Need a reliable choice to to replace an LGA1366 Socket MB

[FirefighterGeek]

I've had an Intel DX580G that has never been reliable. Random hard freezes have plagued this thing along with some I/O issues. I'm increasingly convinced the problem is with the X58 chipset -- either in design or in the way it's implemented on this board. All the drivers, bios, etc. have been updated over the years, video replaced, ram diagnosed, etc.

I want to replace the board, but keep processor (i7 940) and ram (Tripple channel DDR3 1600mhz 8-8-8-24 1.65v) I've invested in.

So -- I'm looking for the right replacement system board. It seems like most of the recommended boards have the X58 chipset so I'm wondering if the problems it had early on got resolved, or if I should be looking for something else. I'm not a gamer. I write code and nearly anything in this class of machine is going to be fast enough for this box so there really is no point in overclocking for me.

Any advice would be appreciated. I'm trying one last ditch attempt to make this thing stable by dropping in pcie boards for all the USB and SATA traffic and turning those features off on the system board, but I honestly don't expect that is going to resolve the issue. I'm trying it because it's cheap and easy to do. When that fails, I need to know which board to buy.

 

[Calculagator]

The problems you are experiencing are not normal. The x58 chipset is usually very reliable (in my experience) without significant issues. You could just have a bad board or corrupt os installation.

One option would be to buy a used workstation and drop your parts in. The Lenovo S20, Dell T3500/T5500, and HP Z600 are all socket 1366 and very reliable.
You can pick up a complete system for less than $200 on ebay or sometimes a barebone system with out CPU/RAM for closer to $100.

 

[FirefighterGeek]

I suppose it could be a bad board. This was also one of the earlier X58 implementations though so it could be an issue corrected later. I've read of people having problems using all six memory slots in this board and other people with untraceable lock-ups as well. The way this locks up "feels" like a hardware problem. The way it will just lock solid without warning, sometimes with a small sound on the speakers, it just does feel like it's hardware.

I'm pretty sure there are still boards out there I can swap to. I don't really care much for manufactured boxes -- they tend to use crappy power supplies and oddly designed cases that make life difficult. Without specific guidance I'll look for something from EVGA that still out there. I know ASUS makes some great hardware, but to be honest I've never liked their software and their driver support has been....questionable in my experience.

 

[Calculagator]

I don't really care much for manufactured boxes -- they tend to use crappy power supplies and oddly designed cases that make life difficult.

For the machines I recommended, their boxes may be ugly, but they are anything but crappy or difficult. These used to be $2000 machines. With the exception of the HP (which uses an easy to swap but non-standard PSU) the PSUs are standard 80+ models built like tanks. The cases were designed to be easy to upgrade and add/remove drives and cards. They are nothing like home/office Dells and HPs.

 

[FirefighterGeek]

Fair enough, and I appreciate the time you've taken. I am a fan of Lenovo's "Think" branded products in general -- they seem to have held the standard up after taking that over from IBM a few years back. Still, I'm really just looking for a good ATX mainboard recommendation that's proven reliable over the years for people. Dell lost my business for good some years ago when I caught their tech people telling outright lies about shipping parts in a support chat (which I then published on my blog site).

 

[FirefighterGeek]

Ended up replacing the board, processor and ram. I'm not a gamer so overclocking just isn't needed, but to get a nice board with all the ports I wanted and a decent reputation I went with a "gamer" branded one. A Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 7 and a Core i7 4790. I don't really like the location of the SATA ports, but otherwise it seems to be a nice rig. After a bit of driver battling, I'm back up and running without data loss (in fact, am typing on that machine now). To be honest, it's nice to be running with the Intel graphics set, which is more than enough to handle my dual 21" monitors for programming, and means I don't have to deal with NVIDIA or ATI and their endless graphics driver updates.

 

[Calculagator]

Sounds like a nice upgrade: much better than buying an old 1366. It should work well for years to come.

 

[FirefighterGeek]

I hope so. As a few people pointed out, it wouldn't have been that much savings to buy the old board -- assuming I could even find one still on a shelf somewhere.

I'm not really impressed with the packaging, but the board seems to work well. My biggest complaint is that the DVD they ship with drivers was completely worthless for my existing 64bit Windows 7 machine. It found no drivers on it, and none of the software would run without hard crashing the box. I did get the drivers I needed, but only by going to Gigabyte's website, downloading them with another machine, moving them to thumb drive, and installing from there.

 

[wbj707]

Asus Rampage III Extreme Socket 1366/ Intel X58/ 3-Way SLI & CrossFireX/ SATA3&USB3.0/ WiFi/ A&GbE Motherboard
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003H2AQG6/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B003H2AQG6&linkCode=as2&tag=besgamgea-20&linkId=OVG5DIFBCN7ZXBRP