Gigabyte, MSI or ASRock for quality?

[snowjim]

Hi!

I am looking for a motherborad for a Intel I5 2500 and its possible that I will need SLI(Geforce GTX570).

I have ofcouse made some research and this is what I have found out so far :

Z68 chip will allow the onboard GPU on the I5 to do specific operations, there will however be no use of this in games. P67 do not contain any onboard GPU suport at all but should be performing like the Z68 in "regular" use.

When looking closer on reviews we can see that the performance is more or less the same between the boards (Link) and everything seemse to come don to price, features and quality/reliability.

When taking a look on customer reviews here :

Gigabyte
MSI

We can see that the grades is varying, some boards works flawless, some breaks within a short period of time and other just re-boots.

I have built computers with ASUS, MSI and now GIGABYTE and the onlye motherboard that have been working without any trouble is the GIGABYTE. This was also my first choise now when looking at a new board but I can see that even GIGABYTE do have some problems and thay do not provide a full EFI-bios as for example the MSI does.

So the question is, which motherboard is prefferd if i seek stability and quality?

BestRegards

 

[o1die]

Your guess is as good as mine. If you have any way of using the warranty in your location, I would choose based on that option. I've used msi and biostar's warranties, and had no problems with them. Gigabyte and asus can be a pain; one reviewer claimed he sent in a perfectly good board (no physical damage) and asus claimed it had some scraping damage on the circuitry.

 

[swimswithtrout]

I've been a happy ASUS user for at least 15 yrs, but based on reviews after the P67 release, I decided to go with a Z68 board from ASrock a couple of months ago and couldn't be happier.

ASrock Z68 Extreme 3, SLI capable, UEFI BIOS worked perfect straight out of the box, their version of "Easy Tune" took me to 4.4 Ghz with one click, and then allowed me to customize my settings.

Oh, and ~$125.

 

[snowjim]

Asus feels luxury and do have many features but by reading on forums it seems to be alot of problems on there motherboards and the suport is not good at all.

Gigabyte do however seems to have same bad suport but the qulity on there boards are a bit higher.

There is alot of people that is happy with Asrock and I have not found as many users with problems yet on this manufacture. Asrock have been a low prics alternative for a couple of years ago but now it seems like thay have taken up the battle with the big manufacture.

What brand to choose will probably be a gamble but based on suport MSI have the upper hand.

 

[davcon]

Gigabyte no question in my mind.
The number of Asus post are appalling for the so-called premiere mobo maker.
And it's on the rise.

 

[mxsix]

I'll support MSI on this one. Just bought one of their new Z68 boards with military specs and it's rock solid.

 

[snowjim]

I would go with Gigabyte but it apears like thay do not have a gen3 card on the market? MSI does however!