How can I tell if a motherboard sucks?

[ShawnD1]

I'm going for broke and overclocking my E6600 as high as possible. Default FSB is 266, and I managed to get it up to 350 just fine. At 360, my hard drives start disappearing. This crappy Asus P5LD2 (Intel 945P) motherboard sucks, and it's holding back the CPU.

How can I prevent this from happening in the future? Do I just look at the chipset, or is this a motherboard-to-motherboard variable? I'm looking at Newegg and I don't really see a trend in any of this.
MSI motherboard (Intel G31) - rated for 1333 (333 actual)
Asus motherboard (Intel G31) - rated for 1600 (400 actual)

edit: I'm not actually planning to buy a motherboard. I'm just using those links as examples.

 

[VulcanX]

As far as i know the chipset/BIOS are what actually control the overclockability of the components themselves, so u need to ensure u get summin like a "P" or "X" series board eg. P45 or X48 bcoz those are designed for overclocking, the G31 as far as i know, isnt good at all for overclocking. But i would like to find out this as well, so anyone with knowledge plz educate us both

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1
I'm going for broke and overclocking my E6600 as high as possible. Default FSB is 266, and I managed to get it up to 350 just fine. At 360, my hard drives start disappearing. This crappy Asus P5LD2 (Intel 945P) motherboard sucks, and it's holding back the CPU.

That's actually a respectable overclock for a nearly four year-old integrated chipset and motherboard design that was marketed for mainstream consumer and digital media segments, not performance or enthusiast.

If you want overclocking, try to avoid the value oriented chipsets and motherboards that use them, such as G31, P31, G41, et. al. These are depopulated or cut-down derivatives of the mainstream performance or enthusiast class chipsets. Even so, the value chipsets are not necessarily going to be the weakest link that will limit overclocking, so much as the motherboards that use them typically won't be designed for anything more than moderate overclocking (if even that) due to product segmentation.

You don't need to go with the high-end enthusiast class chipset and motherboard offerings, just aim a little higher than the bottom.

 

[ShawnD1]

Great info. Thanks guys