Motherboards from companies you wish you would have kept for their historical value.

[DAPUNISHER]

Most if not all of the past boards I really liked I've held onto, with the exception of a couple that had some issues. On my wall still: Abit NF7-S, Rampage Formula (X48), and Striker II extreme. I'm still using a ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 but it is not my original board I used in ~2009/2010

Has anyone else ever bought a board just to have it? I've always wanted a first generation Maximus Formula because I thought it was the coolest looking thing ever when released. They pop up on eBay from time to time but people typically want too much for them. And then there's the EVGA SR-X which I'll probably never get to own.

You are what the hobby is all about.

I regret not keeping some of them. Whether it was features like Soundstorm, a cool looking PCB, or something interesting like socket 7 where you could use multiple vendors CPUs in it. Even the exceptional performers of their day being from defunct companies is cool to me.

 

[EXCellR8]

Defunct company boards might be among the coolest if you ask me. By the time LGA775 was mainstream there was an abundance of both boards that were outfitted to look neat and equipped to perform. In order for me to retain a board I typically either appreciate the layout, stability, features and expansion options. OC capability is a plus, but I don't necessarily only keep boards that OC well. I still have a mATX brown turd of a board on my wall because it was the first board (out of an eMachines PC) I tinkered with. Not only is it an eye sore, but it sort of represents my roots.

 

[Rifter]

I miss Abit, my BM6 was a great board.

 

[whm1974]

I actually had someone's CP/M-80 system, with 8" floppy drives, that was given to me. I didn't know what to do with it, really, I should have called the Computer Museum in Boston to see if they wanted that stuff. I think I eventually trashed it, although I saved a few of the 8" floppies for novelties. (Maybe the US gov't would have bought those floppies off of me, for their systems that still use them - I won't say which ones.)

DEC's PDP minicomputers? Or VAX maybe?

 

[mopardude87]

Wish i kept my Abit IP35 Pro, it looked quite nice with my Antec 900 and Zalman 9700 cooler. Ended up moving to the original Asus Maximus. Nothing wrong with the Abit for the price it was at but that Asus was awesome though.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Most if not all of the past boards I really liked I've held onto, with the exception of a couple that had some issues. On my wall still: Abit NF7-S, Rampage Formula (X48), and Striker II extreme. I'm still using a ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 but it is not my original board I used in ~2009/2010

Has anyone else ever bought a board just to have it? I've always wanted a first generation Maximus Formula because I thought it was the coolest looking thing ever when released. They pop up on eBay from time to time but people typically want too much for them. And then there's the EVGA SR-X which I'll probably never get to own.

Ha, I have a Rampage X48 with a 4 Ghz-capable E8400 and 8 GB of RAM that I've tried selling on eBay but the only person who bid was a guy in Peru who would have me ship it to his "friend" in Miami for shipment. Probably going to end up recycling it next week when I haul a bunch of electronics gear to a free local electronics recycling event.

I don't remember what happened to by NF7-S, but I must have sold it at some point because I don't have it in my closet now.

 

[EXCellR8]

^That might be one of my favorite boards of all time, honestly. When I finally moved to a multi-core setup I originally tried nForce boards and I had nothing but problems with them. I forget how I got tipped off to the Intel chipset boards but decided to shell out for a (at the time) high end board that promised superior overclocks with a Q6600. It was not only super stable with great expansion options but was also the first board I used that featured an impressive OC BIOS, albeit not UEFI. I may never part with it.

 

[sandorski]

Epox, had another extinct company board as well, but can't remember the name.

I notice no one mentioned PC Chips.....

 

[VirtualLarry]

I got one of my (now late, sadly) friends a rig with an Abit IP35-E board, with a E2200, then an E5200, then an Q8200 I think. At some point, I picked up a used IP35 Pro on ebay for him too, as a backup, which I had to use, because I lost a standoff, and it shorted out the mobo when I powered it on after an upgrade, so I had to go get the IP35 Pro and install it.

Oh, the joys of XP. LOL. Other than the bugs, and the blue-screens (which Windows 7 had much, much less of), XP was a decent sort of OS. I do still much prefer Windows 7 64-bit or Windows 10 64-bit though, overall. Probably Win7 64-bit a little better.

I think that at some point, I did upgrade my friend to Windows 7 64-bit, eventually. I was running that at home, at the time, on my Core2-era rigs. I don't recall if I ever got him set up with an SSD on that rig, I do remember replacing his HDD with a shiny new 1TB drive though.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

A few others that will stir memories -

Albatron
Jetway
Leadtek
Pine
BFG

 

[IndyColtsFan]

^That might be one of my favorite boards of all time, honestly. When I finally moved to a multi-core setup I originally tried nForce boards and I had nothing but problems with them. I forget how I got tipped off to the Intel chipset boards but decided to shell out for a (at the time) high end board that promised superior overclocks with a Q6600. It was not only super stable with great expansion options but was also the first board I used that featured an impressive OC BIOS, albeit not UEFI. I may never part with it.

Yeah, it was a great board and I was able to hit 4 Ghz on my E8400 with complete stability. I'm just out of space for it - my computer closet is already an avalanche risk whenever I open the door, even after significantly cleaning a bunch of my home automation gear out last weekend. Maybe I'll think about tossing it up on FS/FT and giving it to someone who could enjoy it for the price of shipping or something. I just can't find a good use for it - I do need a second small server for purposes of redundancy, but any CPU I could buy for that thing would probably suck down too much power, not to mention that it is limited in RAM capacity.

 

[EXCellR8]

I thought Jetway still made boards? If not that would explain why the old stock is so expensive.

Using one as a Untangle firewall/router since 2015

 

[Ketchup]

The DFI board and one of the Epox boards. As good as the Abit board was, it wasn't much to look at.

 

[sandorski]

Biostar or someone made some Blingy brightly coloured boards back in the day. I think if I were a Collector that they would make it into a collection.

 

[mopardude87]

I got one of my (now late, sadly)

Oh, the joys of XP. LOL. Other than the bugs, and the blue-screens (which Windows 7 had much, much less of), XP was a decent sort of OS.

I never ever had issues with XP.Heck i kept going back and fourth between Vista cause it was so shiny and XP cause it was reliable for me. The minute i put in a 6990 with the "certified to work with windows vista" sticker on the box and dealt with a blue screen with Vista that even wouldn't post in safe mode i was pretty much done with Vista. I put the GTX460 i had prior back in, returned the loud 6990 which i didn't miss by the way and put Xp back on and had zero issues. Heck i had Windows 7 preview on eventually and well that was more stable for me then Vista ever was. Since preview it was pretty much 7 till i got my i7 8700 then i moved to 10. 7 was mainly flawless outside of a disaster 7970 where i had the sleep at idle bug where if i watched a movie the monitor would shut off and well nothing outside of a hard reset would fix it. It would overclock like a dream,run like a beast in games but god forbid i watched a movie. The last time i have put a AMD card in my system.

Not sure if my near perfect XP experience was due to me running on a 74gb then eventually 150gb Raptor drive or what. Surprised you have had issues with Xp. Was it prior to Service pack 2? I had mixed experiences with SP3 and i reverted back to SP2 and went back to a flawless experience.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I wouldn't quite call XP "unreliable", only that Win7 was "more reliable". Basically, instead of a BSOD per month, it got reduced to 1-2 per year, if that. Win10 has been highly reliable for me as well, at least, after I stopped overclocking my 1st-Gen Ryzen CPU.

 

[mopardude87]

Win10 has been highly reliable for me as well, at least, after I stopped overclocking my 1st-Gen Ryzen CPU.

Yeah i haven't overclocked anything since my Q6600 cpu and the 7970 gpu. Since i have stuck to Nvidia since the 7970 issues, i haven't even found gpus worth overclocking. I aim for 60fps and if i get drops into the 40's with settings, no overclock is gonna give that much of a boost. Nvidia kind of controls just how much you can get out of your cards now sadly and the little boost is hardly worth it. Maybe 144hz gamers can benefit from maximum overclocks but i much prefer stability over a 5 fps increase.

Honestly with a i7 8700 non k hitting 4.3ghz on all cores, the bins alone should hold over the mass majority of people. It seems that by the time a chip is rendered obsolete, even a overclock isn't gonna do much for it. My Q6600 with a 3Ghz oc still ran like trash in BC2 and when BF1 finally came and murdered my i5 4460 even a overclock wasn't gonna offset the absolute need for more threads assuming the i5 4460 was overclockable to begin with.

 

[Furious_Styles]

I never ever had issues with XP.Heck i kept going back and fourth between Vista cause it was so shiny and XP cause it was reliable for me. The minute i put in a 6990 with the "certified to work with windows vista" sticker on the box and dealt with a blue screen with Vista that even wouldn't post in safe mode i was pretty much done with Vista. I put the GTX460 i had prior back in, returned the loud 6990 which i didn't miss by the way and put Xp back on and had zero issues. Heck i had Windows 7 preview on eventually and well that was more stable for me then Vista ever was. Since preview it was pretty much 7 till i got my i7 8700 then i moved to 10. 7 was mainly flawless outside of a disaster 7970 where i had the sleep at idle bug where if i watched a movie the monitor would shut off and well nothing outside of a hard reset would fix it. It would overclock like a dream,run like a beast in games but god forbid i watched a movie. The last time i have put a AMD card in my system.

Not sure if my near perfect XP experience was due to me running on a 74gb then eventually 150gb Raptor drive or what. Surprised you have had issues with Xp. Was it prior to Service pack 2? I had mixed experiences with SP3 and i reverted back to SP2 and went back to a flawless experience.

XP was rock solid for me. SP1, 2 and 3 all could have uptime of well over a month. I stuck with it until I had to upgrade to 7 due to the memory limitations.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I remember that before we knew the source of the issues, my trust in Epox and MSI boards went in the toilet. I would RMA one just to have the next fail within a short period too. Most of us here were pushing our overclocks as far as we could on the cooling we used. That was of course during the dark times, an age of bad capacitors. Almost stop using MSI for good.

Then came the K8N SLI, and that was the longest I ever used a single board. My son was young and console gaming was his preference at the time, so I was not PC gaming. I kept that system for some obscene length of time.

 

[DrMrLordX]

something interesting like socket 7 where you could use multiple vendors CPUs in it.

If there is any one thing that still has me outraged at the state of the PC world, it's that. Used to be anyone who could get a license to produce a compatible CPU could build one for a given socket. Hasn't been like that since the Pentium II came out. Well, not really. Sure, Cyrix and IDT/Centaur were still able to produce Socket 7/Super 7 chips, but they never amounted to much. Super 7 was AMD's playground until they abandoned it.

I still hate what Intel did.

In truth, I doubt that AMD would be any better today. If some mysterious cloner company showed up trying to peddle AM4 chips, I doubt AMD would let them do it. Plus the nature of modern UEFI would mean you'd have to flash a custom one on there just to boot the cloner chip.

I notice no one mentioned PC Chips.....

Ugh. There's a good reason for that!

I miss Abit. Chaintech and ECS I sort of miss, but not really. I never had a DFI board, though I really wanted a Lanparty.

 

[country2]

I remember that before we knew the source of the issues, my trust in Epox and MSI boards went in the toilet. I would RMA one just to have the next fail within a short period too. Most of us here were pushing our overclocks as far as we could on the cooling we used. That was of course during the dark times, an age of bad capacitors. Almost stop using MSI for good.

Then came the K8N SLI, and that was the longest I ever used a single board. My son was young and console gaming was his preference at the time, so I was not PC gaming. I kept that system for some obscene length of time.

Ah the old bad caps nightmare! I had 3 Epox motherboards go flaky about same time.I remember opening up my Epox 8RDA Pro and seeing caps next to CPU leaking then checked my sons motherboards and theirs were worse. Sent all 3 out for repair or replacement (cannot remember which it was) I loved Epox though..

 

[ultimatebob]

I don't really think that any of those motherboards are really going to be worth anything, unless they were some obscure prototype board.

I could see something like a Apple G4 Cube system board being worth something, though, just from the novel design of it.

 

[thigobr]

I still keep few boards/cpus because they were cool at the time.
I have these combos all in working condition:

Tomato 4DPS(SiS496/497) / AMD 486-100MHz
FIC VA503+(Via MVP3) / K6-2 500MHz
Asus P2-99(Intel 440ZX-100) / P3 550MHz
Shuttle MN31/N (nForce 2 IGP) / Duron 1800MHz@XP2200+(L2 cache mod)
DFI nF4 Ultra-D / Athlon X2 4400+ Toledo

Sometimes I move them to my classic Chieftech case just to play and remember the old times

Some of the mobo makers also used to make video cards, like ABIT with the Siluro line or Chaintech

 

[Blockheadfan]

I have an Abit AI7 with a rotated socket which I thought was mildly interesting. Had an old Soltek Nforce board also with a tacky gold colour scheme.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I have an Abit AI7 with a rotated socket which I thought was mildly interesting.

That's interesting. Why did they do that? Also whoever came up with that color scheme must really have liked the University of Florida. Or Galford. Or both.