Rant Motherboard manufacturers

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

A///

Diamond Member
Feb 24, 2017
4,352
3,151
136
AsRock is YMMV.
My board is about 12 years old and hasn't had major problems, but it was defective because the headphone jack is screwed up. Doesn't make a reliable connection and might be crossed up with a different port. Not worth a RMA at the time.
sounds about right aligning with my own experiences over about 18-20 years of the brand. they haven't changed a lot since their divesture from asus but they're about the same. calling it a divesture is an over statement. they both dropped using pegatron as a manufacturer around 11 years ago dunno about the quality differences before or after, asus have always been good to me. they said they were gonna use ecs compal and other odms back then. if you've been in the diy space for a long time you'll know ecs is a terrible company. couldn't tell you who the main odm is now and for what ranges.
 

Captante

Lifer
Oct 20, 2003
29,995
10,508
136
Chrome has no limitation on the number of "home-pages" you can setup. (tabs that open every time on launch)

Do that once and you'll never worry about any of that buggy "sleep" nonsense again.
 

Captante

Lifer
Oct 20, 2003
29,995
10,508
136
AsRock is YMMV.
My board is about 12 years old and hasn't had major problems, but it was defective because the headphone jack is screwed up. Doesn't make a reliable connection and might be crossed up with a different port. Not worth a RMA at the time.

Even the crappiest car on the road for example, with a completely unacceptable IRL 32% "repair-ratio" still works fine for 68% of the unfortunates who buy one and the same can be said for electronics.

I've owned one Asrock/AMD board (years ago) and worked on quite a few systems equipped with them. (plus a few with GPU's) While the majority ultimately worked for me I wasn't impressed with the quality level at all.
 

manly

Lifer
Jan 25, 2000
10,329
1,556
126
IIRC you have to be careful to open the browser, do an immediate restore or lose the option to restore?

Also I'm not sure just how good a restore is, doesn't it reload the pages rather than remembering the state each page was in (e.g. long web page that takes half an hour to read, user is 60% of the way down, doesn't want to lose their progress).

---

chrome's bookmark support historically hasn't been as strong as Firefox's IIRC, I migrated to Chrome in the era that FF's multithreading wasn't good then migrated back once it was fixed to get the better bookmark system. Given how these days software makers copy the crap out of each other, it wouldn't surprise me if FF's bookmarking system has been nerfed to make it look/work more like Chrome.
Like I said, some people use background tabs to preserve state. When you restart Chrome or FF and restore your session, you get all your tabs back but not the prior state.

So bookmarks and session restore can save all your locations, but that isn't relevant to all the different reasons a person might have for hoarding browser tabs (it could be reading a long, static document but it could also be keeping the last page of a transaction as a reminder to do something else).

It's a funny pivot to go from you need to use bookmarks to organize your pile of tabs to "just delete all your bookmarks." :tearsofjoy: Obviously most users aren't like igor, but I have a lot of tabs lying around as well (many dozens, not hundreds).
 

Torn Mind

Lifer
Nov 25, 2012
11,201
2,517
136
Even the crappiest car on the road for example, with a completely unacceptable IRL 32% "repair-ratio" still works fine for 68% of the unfortunates who buy one and the same can be said for electronics.

I've owned one Asrock/AMD board (years ago) and worked on quite a few systems equipped with them. (plus a few with GPU's) While the majority ultimately worked for me I wasn't impressed with the quality level at all.
Like American cars. A Ford, you know it will go "high maintenance bitch" come 100-150k.

sounds about right aligning with my own experiences over about 18-20 years of the brand. they haven't changed a lot since their divesture from asus but they're about the same. calling it a divesture is an over statement. they both dropped using pegatron as a manufacturer around 11 years ago dunno about the quality differences before or after, asus have always been good to me. they said they were gonna use ecs compal and other odms back then. if you've been in the diy space for a long time you'll know ecs is a terrible company. couldn't tell you who the main odm is now and for what ranges.
I think ASUS designs a "flow" in which the boards that are good are dead stable, but god forbid if you get a defective one, because they will...not...own...up without forceful prodding.

Strangely, I had an ECS Socket 478 board that was handed to me and it was dead stable. This was the box that got me started in becoming a computer builder nerd, by virtue of the heatsink being clogged up with dust and being super noisy.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Captante and A///

A///

Diamond Member
Feb 24, 2017
4,352
3,151
136
I think ASUS designs a "flow" in which the boards that are good are dead stable, but god forbid if you get a defective one, because they will...not...own...up without forceful prodding.

Strangely, I had an ECS Socket 478 board that was handed to me and it was dead stable. This was the box that got me started in becoming a computer builder nerd, by virtue of the heatsink being clogged up with dust and being super noisy.
Asus position has always been unique to me because their attitude at least based on their production systems which are through ecs or others or a multi mix where the majority is mechanized and digital with no human interactions which i suspect for them means near zero fault for them and very tight tolerances. in laymens english they walk around with a big dick thinking they're better than the rest but their shit stinks as much as the rest. ecs history is storied. much like asrock they've put out duds or hot bangers over the years. when ecs merged with the infamous pcchips about 20 years ago i swore off anything they touched. dunno if you remember pcchips but they were worse than any of the scummy stuff you have witnessed in the last decade put together as one. the irony of me saying that is i used asus boards long after they dropped peggatron as a partner due to cost iirc. now why's this matter? because at the end of the day due to the circle jerk design of tawiwanese business asrock, asus, pegatron, asrock and unihan are still the same company due to sharing the same cporortrate drones and interests with a tight working capacity.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Captante

Captante

Lifer
Oct 20, 2003
29,995
10,508
136
Like American cars. A Ford, you know it will go "high maintenance bitch" come 100-150k.


I think ASUS designs a "flow" in which the boards that are good are dead stable, but god forbid if you get a defective one, because they will...not...own...up without forceful prodding.

Strangely, I had an ECS Socket 478 board that was handed to me and it was dead stable. This was the box that got me started in becoming a computer builder nerd, by virtue of the heatsink being clogged up with dust and being super noisy.


Some Fords hold up a lot better than you would think .... the livery services I used to dispatch for used 80% Ford or Lincoln vehicles and they averaged in the area of 400k prior to selling them "as-is" for a couple grand.

The biggest issue with Ford products is the automatic transmissions.... not great. (400k = at least 1-2 rebuilds)
 
Last edited:

Torn Mind

Lifer
Nov 25, 2012
11,201
2,517
136
Some Fords hold up a lot better than you would think .... the livery services I used to dispatch for used 80% Ford or Lincoln vehicles and they averaged in the area of 400k prior to selling them "as-is" for a couple grand.

The biggest issue with Ford products is the transmissions.... not great. (400k = at least 1-2 rebuilds)
Crown Vics(and the badge engineered Lincoln Town Car) were reliable precisely because of the customers that used them...namely cops and as you said, livery.

Even then....sometimes a spark plug can pop out due to insufficient threads.
--------------
For non-Crown Vics, there are also stories of failing water pumps.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Captante

Captante

Lifer
Oct 20, 2003
29,995
10,508
136
It was also because those vehicles were built with an "OTR Truck" mentality rather than "passenger-car" .... old-school (sedan) RWD Town Cars in particular. (plus nothing rides better over brutal NYC streets)
 

biostud

Lifer
Feb 27, 2003
17,869
4,230
136
If we look over a long period of time I don't think any of the major brands differ in quality. Every manufacturer has had a board with design faults or bios releases with bugs. So personally I just choose which board has the layout and features I want for the lowest cost. My last two boards have been ASRock and both have been working as expected. And if I need help or guidance, I come here and ask you guys. :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: igor_kavinski

Captante

Lifer
Oct 20, 2003
29,995
10,508
136
Idk.... I've used many 100's of ASUS and Gigabyte MB's and had a grand total of ONE that I couldn't get "stable". (not counting the occasional "DOA" board which happens with all brands)

OTOH I've used maybe 2 dozen Asrock MB's and had at least some minor "unfixable" problems with just about ALL of them. (I am a bit of a "perfectionist/obsessive" when it comes to error-free PC's to be fair!)

:oops:

Overall (despite the recent BIOS/warranty debacle) I've had the best luck with ASUS and will be sticking with them. Gigabyte has actually been very slightly BETTER in terms of not breaking but they have some of the worst RMA service in the entire industry.
 
  • Like
Reactions: biostud and lxskllr

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
57,051
7,075
126
I always liked asus. Been a long while since I built a machine, but I always preferred the bios they used(can't remember which). Gigabyte has also served me well, but I didn't like their bios quite as much.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Captante

ch33zw1z

Lifer
Nov 4, 2004
37,366
17,568
146
It's especially nice when you forget it's on and "power-up" to a 100% flat battery! ;)

Standard User Error, gets us all from time to time. Sleep mode on my laptops with healthy batteries lasts anywhere from 3-7 days

It's really meant for mobility, going from place to place. As a traveling field tech for 16 years, it was definitely my go-to...especially pre-SSD as booting my employer provided laptop could take up to 15 minutes to full load. yes, it was that much fun.

I use it on my home PC to conserve power mostly.

Either way, if you need very little battery usage and a sleep mode, hibernate is there.