let me tell you a tale of my troubles with Abit products:

Awhile back I bought an Abit KT7 from Logical Source.com. After much hassle and data loss (700MB on two hard drives) I figured it had a bad IDE controller. I RMA'd it back to Abit (Logical source would charge a fee). While waiting for it, I ordered another one from a DIFFERENT company. It had the exact same problem - enabling DMA would start destroying data and causing write errors. Returned that to the company I bought it from. Then I got a board back from Abit - it worked just fine. So that's my story. Two bad Abit boards in a row from 2 different vendors. I'm not much of an Abit fan after that...

 

[yodayoda]

i don't think there is such a thing as a motherboard that works for everyone all of the time. some boards just seem to be really unstable--i had a run-in with the soyo dragon, back when i thought it was the cat's pajamas. went through 3 boards and they all had bad AGP ports--i thought i was blowing video cards, but it turned out the video cards were fine when i plugged them into other mobos. so i kind of wrote the company off in my mind.

i also had a bad experience with Abit, but my roommate runs his KT7A-RAID overclocking an AXIA 1 GHz to 1.33 GHz 24/7 for the last month with no problems. sometimes you get a good one and sometimes you don't. i have had zero problems with Epox and Shuttle boards, but that doesn't make them bulletproof either. sometimes a running poll of current users can tell you how many problems people have with the board.

computer construction is very zen. you have to stop and listen to the problems of your computer. never is one problem ever as simple as a single bad component--often two things are incompatible and may work independent of each other very well. that soyo mobo problem--i found out later that my power supply was faulty and was spiking one voltage line. while the epox was able to handle it, the soyo passed that along to the AGP and screwed up the video. it is neither the power supply's or the mobo's fault--each had a hand in the problem.

 

[flexy]

there are for sure more people with rock solid d+ boards around than with every other boards....i think many reviews and users usually cant be wrong.

I dont know what's wrong with YOUR board....but instead of generalizing and blaming a (usually) extremely solid and stable board.....you should rather be construcitive and look at the right places and ask the right questions....

How should some be able to help you.....eg. go to the newsgroups...there is an alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.soyo group with many people wanting to help out.

Also..it MAY HELP maybe to give your configuration...what drivers you have installed already...what bios...etc..

There is a 99,9 % chance its a setup problem and a 0,1% chance you really have a bad board...

 

[BeHeMOTH]

Mine rocks, one of the best boards I've ever owned.

 

[jhites]

I have only been running the Dragon + since Sunday, but can say that it is definately rock solid.

I have 2 Maxtor 40Gig Raid0 setup plus Maxtor 30Gig and 20Gig with Athlon XP1600 running at 144Mhz with default Vcc. Have Prime95 running 24/7 without any errors. I may decide to O/C more later but for now I am happy. This is with Crucial PC2100 2X256Mb set at CL2 2-6-2, on board lan (home network), 3Com Nic (cable modem), 56K Fax Modem, AIW Radeon 32Mb AGP, front usb and reader card setup, and the onboard c-media sound all working perfectly.

The Alpha PAL8045 does fit on the Dragon + and my temps idle were 32C and with Prime95 torture test running have never exceeded 41C. Keeping track of temps with Motherboard Monitor.

Windows XP loaded without any problems (once I got the promise raid drivers on the disk correctly) and found and setup all the hardware except the c-media. Any problems I had setting up this system were errors from the operator!! Me!!

Would recommend this Mobo to anyone that wants the features that are available for a great PRICE!!