Question Gigabyte motherboard, are they really durable or reliable?

rogerdv

Member
Dec 2, 2010
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I have bought 2 Gigabyte B250 motherboard. The first one was new and last almost 2 years. The second one was used and lasted on my hands less than a year (I guess it had a year or so in use). The first one died: started to reboot and couldnt be repaired. The second one started to shut down 2 weeks ago, a technician made it work a couple of hours and after that, the same, it restarts and restarts, with maybe one or two minutes of work. And yesterday somebody tried to sell me one but we found it has the same problem. I have received many different opinions about Gigabyte, that it is crap, that they are good. What do you know about this? Should I never buy Gigabyte boards again?
 

UsandThem

Elite Member
May 4, 2000
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I used them pretty much in all my builds up until 2016 or so. After that, I began having issues with their newer boards, so after several defective boards and plenty of wasted time/headaches, I switched to buying other brands (mostly Asus, some Asrock).

Gigabyte at the time was also really behind MSI, Asus, and Asrock with their BIOS updates/features, although they seem to have improved in that area.

I might consider using a Gigabyte board again in the future, but if it were the same price as a comparable Asus/Asrock board, I'd probably just stay with them.

And those exploding Gigabyte power supplies (and how they mishandled the whole problem), made me really lose confidence in them to be honest.
 
Jul 27, 2020
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Should I never buy Gigabyte boards again?
I'm surprised that even after your bad experiences with two boards, you are still asking this question? OK, well this is my opinion: buy Gigabyte if it's the cheapest with the best feature set of competing brands. Buy it knowing that you will regret it sooner or later.
 

Saylick

Diamond Member
Sep 10, 2012
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I'm surprised that even after your bad experiences with two boards, you are still asking this question? OK, well this is my opinion: buy Gigabyte if it's the cheapest with the best feature set of competing brands. Buy it knowing that you will regret it sooner or later.
As someone who recently bought two new Gigabyte mobos...
1668216389814.png

Are they really that unreliable? My Lynnfield system from way back in the day had a cheapo $130 Gigabyte mobo and ran fine for almost 10 years...
 
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As someone who recently bought two new Gigabyte mobos...
If you are not facing any current issues with them, they should be fine.

Almost every Gigabyte mobo I've owned has had some quirk I've had to live with. I'm actually really surprised that my Z97 Gigabyte mobo I got off Ali Express is the most stable one I've had yet (with Kingston RAM. I suffered for days with instability using Corsair RAM).
 
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DAPUNISHER

Super Moderator CPU Forum Mod and Elite Member
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As someone who recently bought two new Gigabyte mobos...
View attachment 70895

Are they really that unreliable? My Lynnfield system from way back in the day had a cheapo $130 Gigabyte mobo and ran fine for almost 10 years...
I have

B550 AORUS ELITE AX V.2
B550i AORUS PRO AX
B450 AORUS ELITE

The B450 has seen my son through 4yrs of college and 1000s of hours of gaming. Still humming along.

The other 2 are much newer but have been trouble free thus far. My mother in law still uses the old Gigabyte Ultra Durable FM2 system I built her what seems like forever ago. It only does internet and email duty, but yet refuses to die.

I can say the same for most of the AMD and Intel MSI, ASRock, and Asus boards I have owned in the last 10yrs.

Had a B450 Steel Legend go flaky shortly after I sold it to someone here. I made it right with them, but still not cool.

Had a MSI Z97 Gaming 5 that developed a laundry list of issues over time. Also 2 MSI 970 Gaming boards die months apart. Claimed to support the FX8350, yet the VRM thermal pads partially liquified during the VRMs burning up. Soaked through to the bottom of the boards. In fact, MSI has been the most hit or miss for me over a long history of using many brands. Including Asus, DFI, EPoX, ABIT, Soltek, BIOSTAR, Shuttle, ECS, SOYO, FIC, Intel, SuperMicro, Foxconn, and probably more. That's not counting the bad caps epoch when multiple brands failed me.

Gigabyte has been one of the few brands that hasn't failed on me yet.
 
Jul 27, 2020
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My office had a Gigabyte Brix mini PC. It just died and they had to throw it away. Not sure what the issue was. Never got to inspect it, other than holding it in my hand with great curiosity and asking the IT guy if it worked. He said he would never buy Gigabyte again. Now he sticks with Zotac and HP mini PCs.

As an aside, what an awful name. BRIX. It did turn into a brick in the end :D
 

DAPUNISHER

Super Moderator CPU Forum Mod and Elite Member
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Wow. You had lots and lots of guinea pigs, er...customers :D
What if I told you that it didn't matter what brand I use. I always see industry standard failure rates when not overclocking the systems. ;) Heck, I could use ECS back when they were reviled here, and have happy clients. Next time I would see those boards was when I was upgrading the client years later. Shuttle was by far my favorite for client builds from the old days. Nforce 2 with IGP and soundstorm FTW.

This thread asked about Gigabyte reliability. My anecdotes have been that they are thus far one of the most reliable brands I've used. As this thread demonstrates, YMMV.

BTW, your IT guy got salty over one failure? Or was that one of many? Because I chuckled at the idea of Zotac being a good choice. I'd pony up for NUCs long before I'd deploy Zotac. That's my personal opinion of course.
 

lopri

Elite Member
Jul 27, 2002
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I think their quality differs in price range. Not necessarily the more money is the better, but there is a threshold below which the quality suffers. Above that threshold, Gigabyte boards are as solid as can be, imo. (But I never considered them to be tweaker-friendly.)

Check out this video.

 
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mindless1

Diamond Member
Aug 11, 2001
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Last Gigabyte board I bought was a 78LMT, mATX socket AM3, about 10 years ago for $55 after rebate.

It still works fine, used daily for light tasks like internet, email, streaming video.

If I had board after board dying with no community-known defect (and had been out in the wild long enough to get a good sample size in use), I'd start suspecting the PSU(s).
 
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Aug 16, 2021
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Last Gigabyte board I bought was a 78LMT, mATX socket AM3, about 10 years ago for $55 after rebate.

It still works fine, used daily for light tasks like internet, email, streaming video.

If I had board after board dying with no community-known defect (and had been out in the wild long enough to get a good sample size in use), I'd start suspecting the PSU(s).
That same board for me died after 2 years. I had 78LMT-S2P rev 5 variant of it. I remember USB3 variant having way stronger VRMs and it was good at overclocking chips, well at least for cheap board. UD3P was a king for budget overclockers.
 
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Mantrid-Drone

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Mar 15, 2014
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Is it fair to slam a particular MB or MB manufacturer when the MB has been over-clocked or otherwise 'tweaked' to give highest performance?

That must come at a cost to reliability or longevity and to criticize a MB which is being used in that way, outside the manufacturers' recommended specs, is unfair even if they have provided the tools to be able to do that.

What is surely more important to most users is how it performs when used within its normal parameters. Is there any evidence for Gigabyte MBs being less robust or more likely to fail when used as recommended than any other manufacturers' MBs?

 

mindless1

Diamond Member
Aug 11, 2001
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^ Depends. First, if it was o'c, is it stable if returned to defaults? If there is no chipset or memory voltage increase, then it shouldn't matter to the board. If there was, it depends on the specifics. A little 0.2V memory increase on two modules is less strain than four at default voltage.

Second, if the o'c does not exceed the board's ratings, like max CPU TDP, it should handle it. I mean within the reasonably expected lifespan.

When I do a new build, I usually o'c it just to see what kind of stability margin it has. I don't leave it at the max speed it runs stable, back it down from that. It has never been a problem unless going back to the era ~15 years ago when CPU VRMs had dodgy electrolytic capacitors, and then you see them vented when it fails.

We could consider o'c somewhat of a constant that if someone is going to do it, that they would regardless of which brand the board was, and that if an o'c wears the board out sooner for one brand than another, that makes one brand superior to the other. It is probable that means that brand/model would also last longer without an o'c.

Depends on the load too, someone might o'c for the moments they want the performance but not be gaming or especially running prime95 or video compression, F@H, /etc jobs where it is at full load continuously.

Yes, I think it's fair to slam avoid a brand if you find it has premature death no matter the cause, if it is an otherwise apples to apples comparison.
 
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rockfella79

Member
Nov 16, 2007
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This is sad, I've always liked Giga boards, none of them have died on me but it seems like they've lost their quality standards. I remember back in 2006 they came up with solid caps, then everyone followed.
 
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rockfella79

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Nov 16, 2007
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That same board for me died after 2 years. I had 78LMT-S2P rev 5 variant of it. I remember USB3 variant having way stronger VRMs and it was good at overclocking chips, well at least for cheap board. UD3P was a king for budget overclockers.
I had the same, I sold it after using it for few years, upgraded.
 

CakeMonster

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Nov 22, 2012
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I had Intel Gigabyte boards mostly in the 10 years up to 2016. They all worked great, FWIW. My Z170 board is still going strong in a friend's PC and it has all the modern security features (except W11 support but that's not the fault of the board).