Best PC motherboard under £150? (230 E / 230 $ ish)

[lorddef]

MSI Make some good boards, but they can be flakey. I've got an MSI at the moment with no probs but I've seen quite a few just die like b*tches, they're cheap.

I've never had a single problem with an ASUS or a Gigabyte.

[countzero]

I have been very happy with my asus boards so far too, but recently I heard that ASUS has changed name to AsRock (?) and quality has fallen ? can anybody confirm ? (I built my last (current)computer 3 years ago. didn't need to build another one yet)

[Waccoon]

What do people think about Abit?  I have one and I think it's terrific.

What I particularly like about Abit boards are the layouts.  One thing that drives me nutsp about ASUS boards is the place they choose for the power and IDE connectors.  It's difficult to build a machine without cables poking up right behind your drives.  Also, my dad swears by ABIT, but I don't think he's ever been able to get the stupid QFan feature to work properly, because the BIOS and PC Probe keep complaining the RPMs are too low.  BIOS updates never seem to work properly.  My Abit IS7 (Pentium4) works beautifly, and is super-quiet.

countzero:   I have been very happy with my asus boards so far too, but recently I heard that ASUS has changed name to AsRock (?) and quality has fallen ? can anybody confirm ?

Techspot article

ASUS hasn't changed its name.  I was under the impression that the two related companies just share designs.

[Savan]

Ask your mate what he will be using the machine for, then go from there. 150 quid however is rather high when most decent boards can be had for under £60 at a computer fair.

I purchased a K7S5A motherboard 3 years ago for £25 (new) and still works perfectly today as the main computer. Despite what some dickhead tells you in a shop, you do not need the latest and greatest (expensive) board.

[Cyberus]

Gaming, gaming, gaming

And music and video (playing, not creating)

I've been looking about and have come up with a few ideas - we've just been sitting looking around on the net and I've come up with a prime contender.

But I'm torn - I doubt he'll be using RAID arrays etc, but he has said he's quite happy to lay down a wedge if it means it'll be upgradeable and he won't have to mess around for a while.

Anyway, this is the family of mobos I was looking at:


Premium

Deluxe

Or the other option would be a bundle with a slightly cut down version of the mobo
Bundle

He has the money to go all singing all dancing, but he's not a computer geek. He says he could get into all the windowed cases et al, but I doubt he'd go as far as overclocking and water cooling...

But he does want something that will support decent processors and would give him good gfx performance....

Any thoughts?
The price differences for the mobos are about 20 quid (30$) from SE, to premium, to deluxe.


Cheers

[srg86]

My personal expereince with gigabyte motherboards has been very poor, I'd never buy another one.

I've had two, one socket 7 and one socket A and neither lasted longer than two weeks, both just died. A friend of mine has had a gigabyte motherboard that has had a capacitor explode.

[Cyberus]

:bump:

:-)