Preferred brand of parts.

[sphincter]

Out of all the Manufacturers producing motherboards/gfx cards/etc. who do you prefer?


I tried my Asus Sabertooth board with my MSI GTX760TF one last time, and same thing exactly.  VGA LED lit red.  tried everything, card seating, output cables, cleared cmos, flashed bios, no dice.
Oh well, it was worth a shot.  I didn't RMA the second one because It gave the same problem and came with the "tested" certificate, so I figured it's something on my end.  Should've RMA'd it again for an MSI 990
Atleast Ive got fresh arctic4 thermal paste(after 5-6years), which has lowered my idle temp to 38c from 42c   and its nice to know I can tear my PC down and build it back up in minutes still 
Also, Iv'e reassembled my pc like 6 times with this ALL MSI 970A-g46/MSI GTX760TF Combo and it works every time like i know wtf i'm doing.

Somehow I feel like an Asus Graphics card would make it work even though the forums ive searched through claim brand shouldn't matter.


To the point I've had a positive experience with MSI parts, and would buy again.

What are your fav. brands?  This thread could influence my future choices.
Also any insight on my issues, appreciated.

[Mr.Scott]

Depends on the platform for motherboards.

For GPU's I do prefer EVGA and Sapphire cards.

I will tell you though, I have only like 3 MSI parts. They're not high on my list.
Everybody has their own goto brands. Doesn't really matter as long as you're happy with them.

[sphincter]

are they not high because of performance or reliability? I really like the MSI Click bios as well, but as someone with minimal overclocking experience, I can see where some details would elude me without further research.

[Mr.Scott]

Difficult question.
In my case, it's usually because there's a better performance board in the same platform.
There were a couple platforms that MSI boards were just time bombs though.
I would be more likely to buy a MSI branded GPU than a motherboard.

EDIT- Just for grins I took a quick MSI inventory.
MSI Cyclone GTX 460
MSI NX6600 Diamond
MSI K8N Neo 2 Platinum
MSI K7D Master-L

[mythicaltech]

For xoc motherboards I prefer asus but for daily use I prefer the newer asrock stuff. For ddr3 I prefer corsair at least for hypers because they are usually the most consistent 

[ShrimpBrime]

I've killed some boards. Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, AsRock.... And never forget BioStop boards.
Asus has always been my target for Daily Rig, even if a lower classed board. Nothing but success through the last decades.

A lot of the older stuff I had was bartered and traded years ago to help with OC and getting new hardware. I haven't been able to hold onto a lot of hardware through the years, but I have fun and my stock pile is not very large as a result.

But boards like K8N-DRE, I've had two of them. Abit, Epox, DFI and ECS I've had for maybe a short time or found them scrapped non working through the years.

But AMD is my favorite platform though.

[mythicaltech]

Shrimp have you had good luck with asus rma? I had a bad experience with it when I had to rma my tr4 system

[ShrimpBrime]

Mar 13, 2020 21:58:39 GMT -5 mythicaltech said:

Shrimp have you had good luck with asus rma? I had a bad experience with it when I had to rma my tr4 system

I've never had a bad board from Asus. Not a single one. Any Asus board that died was from my own doing while overclocking. I used multiple weapons of extreme cooling on many boards, if not and the very least sub zero and high voltages.



MSI RMA is ok. But that was for an 800 series AMD chipset. I have the board, 3rd one sent back from RMA, first two was the same board. We informed them that we didn't want the same board back a third time, finally got a working board.



I blew up this biostop board. It was sealed with permatex and dielectrical grease in socket. But I did not insulate. I think maybe one or two runs and it was done for.

Used this board in place of the MSI while on RMA. Once we got a working board, this one went cold.

Phenom II X3 720 to 5.1ghz. Not exactly the greatest board for overclocking, that's for sure.

[Bones]

Mar 13, 2020 19:33:32 GMT -5 sphincter said:

are they not high because of performance or reliability? I really like the MSI Click bios as well, but as someone with minimal overclocking experience, I can see where some details would elude me without further research.

MSI unfortunately tends as a practice to use the low end of components to make their boards with (Nikos brand components).

While MSI has made some good boards and so on the majority are as described, time bombs with a lit fuse that gets shorter each time you fire it up.
I had a 790FX-GD70 that suffered from the "Usual" VRM death syndrome those boards had back in the day and coudn't support a hex core chip even though MSI said it would.

For a long time I said I woudn't get another but finally did and so far it's been OK (X570 MEG ACE).

The GPUs they make as far as I know are better, much better in fact.
Have a MSI GTX 560-448 I bought new and it still runs fine to this day.

Back to boards, MSI did have features that not only were neat but useful AND worked too. The OC dial everyone craps on DOES work, it's like having a copy of ClockGen made into your board, always available whenever you need it.
Well, at least the older iterations of it worked fine, the new one that's in boards now isn't the same at all.

In short they all have their share of shortcomings.

For AMD - I'm a DFI guy for anything Socket A through AM2+, Asus when it comes to AM3/AM3+ hands down and (ATM) it looks like ASRock for AM4 stuff.

Intel stuff - I know it's either Asus or Gigabyte (Depending on model) for 775, for 1155 I also like Asus but have an ASRock that's done well too (OCF), in fact Asus with Intel stuff seems to have been largely consistent all along and based on that I'd say Asus for anything that's recently Intel period.

[Macsbeach98]

They will all blow up if you lean on them hard enough especially with Xtreme overclocking.
I would like to have all the money I have spent on motherboards over the last 8 years I have blown everything up from Socket 7 to Z270/AM4 and everything in between a few platforms I have blown many times
As for favorite brands it depends on platform I usually see what others are using and what is doing the best.
I have blown a lot of cards up too from most vendors but usually overvolting them way too much.

[sphincter]

many great and interesting answers.

Im considering buying the asus version of my 760gtx for 60 bucks just to try out that Sabertooth again. Suppose if I can return it, it wouldn't hurt to try.

Otherwise, I'm not gonna do any overclocking with my current "hot vrm" 970 board, as I now just want this setup to last as long as possible for browsing the web and streaming 1080 well after I upgrade.

Regarding MSI components, my startup screen claims "Military Grade Reliability" 

If I wait a few years Ill be able to afford more of an upgrade... atleast I hope.    Got too many automotive project that need $ put in atm.

[Macsbeach98]

You will probably have complete success with the Asus card its not the first time I have heard of Brand A card wont work in Brand B board.

[sphincter]

Cool! if that were the case (eyeing the generic case leftover on my desk) Ide be ram, some fans,a 40 dollar fx cpu, and a psu short of a second machine with the msi combo.

I'm seeing double. Ide really like to replace my dads mini gateway... lol it cant play 1080 very well, even after a fresh linux install on a spare drive. choppy with the amd 1.4 ghz

well, if and when things happen Ill start a thread for that. if the ST still fails i may just pick up a better board than that 970 to finish the job.


As for brands go I can't say negative of MSI, I ran this setup at 4.5 solid for a while and had no problems. I turned it down to stock for 3d rendering, which is the only time i see my cpu up to 60c .

Suppose it's throttling there, as with games and video playback its around 48-52c.