Asus motherboard? -- never again!

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 10:18:24PM -0400, CLIFFORD ILKAY wrote:
> For what it's worth, when I spoke to a fellow at the Canada Computers  
> store in Pacific Mall last fall when I was shopping for components to  
> build the system I'm currently using, he recommended Asus when I asked  
> him about a Gigabyte which was about the same price as the Asus that I  
> eventually bought. He said, "By the way, I'm the tech who has to deal  
> with RMAs. I rarely see Asus motherboards returned but I see Gigabyte  
> and others all the time." I know that's anecdotal evidence but assuming  
> he has no vested interest in telling me that, he's bound to have a  
> bigger sample to draw from than I would. Having said that, if the other  
> popular brands were so awful, they wouldn't survive. It's a competitive  
> market.

Yeah exactly.

Asus has ranked top in reliability on many surveys I have seen over
the years.

MSI is generally pretty high up too.  Some people hate them though
(I have never dealt with one).

Gigabyte is lucky if they get half the votes of Asus.  It is still
considered very good these days.  Perhaps they have learned something
since the awful ones I have dealt with in the past.  Of course given
Asus has never failed me I haven't had a reason to give gigabyte another
chance.

EVGA generally seems decent, although they have generally in the past
only made nvidia chipset boards and been a bit of a specialty case and
hence don't have the numbers to really tell.

Abit is supposed to be decent.  I have never looked at them.

ECS has been crap for years (along with their other brand PC Cchips).

Biostar is also considered bad by most.

No idea with DFI.  Some people seem to like them.  I don't think they
are that big.

Asus went from being a "never heard of them" motherboard maker from
Taiwan in 1990.  It was started by some engineers that had been at Acer.
They made some 386 boards for OEM use.  They then designed a 486 board
based purely on the specs released, even though they didn't get an
engineering sample until 6 months after it was first given to IBM and
other big names.  They apparently went to intel to have their board tested
with a 486 chip, and the board worked perfectly.  Intel's own prototype
board at the time didn't work yet.  Apparently they impressed intel.
They now get samples of chipsets and CPUs from intel before anyone else.
They are that good.  Often Asus has working boards ready for evaluation
before intel can make their own.  I actually have one of those 486 boards
from Asus that I bought in 1993.  It still works perfectly.  Back then
they didn't say Asus on the box, it was just a light blue box with
a rainbox.  By the time pentium boards started shipping they put the
Asus name on the rainbox.  Going from nothing to 30% market share for
motherboards in about 20 years must mean they are doing something right.
I am sticking with them for now.

-- 
Len Sorensen
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists