StarDestroyer.Net BBS

OK, maybe I just got a lemon. But come on, this truly sucks. Matthew's machine had a Gigabyte motherboard in it. Last year, the network function on the motherboard started slowing down. It got so bad that it would download files at maybe 100 kB/s. Eventually it stopped working entirely. So I installed a 3Com network card that I had laying around.

Then, a month ago, it started behaving very oddly when it was powered down. Specifically, it was totally random whether it would power back up. You'd have to hit the power button maybe 10 times before it would come to life. This was odd, and somewhat inexplicable, but you could work around it.

Then, a week ago, the keyboard port stopped working. I tried moving the keyboard to another machine and testing it, and the keyboard itself was fine. It was the actual port that was dead. I swapped in a USB keyboard and it was OK again.

Then, yesterday, it died completely. I've now replaced it with a cheap Biostar motherboard because I figure it's not really worth getting a high-end motherboard for an older CPU socket and an older type of RAM anyway.

This Gigabyte motherboard has truly been the shits.

That's very odd that it died slowly over the course of several months.

If you've still got it handy, you might check the capacitors on the motherboard; maybe they went bad. This normally manifests in the capacitors bulging at the top. Probably wouldn't be practical to replace them but it might be interesting to see if that were the case.

Whoa, that's pretty shitty. Out of pure curiousity I'd love to get a good look at it to see if there were any obvious hardware failures, but holy hell that's a a lame-ass board. Any chance of getting some good photos of the thing for a post-mortem?

Was it less than a year old? In my case I've never had a board crap out on me within a year except for an old ECS mobo, and I've used Abit, Asus, Asrock and MSI and all of them were just middling mid-range boards at best. From what I've experienced so far and from other people's anecdotes, the power supply is actually far more important as a critical point of failure, since it may take out the board with it as well if it fails.

That said, with corner cuts as it is compared to, say, 5-6 years ago, I think for a primary work machine I'm really leery of using a budget board these days.

I had a Gigabyte board actually catch fire a few years ago. When I got a replacement for it (same model), the AGP port died after a year.

I concour with Lord Wong. I bought a Gigabyte board once and it was shit. I had many of the same problems as Mike, especially the trouble with ports randomly dying. I swear by ASRock now.

I have a gigabyte board...

Half my USB ports don't work properly , constantly get a voltage error if i plug somehing in and the built in ethernet port doesn't work. But I can't afford to replace it at the moment.

Lord Pounder wrote:I concour with Lord Wong. I bought a Gigabyte board once and it was shit. I had many of the same problems as Mike, especially the trouble with ports randomly dying. I swear by ASRock now.

I´ve hat plenty of problems with ASRock. I can only use one USB Port at a time now and the driver support is horrible. Often if i try to download new drivers the download stops when half finished. I have to try for week before i can get the new drivers. I swear by ASUS now.

salm wrote:I´ve hat plenty of problems with ASRock. I can only use one USB Port at a time now and the driver support is horrible. Often if i try to download new drivers the download stops when half finished. I have to try for week before i can get the new drivers. I swear by ASUS now.

The anecotal evidence for Asrock I've heard is split cleanly down the middle. Some love it, some absolutely loathe the name by now. But they are affordable, and I guess the brand and ECS are viable buys if the budget is tight. It's a bit like my situation with Maxtor disks, I've had 2 and both broke down within a year, while others swear by it. I'm not paying another dollar for anything that's not Seagate or WD, not for something data-sensitive.

I generally like my Gigabyte motherboards, I've had two over the years. The one I actully paid attention to is a rock solid VIA based motherboard for the Athlon. Never crapped out, never did anything wrong.

Darth Wong wrote:OK, maybe I just got a lemon.
Then, a month ago, it started behaving very oddly when it was powered down. Specifically, it was totally random whether it would power back up. You'd have to hit the power button maybe 10 times before it would come to life. This was odd, and somewhat inexplicable, but you could work around it.

I had this problem with my Abit motherboard, a new powersupply fixed it.

I've got an old Socket A machine running on a gigabyte board. The machine was used HEAVILY for about 3 years, and endured two extremely hot summers without A/C. I can't say much about it, other than it never gave me problems.

salm wrote:

Lord Pounder wrote:I concour with Lord Wong. I bought a Gigabyte board once and it was shit. I had many of the same problems as Mike, especially the trouble with ports randomly dying. I swear by ASRock now.

I´ve hat plenty of problems with ASUS. I can only use one USB Port at a time now and the driver support is horrible. Often if i try to download new drivers the download stops when half finished. I have to try for week before i can get the new drivers. I swear by ASUS now.

Fixed. ASRock is a subsidiary of ASUS.

The only problem I've ever had with Asus was a stripped down K7M board that was in an HP; I'm blame HP for the problem (AGP issues). I've had a K7V, P4S533, P4P800, A8N-SLI Premium, P5W DH and the Striker, all from Asus, and aside from the NF4 bullshit with the A8N, they've all been excellent boards. I had a DFI that went dead in two weeks, and one of my friends has had a couple of Gigabyte boards blow up on him. And of the original machines at the office, which were built with Abit boards, only one of them lived long enough to become obsolete; the rest blew up.

The only brand of motherboard I really trust is Asus (edit: and Intel). I wouldn't touch a Gigabyte or Abit.

The Asus motherboard in my computer is nearly 9 years old now and all I've had to do was replace the battery after it ran out last year.

A tower I built had a shitty Gigabyte mobo and the onboard soundcard didn't work. Eventually it bombed entirely. (though I was told the power supply was bad too by my friend I'd loaned the system to) In short, welcome to the club.

edit: there were more problems with it, but considering the fact that I was told the power supply was also erratic and that I didn't possess the system in it's last days, I don't know how much of it was the mobo and how much was the power supply. That bloody soundcard though. It prevented CoD2 from running properly, and I couldn't figure that out in the short time I had it. (I had a 'fake deployment' scare me into leaving it at my home and later got a new laptop and essentially permanently lent / gave away the system to my friend. He's paid for it in repairs. )

My experiences with Gigabyte motherboards are fairly similar to the OP. A while back, me and a friend both had the same model Gigabyte Socket A board, both of which independently developed a problem with the AGP slot contacts somehow wearing out. The board I'm currently using has dead IDE ports and I had to use an IDE PCI card before getting a SATA drive.

interesting as Gigabyte boards are widely considered to be rock solid. A few anecdotal failures hardly seems reason to condemn the manufacturer.

ThatGuyFromThatPlace wrote:interesting as Gigabyte boards are widely considered to be rock solid. A few anecdotal failures hardly seems reason to condemn the manufacturer.

It might be a particular product SKU, or just a certain year where there are QC issues. Assuming it's rectified fast the negative word of mouth usually doesn't snowball too much.

ThatGuyFromThatPlace wrote:interesting as Gigabyte boards are widely considered to be rock solid. A few anecdotal failures hardly seems reason to condemn the manufacturer.

Why are they widely considered to be rock solid? Is there some kind of long-term reliability testing data for computer motherboards?

Darth Wong wrote:Why are they widely considered to be rock solid? Is there some kind of long-term reliability testing data for computer motherboards?

I suspect it's just an OTHER set of anecdotal data. Not only is there not a industry stress test standard, ethusiasist sites generally don't like to do any reviews on reliability, considering them not "sexy" enough for the average gamer. Though if we're collating word of mouth Asus has to take the cake for reliability because I've never heard ANYONE complain of reliability with their boards. Pricing though, certainly.

If you use the Google, you'll find reports of failure for every manufacturer. I've personally witnessed 3 incidences of Asus parts dying. I've also seen plenty of cases where they last forever.

That the Gigabyte parts seem to fail in a relatively consistent way every time I've been there to see it does indicate to me that they have some specific issues.

Seggybop wrote:If you use the Google, you'll find reports of failure for every manufacturer. I've personally witnessed 3 incidences of Asus parts dying. I've also seen plenty of cases where they last forever.

That the Gigabyte parts seem to fail in a relatively consistent way every time I've been there to see it does indicate to me that they have some specific issues.

Of course, which is why it's mainly personal accounts in this thread. No business in the word can assure you of ironclad QC within warranty periods, and the vitrol the customer vents is directly proportional to how drastically the failure affects his life/time/business/monetary issues. Your Gigabyte experiences mirror my Maxtor issues, where for some inexplicable reason every disk I've bought has failed within a year, one even in 4-5 months, despite glowing endorsements from acquaintances.

P.S:Still can't stress how many mobo issues are due to p.supplies, which in the last 4-5 years have taken a hit in quality in the average case, which would include the vast majority of units in vanilla casings.

Yokel on an Island wrote:P.S:Still can't stress how many mobo issues are due to p.supplies, which in the last 4-5 years have taken a hit in quality in the average case, which would include the vast majority of units in vanilla casings.

My previous power supply was an Antec. The current one is a Thermaltake. I never use generic power supplies.

My gigabyte seems pretty solid, but there are some ports I thought I configured incorrectly--but they mighta' just been shoddily engineered.

What does our peer review group think is a quality mobo?

Darth Wong wrote:My previous power supply was an Antec. The current one is a Thermaltake. I never use generic power supplies.

Yes, I wasn't referring to your experience, mainly just with what I've seen firsthand. It just seems a disturbing trend with some neophyte techies to ignore the quality in that portion of the rig, which doesn't bode well when power demands have been rising in the last few years.