Which is your favourite motherboard of all time?

[Japlabot]

I'm feeling a bit nostalgic here. Recently my trusty old A8N-SLI Deluxe bit the dust. It was the first computer that I fully built by myself so I was sad to see it go.

In that time I had replaced the noisemaker fan on the chipset with a heatpipe from an A8N-SLI Premium, and learnt a lot about overclocking and hardware in general from this board.

In the end the thermal paste between the MOSFETs and the heatpipe didn't hold up after so many years of constant use.

I consider it a piece of history, as it was one of the first decent Socket 939 boards (and with SLI) bringing in the 64-bit era. I can't believe how much money I spent on a 6800GT which is worse than integrated graphics by todays standards. Within 6 months after that was released it was already obsolete and considered mid-range, and then low-range shortly after.

It was preceded by an ECS K7S5A, also legendary, which bit the dust a few years earlier after finally giving in to all the torture it was put through (Have of it's life without working USB Ports which short circuited, and used a PCI USB card instead). This one I did not fully build from scratch (only pulled it apart from someone else's build and fully rebuilt it again) so not as special.

edit: I just remembered (suppressed memory). Between the ECS and Asus, I also had a Gigabyte P4 board. It was so bad, I want to forget, I can't even recall the model number.

I don't know if I am so fond of it because it was my first build or because it was awesome.

What has been your favourite motherboard of all time?

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

ASUS, enough said...

[Colin.B]

Honestly, I've been pretty fortunate with every motherboard I've had. I believe all the ones I still have are still working. The worst I ever had was a Biostar that I ordered from Newegg. It went into my Q6600 build and right after install it failed me. Returned it for a Gigabyte and haven't looked back. I also had an MSI board that I think is still working to this day. As far as a specific favourite, I'd have to say either my ASRock I used for my old 939 or my Gigabyte UD3LR for my Q6600. The ASRock is still working and reliably so. While it's overclocking options were very basic, it was an innovative board based solely on the fact that they were selling adapters to allow your board to support the AM2 chips - It was a nice way to allow consumers a direct path to upgrading without having to replace their entire motherboard (and to keep the money with ASRock.) My UD3LR was my first "higher end" motherboard and one that had all the features I could want for overclocking. Set up was easy, the board has been reliable and it's sturdy as hell.

[+Gary7 Subscriber²]

MSI X58 Pro-E

[+longgonebn Subscriber²]

Yea I have never really had any problems with any of the motherboards I have had, of course I used to upgrade often.

The one I have now, which is on the way out is an EVGA 780i SLI, which has been good, but is dyeing slowly. It is though, over 6 years old I believe.

[TheLegendOfMart]

MSI KT4 Ultra, had an Athlon XP 1700+ and overclocked the arse off it with DDR400 RAM, had 6 ram slots, AGP x8, 6x PCI slots the first proper 'performance' board I bought. Was a cheap version of the nForce2 chipset that was really unstable. Was a nice upgrade from my Duron 700Mhz KT3 motherboard.

I would have picked another but I was too young to remember, it was an Intel chipset board with Intel Celeron 300A, bodged an Intel P3 heatsink to it and managed to get 300Mhz overclock out of it.

Damn those where the days.

[Noir Angel]

The best board I've owned would have to be the board I have now. Asus certainly don't skimp on features or quality with ROG boards.

[+kpo6969 Subscriber¹]

Gigabyte EP45-UD3P

Still in use w/ Q9450S and 8GB ram @ 1066.

[kaborka]

ASUS BE6 with a Celeron oc to 450. It was pretty hot at the time. I also still have a DFI Lanparty 939 board with an Opteron.

[TheLegendOfMart]

ASUS BE6 with a Celeron oc to 450. It was pretty hot at the time. I also still have a DFI Lanparty 939 board with an Opteron.

Thats it!

ABIT BX6 board managed to get a cherry picked Celeron 300A to 600Mhz, I love it when PCs were niche and not every moron had one.

[n_K]

ASUS P4V800D-X, overall it's an astonishingly **** motherboard, and is full of such great bugs like turning it on with a PCI-Express graphics card and turning it off again will then cause each subsequent boot to just beep that no GPU was detected until you remove the GPU and plug it back in... (And yes, boot up will then go fine until power off whereby you will again have to repeat the cycle of removing the GPU and putting it back...)

What I love about it however is that it's the only socket 478 motherboard with a PCI-express slot on it! Shame ASUS didn't do it right at all though.

[abysal]

I've found a new favorite with every new generation of motherboards. Currently I'm extremely happy with my z77 ASUS P8Z77.

[metallithrax]

As far as a specific favourite, I'd have to say either my ASRock I used for my old 939 or my Gigabyte UD3LR for my Q6600. The ASRock is still working and reliably so. While it's overclocking options were very basic, it was an innovative board based solely on the fact that they were selling adapters to allow your board to support the AM2 chips - It was a nice way to allow consumers a direct path to upgrading without having to replace their entire motherboard.

I have built many computers, mainly for work. The only home PC i've built uses (yes, still uses) an ASRock 939 Dual Sata2. Still in use every day, never uprgraded to AM2 though. At the month end will be upgrading the PC to Windows 8 and hopefully add another gig of memory - running 1GB at the minute.

I have not had any problems with the motherboard even though at the time people online were commenting on it being a cheap brand.

[hckngrtfakt]

ASUS P5N-D

Which was my first SLI build ever

still rocking with a Q9550, a now defunct-company BFG gtx285 and 74gb Raptors on RAID 0 :woot:

(sadly collecting dust in the closet now) :/

[mattmatik]

MSI KT4 Ultra, had an Athlon XP 1700+ and overclocked the arse off it with DDR400 RAM, had 6 ram slots, AGP x8, 6x PCI slots the first proper 'performance' board I bought.

Yup, same here. Never had a problem with that board although I absolutely HATED VIA chipsets.

I like my current ASUS board but the audio just died out on me after 8 months. Not sure how I feel about that.

[NinjaGinger]

ASUS Z77

[Driph]

Wasn't the best ever made, but I'm biased to the one who helped me dive into the computer realm, DFI Lanparty Ultra D 939. Still using it right now to write this up. Its been my workhorse, unfortunately it seems its about to bite the dust. Will always be remembered...

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

Of all time? Probably the AMI Enterprise III Series 68 motherboard, for Intel 80486 (and Pentium OverDrive) CPUs. This was a server-grade motherboard that could take 256MB. Not a lot by today's standards, but when it came out, anything about 8MB was a lot of RAM.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

[Crisp]

DFI LanParty 939 Expert

[The Evil Overlord]

Asus, M2N Sli Deluxe, it's over 8 years old now (I think) had it since XP

[mattmatik]

Gah, I was so jealous of those DFI LanParty boards! Couldn't afford one at the time. Loved the colors and the specs.

[MarkusDarkus]

My Asus A8N32-SLi Deluxe.

Looked a beast when paired with my Asus Extreme N6600GT Silencer. It's still running today for my uncle!! Man I miss it.

[Darrian]

ASUS, enough said...

I've had nothing but trouble with ASUS boards in the past, you might need to say more

[Lathanielt]

I think mine was the Asus Rampage Formula which was running a Q6600. I oath, best board I have ever owned, and that sound card!!!! I miss that beast. I am also starting to like my current board, GA-Z77x-UD3H. Am having no issues with it. But Asus and the ROG, epic stuff. I need another one....

[plamennicolov]

I loved my DFI NFII Ultra Infinity... It had character - you could stay up all night to find the perfect settings and stable clock rates and the final working settings would make no sense to you whatsoever.