Chiyeko Kuramochi, on 21 June 2012 - 03:25 PM, said:
That is a lot of Asrock boards!
Anyhow I am pleased with my Asus Sabertooth Z77 thermal armor to me is like whatever, but it does help to protect parts from me and the dust covers+ extra cooling is a ncie touch. O and clean looking is always nice in my opinion

(O and the usb bios update thingy is handy)
Yep. that reminds me I should put in a $250 bracket in LGA 1155 and AM3+.
Lakevren, on 21 June 2012 - 03:46 PM, said:
AsRock is somewhat of a gamble in terms of reliability. It either works or doesn't. If it doesn't start up, RMA it. If it does start up, it's likely to work reliability for a while.
Either way, good value for its features, but not necessarily for its guaranteed quality. Not saying that Asrock has bad quality, especially since its quality has gone up since a few years ago.
Hence why I recommend it here, as this is price / performance, not price / 100% of success on first try. AsRock is one of the few companies that actually makes somewhat useful marketing features as well, which is nice. And their quality seems to be somewhere on the level of MSI. (at least in my opinion) They have good boards, and a few iffy boards. It mostly seems to depend on the model of board. It's helped since they now are actually their own company too.
Lakevren, on 21 June 2012 - 03:46 PM, said:
Gigabyte is another fairly well-valued motherboard manufacturer, but they too have their share of problems. I believe they have one of the worst UEFI as of yet.
Agreed. Though they generally last. Then again most motherboards do.
Lakevren, on 21 June 2012 - 03:46 PM, said:
Asus and MSI tend to be a bit more expensive for the features you get, but nothing that costs an arm or a leg unless you want everything. Most people don't need everything, since a lot of the higher-end boards (gigabyte and Asrock included) tend to be overclocking-related.
Yep, although Asus generally has more features and somewhat better quality than MSi in my experience. At the same time, for the price if you can get more features and better value overall on a competitor board.... then they kind of lose their appeal, at least for me.
Edited by Vulpesveritas, 21 June 2012 - 05:51 PM.