how are Shuttle MBs (SIS Chipsets) as far as quality?

[Ninepepper]

They seem to be the lower priced of the 648 chipsets. With all the recent posts on asusboards.com discussing problems with the p4s8x, i was considering a shuttle brand purchase. I'm not familar with the Shuttle brand as all my previous computers were Asus or OEM bundles. Thanks for your time. By the way, I found that Gigabyte will be releasing a 648 as well within the next couple of weeks. Are there any other vendors who will be launching a 648 chipset MB within the next two weeks? (making my purchase the first full week of October). I am more concerned with stock stability than any overclocking features BTW...

 

[MichaelD]

Hello,

Your thread title doesn't mention that you're inquiring as to the quality of Shuttle SiS motherboards; but I'm here, so I'll add my two cents. I have a Shuttle AK35GTR (KT265A chipset) the quality is outstanding. Stable as a rock, easy to setup and almost the perfect BIOS. It's missing a 1/5th divider...but that is available in the AK35GTR2 (KT333 chipset)

I have had the board seven months now, in a gaming system running a RAID 0 array. It has been flawless. My next mobo will most probably be a Shuttle. I have zero experience with the SiS chipset Shuttle boards...I would imagine the quality would be on par w/the rest of Shuttle's boards, but I"ll let someone that has one say that.

 

[Peter]

ECS have a 648 board out as well. They were first actually.

 

[First]

Originally posted by: Peter
ECS have a 648 board out as well. They were first actually.

Not hardly actually. A handful of motherboard makers have released SiS 648 motherboards. ECSs' 648 board is no where to be found...

 

[Dix]

While I never actually owned one, I built a lot of machines over the course of a year a while back with Shuttle's AV61.

As far a quality goes they were very well made, solid, and stable as hell in use... overall quality was excellent.

Overclocking apparently is not really a big concern at Shuttle (at least at the time) so don't expect to see a lot of speed tweaking options... they shoot more for reliability than speed it seems. And given that these were "business" machines I was constructing they certainly fit the bill perfectly. Never had a single RMA. And of all those machines only one problem in about a year and a half of operation. One board refused to soft-powerdown after being online for a little over a year. After going through the BIOS, Windows Settings, and swapping out the power supply just to be sure... I swapped the board and it cured the problem.

One failure out of about 50 in over a year I'd call a pretty good record.

If I had ONE complaint with Shuttle? it?s support? or more correctly? the lack of it. In a word? it?s pathetic.

Unless something?s changed over there, don?t think you?re going to get any quick answers out of Shuttle?s tech support staff. Initially, I had a problem with the first few I built. I ended up getting an answer off of their tech support board from another Shuttle user that a jumper setting in the manual was a misprint (if memory serves). Never heard from anyone at Shuttle at all? ever.

In fact, for about 2 or 3 months I gave the guy that was doing most of the actual ?support? on Shuttle?s support forum a hand in answering questions? and he wasn?t even an actual Shuttle rep, just a user. He told me that he?d never actually seen anyone from Shuttle post answers on their own board? that?s how bad it was.

 

[Ninepepper]

Thanks everyone for taking the time to respond to my question. I have waffled so much back and forth on which board to buy. When I started this trek, I was eyeing the Asus P4S533. Over time and research I decided on a P4s8X, but then I saw all the problems and decided against it.

Anandtech has been invaluable in my quest and every user on the forums seem helpful. If I had only one complaint about Anandtech (and other sites like it) is that it is very difficult to get a sense of the value of a motherboard running at STOCK speeds. All reviews seem to delve into in-depth observations of how they perform as overclocked boards and make a singular evaluation based on that.

Anywhoo...can't complain too much really, information is information. Come October 1st newegg and I are going to do a little business:

Shuttle AS45GT/R
P4 2.5 (533FSB)
Radeon 9700
Windows XP Home (OEM)

The other items I need, I either already own or have already purchased (including a the regrettable purchase of 2 256MB PNY PC2100 RAM should have went to a higher speed DDR)

Additionally, I am considering a purchase of either a subscription to CPU magazine or Subscribing to Anandtech (can't decide which)

Thanks again all!

BTW this is probably not goodbye, this system will be the first I have put together myself from scratch. I will probably return with numerous questions so please be patient