Motherboard Brands? MSI a good one?

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atreidesgoldenpath

Gawd
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Jul 20, 2008
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I've got a Gigabyte board. Friends with ASUS.

What's the [H] opinion of MSI boards?

Eyeing the $309 combo on Newegg for the 4690k and the Z97S board for $309 this weekend...

Thanks...
 
Used only Asus the last 4 years, but had good luck with 7 or 8 MSI X-Power 1366 boards!
 
The cheap MSI boards tend to be crap with corners cut and cheaper components used. BUT the higher end MSI stuff tends to be pretty good in my experience.
 
Gman1979 said:
The cheap MSI boards tend to be crap with corners cut and cheaper components used. BUT the higher end MSI stuff tends to be pretty good in my experience.
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I've religiously used Asus mobos since 1996. Friends, plus forum comments, tend to support Gman1979. Were I in the market for a new mobo, I'd seriously look at some of the higher-end boards from MSI and, perhaps, ASrock.
 
Go for the best reviewed board with features you need.

Seems like these days all the big brands are suffering from x99 problems.
 
Gman1979 said:
The cheap MSI boards tend to be crap with corners cut and cheaper components used. BUT the higher end MSI stuff tends to be pretty good in my experience.
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I think he is correct. I recently went from an ASUS AM2+ motherboard to an MSI 4670K based motherboard and I am happy with it. I don't have a "gamer" edition card, but the reviews were decent on it. And at the time, it was the cheapest motherboard with the specs I needed. But I run a simple setup, no SLI and no RAID or anything complex. Nor do I do heavy overclocking.

In my search I found that some of the other mid range and low end MSI motherboards were not that good. But I found this to be the case with ASUS boards to. ASUS was generally more expensive across the board, so I went with MSI.

I would think if you checked reviews for your particular choice, don't go for the lowest end model, and if you can afford it get the higher ending "Gaming" motherboards then you'll be safe.
 
I recently heard great things about ASRock.
In fact, I just bought their X99 OC Formula as it packs a lot of high-end features and can be found a very competitive price.
 
Just put an MSI motherboard in my personal system.
 
My last build was a higher end MSI that last 5 years with out a single hiccup. My new build I went with a higher end MSI and am extremely happy with it thus far.

Ive used ASUS, DFI and others in the past and have no problem with them but I have been really happy with the MSI quality on the boards I have used the last few years. I've recommended a few friends pick up some MSI products as well and some ASUS and both have been stable.

I cannot personally speak to the cheaper side of their offerings.
 
I just bought those two items and they are working good for me so far. I like how simple and plain looking the MB is.
 
MSI is generally OK but like many others they've switched to Qualcomm for NIC rather than Intel which to me is unacceptable. I literally won't even consider buying a board if it has anything other than an Intel NIC. I don't care if it's Qualcomm, Marvell, Realtek or even Broadcom (Broadcom is considered by many to be the only NIC other than Intel to be acceptable and Broadcom NICs are even bundled in some servers rather than Intel).

Asus is crap. I've bought many boards from them and they are crap. They don't believe that advertising their boards as supporting PCI-E means that they need to actually support non-GPU PCI-E cards like RAID/HBA cards. I've had even expensive-ish boards like the Maximus VI Hero not support RAID cards. And before you say that it's a gaming board, IT IS STILL PCI-E and they should be REQUIRED to support ALL PCI-E cards to even advertise PCI-E support. Also, gamers such as myself are often interested in RAID cards and these days things like PCI-E SSDs. I've consistently had Asus boards fail to work with non-GPU PCI-E cards and it is just unacceptable. They've also had other issues over the years that nobody else did such as BIOS code that refused to allow option ROMs greater than 64KB in size which limited the Intel RAID OROM to a very old (even at the time) version which was not good for SSDs (for TRIM and performance in general). I've been unhappy with quite a few Asus boards over the years and several of them have had PCI-E support issues. The only one I found that DID support my RAID card was the P8P67 Pro which at some point added support with a BIOS update (it didn't work with the release BIOS). BIOS/EFI update did not fix the Maximus VI Hero. Also my first Maximus VI Hero had a dead ASMedia SATA controller and Asus wanted me to pay return shipping for the RMA. I had to threaten to dispute their charge with my credit card company which convinced them to pay shipping.

Also, by the way, the ASMedia SATA controller is GARBAGE. No optical drive support. Some people don't even use ODDs anymore but I do and I would really prefer to keep my HDDs and SSDs on my Intel ports for performance reasons, but I've had to put my ODDs (2 of them) on Intel ports and put 2 HDDs on the ASMedia SATA ports. Ugh. Unfortunately ASMedia is the common third-party SATA controller these days, even with other brands of motherboard. Please bring back the Marvell chips - I don't care if they cost a fraction of a penny more because cheaping out on these ASMedia pieces of crap is not acceptable.

I'm currently running an ASRock Z97 Extreme4 and it, at barely over half the price of my Maximus VI Hero (which was Z87 not Z97), is as good or better in EVERY SINGLE WAY. I can't point out a SINGLE THING I liked more on the Asus. Problem is that my Z97 Extreme4 was bought in June and is great but I saw lots of reports of trouble in reviews around Nov-Dec (which earlier reviews did not reflect and which hasn't affected me) so they had an issue with a bad batch and I don't know if it is fixed. It's not a problem for me but I mean if you were to go buy that board now, you could get one from the bad batch; I don't know. But I had the bad Asus motherboard as well, and previously I had to return a DOA Gigabyte Z68 board so it's not like any other brand is going to be guaranteed problem-free.

ASRock is my recommendation of brand, bad batch or not, but I don't know if I recommend the Z97 Extreme4 in specific at this time. Hopefully they already fixed the issue.

I would also buy Gigabyte (which has been better in regards to PCI-E compatibility in my experience and also didn't have the stupid 64KB option ROM limit) and several other brands over Asus. In fact Asus is one of the very few brands I will never consider ever again.
 
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dandragonrage said:
MSI is generally OK but like many others they've switched to Qualcomm for NIC rather than Intel which to me is unacceptable.
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I ended up buying the X99S SLI Plus which has the Intel NIC instead of that stupid Killer crap, nearly every higher end "gaming" board has the Qualcomm E2200 or the other one, (2210 maybe?) and I've never had good experiences with them. I personally don't need a lot of features, just a strong VRM section and the right amount of slots so the midrange MSI/Gigabyte boards are nice (some ASRocks as well). I tend to stay away from Asus unless I'm buying the high end ROG stuff.
 
I have had very good luck with MSI motherboards. The rare occasions when I have had to send a motherboard back, they have replaced them right away. This happened with a few low-end AMD motherboards in the AM2/AM2+ generation.

They do tend to use low-end parts on their low-end motherboards, but their higher-end products have respectable components. They have a pretty varied product line, which can occasionally be confusing. This is why it is a good idea to pay attention to the detailed specifications.

Good luck with your new rig!
 
I've found MSI to be a solid choice through the years and have had a few of them along side Asus and Gigabyte and always end up returning to one of those brands. I'm not one to be exclusively one brand, but I do go with ones I feel are reliable options. MSI is one of those and would recommend them overall. I haven't found their UEFI implementation as bad as some may think, but I only have one other UEFI board to compare.
 
Thirds and fourths on the Killer NIC being a deal killer.

I was looking at going with a nice MSI board for my next build because they have some awesome looking boards with great features for significantly less than ASUS but the Killer kills it. I've got one on the Gigabyte board I own now and it is nothing but problems. They will NOT release a driver only and try to force you to use their garbage software suite which for me caused endless memory leak problems.

Ironically I found a driver only for the Killer NIC on the MSI forums to use on my Gigabyte morherboard and it mostly solved my problems but... never again.

Other than ASUS, only the Gigabyte UD series board and the previously mentioned MSI SLI plus, I think its called, have the native Intel NIC as far as I've seen. All of the tasty looking Gigabyte and MSI boards aimed at gamers have the super crappy Killer. At least Realtek is recognized by Windows and installs a simple driver without trying to force you to use some really vomitously bad unnecessarily flashy software suite that supposedly does some kind of magic shit with your network traffic but really just fucks it up while slowly eating all of your memory.

Asrock is 3rd tier at best and my personal experience with them is not good. Some have good luck though.
 
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I have used 2 total MSI boards, one failed back in the athlon xp days and the other still going to this day from the same era. They seem to have a solid performance in the higher end boards but economy it is definitely not the highest end components.

Right now I am running a ASRock x99 extreme 3 and its ironically enough one of the most stable boards I have used.
 
MSIX99sXPowerAC.jpg
 
^Guess if it's good enough for Kyle, it's good enough for the rest of us! :p

Even back in the Athlon/AXP days I've never had trouble with MSI. Solid product from my experience, at least up to the AM2 days. Switched to Gigabyte (and Intel) boards after that, but that was only personal preference.
 
I always consider MSI first.running a GD65(1155) at the moment. two years in now.:)
 
Geforcepat said:
@Kyle.i hope those are 980's :D
#goodluck #youknowwhatimtalkinabout
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Hehe, yes, 980s.

I put that MSI motherboard in my box because it showed to be the most stable X99 under multi-day stress testing with no airflow.
 
What's the issue with Killer exactly? Just curious. I have one on my MSI MPower Z87, but haven't really had any issues with it. I mean the software is somewhat useless, but I haven't really had any issues with my internet connectivity....
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
What's the issue with Killer exactly? Just curious. I have one on my MSI MPower Z87, but haven't really had any issues with it. I mean the software is somewhat useless, but I haven't really had any issues with my internet connectivity....
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Mainly driver compatibility. That and knowing that their priorities are in the wrong places. There is no advantage over an Intel NIC other than the cost - probably something like a cent - for the manufacturer.
 
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Compatibility with what? Different operating systems? Because IIRC they have drivers for every commonly used Windows version...

Also, while I don't use it often, the Killer's software actually does work halfway decently. It has readouts for bandwidth usage broken down by app and lets you throttle individual apps. The only real issue is that occasionally it's kind of wrong about which apps are really using the bandwidth (ie one of them will masquerade as another)... but still, it does have a few upsides if you choose to use them. For instance, I have occasionally used it to throttle Steam... because throttling Steam is normally not possible.

There are other options, but they're usually paid:
http://superuser.com/questions/135719/how-can-i-limit-bandwidth-of-other-programs

So, I view bandwidth control as a decent upside. That's just a freebie. I have otherwise not had any issues with it, either. I suppose having to install drivers for it to work is a bit annoying though. Luckily my MB came with a wireless Intel card anyway (so I used it to download and install their drivers).
 
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I usually go with whatever motherboard is the best value. Have had several MSI boards with no problems, but I never really liked their software bundles. I have run ASROCK boards in all of my media centers without any problems what so ever. Buying an ASUS board for my new X99 system, not because of personal experience but because they have been recommended to me more than the others for X99.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
What's the issue with Killer exactly? Just curious. I have one on my MSI MPower Z87, but haven't really had any issues with it. I mean the software is somewhat useless, but I haven't really had any issues with my internet connectivity....
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My problem with the Killer NIC is that it takes so damn long to initialize once the machine is booted up. I've had probably 5 or 6 boards with it by now and 60 seconds after my machine is done loading into windows it is still struggling to acquire the network address. My Intel ones have always been connected as soon as the desktop shows up.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
Compatibility with what? Different operating systems? Because IIRC they have drivers for every commonly used Windows version...
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Different operating systems like Linux, BSDs, Solaris, even VMWare ESXi. I use consumer motherboards for all of those things sometimes (not for business purposes though).

And more importantly to most people, I know an Intel NIC will be supported in future Windows versions. How good will Qualcomm do keeping its drivers updated over time?
 
MSI makes good and bad boards just like Asus, Gigabyte etc. Their mid-range and hi-end boards are usually good but as others have said you should have in mind that proprietary devices/chipsets may cause you headache further down the road. Unfortunately it's really hard sometimes to find a motherboard that "friendly" in that regard, you can pretty much exclude all "gamer/OC-motherboards".

That said, in short here's what I've found to be "best" in the long run.

Audio: Realtek by far, stay away from Creative, AD/ADI, Sigmatel, Connexant if you want long term support and good support in Linux/BSD.
SATA (additional): ASMedia (AHCI), Marvell is doable but they have interesting hardware issues/bugs and doesn't follow the AHCI standard all the time. Si/SiL/Silicon Labs are just plain horrible most of the time and doesn't follow AHCI standards at all unless they started to do so very recently.
LAN: Intel (perferably), works pretty much all the time and there's no hassle. I would rank Broadcom higher than Realtek but it's really rare to find Broadcom NICs. Just stay away from proprietary stuff such as the Killer NIC.

Also, some combinations aren't supported at all such as Intel consumer network cards and Windows Server (you can hack around it somewhat) so keep in mind that you are indeed shopping consumer hardware not server grade.

This is what I usually look for and if a board from MSI, Asus, Gigabyte and I'd consider ASRock and ECS if needed. Super budget boards are usually flakey irregardless of brand. If you're looking for a value board I'd suggest you have a look at H-chipsets boards (mATX) which can be very nice ones with everything you need at about 50% less than a Z-based one. Overclocking isn't going to be great but that's pretty much it in most cases. In most cases, I usually end up with an mATX board anyways since they're much cheaper and pretty much everything is integrated now days, you might end up using one or two PCIe slots which even a mATX sized offers. Regarding stability they work just as good and its what you'll find in most business desktops by Dell, HP, Fujitsu etc.

Having said all that, I'd highly consider Asus H97M-PLUS if I would need a new motherboard as it gives you a very good bang for that buck on the current Intel socket. If you don't need all the fancy stuff MSI H97M Eco might be a decent option too...

//Danne
 
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I wondered about the killer nic on my x99 gamer 7. Hasn't been a issue at all. It's been ok. The software is pretty much useless. But so is must oem supplied software. I just uninstalled its junk and moved on. The board has proven to be good over all. Has my 5930k running smooth and cool at 4.5ghz. I needed a solid board for my first venture into x99 and the board had to be atx and not white trimmed. White belongs on walls, cars and my underwear. NOT my computer! :) Will this board spawn me own to M-Power? I just don't know.
 
Spun Ducky said:
I have used 2 total MSI boards, one failed back in the athlon xp days and the other still going to this day from the same era. They seem to have a solid performance in the higher end boards but economy it is definitely not the highest end components.

Right now I am running a ASRock x99 extreme 3 and its ironically enough one of the most stable boards I have used.
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Exactly same experience right here... not the same models but had MSI mobos back in the days and they plagued with issues.
Few years back bought AR on a great deal and its rock stable.
 
diizzy said:
MSI makes good and bad boards just like Asus, Gigabyte etc. Their mid-range and hi-end boards are usually good but as others have said you should have in mind that proprietary devices/chipsets may cause you headache further down the road. Unfortunately it's really hard sometimes to find a motherboard that "friendly" in that regard, you can pretty much exclude all "gamer/OC-motherboards".

That said, in short here's what I've found to be "best" in the long run.

Audio: Realtek by far, stay away from Creative, AD/ADI, Sigmatel, Connexant if you want long term support and good support in Linux/BSD.
SATA (additional): ASMedia (AHCI), Marvell is doable but they have interesting hardware issues/bugs and doesn't follow the AHCI standard all the time. Si/SiL/Silicon Labs are just plain horrible most of the time and doesn't follow AHCI standards at all unless they started to do so very recently.
LAN: Intel (perferably), works pretty much all the time and there's no hassle. I would rank Broadcom higher than Realtek but it's really rare to find Broadcom NICs. Just stay away from proprietary stuff such as the Killer NIC.

Also, some combinations aren't supported at all such as Intel consumer network cards and Windows Server (you can hack around it somewhat) so keep in mind that you are indeed shopping consumer hardware not server grade.

This is what I usually look for and if a board from MSI, Asus, Gigabyte and I'd consider ASRock and ECS if needed. Super budget boards are usually flakey irregardless of brand. If you're looking for a value board I'd suggest you have a look at H-chipsets boards (mATX) which can be very nice ones with everything you need at about 50% less than a Z-based one. Overclocking isn't going to be great but that's pretty much it in most cases. In most cases, I usually end up with an mATX board anyways since they're much cheaper and pretty much everything is integrated now days, you might end up using one or two PCIe slots which even a mATX sized offers. Regarding stability they work just as good and its what you'll find in most business desktops by Dell, HP, Fujitsu etc.

Having said all that, I'd highly consider Asus H97M-PLUS if I would need a new motherboard as it gives you a very good bang for that buck on the current Intel socket. If you don't need all the fancy stuff MSI H97M Eco might be a decent option too...

//Danne
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Dan - the "Creative" is concerning certain of their chipsets (especially pre-SoundCore) in non-Windows OSes (such as the BSDs). SoundCore3D uses the same drivers that Intel HD Audio uses outside of Windows (and can use them in Windows as well). However, I WILL grant you that Realtek IS better supported there (due to being more common on motherboards) - and this is especially true if you choose OS X as an option. (Still, the best option, even over Realtek - is HDMI, almost regardless of OS.)

I've used MSI - even MSI pulls - in builds for others, and went MSI for my personal build this time (choice is in the SIG). The board chosen was chosen because it's a very basic and quibble-free choice that Just Plain Works. (My check boxes are QuickSync support, overclockabilty support, quibble-free gigabit Ethernet, quibble-free HDMI, and low price.)

1. QuickSync - this is leverageable by any Intel CPU in LGA1150 that's not a XEON - and including G32xx (especially G3258). Can't use NVENC (or it performs poorly)? QuickSync is one heck of an alternative.

2. Overclockability is NOT limited to Z-series in LGA1150; H81 also supports it.

3. Quibble-free gigabit - there are two (and ONLY two) real choices for quibble-free gigabit support, and especially in terms of non-Windows OSes - Intel and Realtek Semiconductor. Depending on motherboard choice, H81 boards from MSI support either. (My choice went with Realtek Semiconductor.)

4. Quibble-free HDMI - if you are going to leverage QuickSync, this explains itself - and especially if your discrete GPU does NOT have a standard HDMI port. (My GTX550Ti has a mini-HDMI port.) The H81-E33 has a 4k-compliant (backward-compatible) HDMI-out port - the backward-compatibility part is critical. DVI-D into dGPU, HDMI into integrated HDMI (display supports both) and no quibbling whatever.
 
I'm kind of on an MSI kick lately, although I've had equally good success with my numerous ASUS boards over the years, although a sour RMA with a Rampage III Formula X58 (one of many I had) led me to build over brands lately. I also had a sour RMA experience with Gigabyte back in X38 days, that was simply awful.

Find the features you want across a few brands, then ask about each specific board and people using them, that's probably the best way to get the information you want.
 
This thread is from 10+ months ago. Also, PGHammer used "quibble" like 8 times, so his man card is obviously revoked.

Mods, scorch this monstrosity from the earth. We shall speak of it no longer.
 
silent-circuit said:
This thread is from 10+ months ago. Also, PGHammer used "quibble" like 8 times, so his man card is obviously revoked.

Mods, scorch this monstrosity from the earth. We shall speak of it no longer.
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I feel like a noob for not noticing -.-
 
silent-circuit said:
This thread is from 10+ months ago. Also, PGHammer used "quibble" like 8 times, so his man card is obviously revoked.

Mods, scorch this monstrosity from the earth. We shall speak of it no longer.
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Thank you for giving me my one good laugh per day!
 
dandragonrage said:
MSI is generally OK but like many others they've switched to Qualcomm for NIC rather than Intel which to me is unacceptable. I literally won't even consider buying a board if it has anything other than an Intel NIC. I don't care if it's Qualcomm, Marvell, Realtek or even Broadcom (Broadcom is considered by many to be the only NIC other than Intel to be acceptable and Broadcom NICs are even bundled in some servers rather than Intel).
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Broadcom is junk. Their switches are garbage and their mezzanine / NICs are worse. They come bundled on servers because they are cheaper than the Intel controllers. It's that simple. It's the same reason why Realtek controllers are used in consumer oriented products over Intel in some cases. As for MSI, I feel that their products are quite solid despite their frequent use of Killer NICs. The NICs work and the Windows 10 drivers have been pretty solid. My experiences under Windows 7 are quite the opposite. The build quality on the MSI motherboards is second to none and they've proven to be extremely stable. MSI also does offer an Intel NIC on the XPower Titanium. Which for a upper echelon product, is quite reasonably priced when you compare it to the ASUS Maximus VIII Extreme and the GIGABYTE Z170X Gaming G1. The feature set of the Titanium Edition is closer to that of the ASUS motherboard rather than the G1.

dandragonrage said:
Asus is crap. I've bought many boards from them and they are crap.
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You are of course entitled to this opinion. I don't share it, as my experience is drastically different from yours.

dandragonrage said:
They don't believe that advertising their boards as supporting PCI-E means that they need to actually support non-GPU PCI-E cards like RAID/HBA cards. I've had even expensive-ish boards like the Maximus VI Hero not support RAID cards. And before you say that it's a gaming board, IT IS STILL PCI-E and they should be REQUIRED to support ALL PCI-E cards to even advertise PCI-E support.
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I've run several PCIe RAID controllers on ROG motherboards. I've got an LSI 8308ELP running on a Rampage III Black Edition as I type this. These motherboards are PCIe compliant. Basic PCIe compliance doesn't mean that these have to be compatible with every card. It's not even possible for that to be the case. HBA and RAID controllers have option ROMS which have to be loaded into memory. Depending on the amount of integrated devices and limited OROM space, compatibility isn't guaranteed. In some cases there are compatibility issues which may not get patched during the service life of the product. Either because the configuration is too obscure to devote resources to it or because they are unaware the issue exists. There are also settings in the UEFI which can be used to try and make this work. It can be a pain and you may have to disable some onboard features to make things work but often they can with enough persistence. ASUS doesn't do much testing on RAID controllers with ROG series motherboards because that's not the target audience of the product. These motherboards have a ton of integrated hardware and making them work with the large OROMs of RAID controllers can be a bitch.

By your logic all those server motherboards with 8x or 16x PCIe slots shouldn't be able to advertise PCIe compliance or compatibility because they may not work with GeForce cards. Compatibility problems exist on those motherboards as well. I have seen this first hand. The OROM configuration and support on server and workstation motherboards is simply different. BIOS updates are less frequent so you could very well end up waiting for needed updates that may never come. I've seen worse atrocities on those motherboards. I've seen various brands of RAID controllers fail to work in a Dell or HP server. I've seen various HBA's not work in DIY server systems. The point is that PCIe compatibility isn't as cut and dry as you make it out to be.

The WS series boards shouldn't have this problem to the degree ROG boards might. According to ASUS, these are actually QVL tested with professional level graphics controllers, sound cards and RAID controllers / HBAs.

dandragonrage said:
Also, gamers such as myself are often interested in RAID cards and these days things like PCI-E SSDs. I've consistently had Asus boards fail to work with non-GPU PCI-E cards and it is just unacceptable.
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There are issues, but you act like this is a blanket problem and that's just not true. I've got two motherboards from ASUS working with non-GPU PCIe cards. My Rampage V Extreme has an Intel SSD 750 800GB AIC in it with full NVMe support functioning that's my boot drive. I've got an LSI MegaRAID 8308-ELP SAS/SATA controller working in my "server" which is running Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise on an ASUS Rampage III Black Edition. I am not saying that every card will work on ASUS motherboards but you'll have problems with RAID controllers and HBAs, or AIC SSDs on any consumer motherboard the same as consumer GPUs won't always play nice with workstation motherboards.

dandragonrage said:
They've also had other issues over the years that nobody else did such as BIOS code that refused to allow option ROMs greater than 64KB in size which limited the Intel RAID OROM to a very old (even at the time) version which was not good for SSDs (for TRIM and performance in general). I've been unhappy with quite a few Asus boards over the years and several of them have had PCI-E support issues. The only one I found that DID support my RAID card was the P8P67 Pro which at some point added support with a BIOS update (it didn't work with the release BIOS). BIOS/EFI update did not fix the Maximus VI Hero. Also my first Maximus VI Hero had a dead ASMedia SATA controller and Asus wanted me to pay return shipping for the RMA. I had to threaten to dispute their charge with my credit card company which convinced them to pay shipping.
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I have had various OROM issues with several motherboards including ASUS, GIGABYTE, Tyan and even Intel. Consumer motherboards are often guilty of pulling various tricks in the name of performance. The NVIDIA 680i SLI motherboards with certain reference BIOS revisions broke compatibility with virtually every SATA add in card on the market to improve quad core overclocking. The Intel D5400XS had problems with certain video card / RAID controller combinations due to limited OROM space. Consumer hardware has frequently had problems with specific OEM hardware. The Samsung 941 M.2 drives and 951 drives have issues with many consumer boards. The Intel SSD P3700 series doesn't work on a lot of consumer motherboards. Need I go on?

dandragonrage said:
Also, by the way, the ASMedia SATA controller is GARBAGE. No optical drive support. Some people don't even use ODDs anymore but I do and I would really prefer to keep my HDDs and SSDs on my Intel ports for performance reasons, but I've had to put my ODDs (2 of them) on Intel ports and put 2 HDDs on the ASMedia SATA ports. Ugh. Unfortunately ASMedia is the common third-party SATA controller these days, even with other brands of motherboard. Please bring back the Marvell chips - I don't care if they cost a fraction of a penny more because cheaping out on these ASMedia pieces of crap is not acceptable.
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I'll sort of give you this one. The ASMedia controller can perform well but, like Marvel and other options, these controllers lack the flexibility of their Intel counterparts. Criticism of these controllers is certainly understandable. Marvel controllers offer RAID support on some models, but the Marvel controllers often perform worse than the ASMedia controllers do and aren't anymore compatible with optical drives. I don't think that this part of your argument is fair or makes sense.

dandragonrage said:
I'm currently running an ASRock Z97 Extreme4 and it, at barely over half the price of my Maximus VI Hero (which was Z87 not Z97), is as good or better in EVERY SINGLE WAY. I can't point out a SINGLE THING I liked more on the Asus. Problem is that my Z97 Extreme4 was bought in June and is great but I saw lots of reports of trouble in reviews around Nov-Dec (which earlier reviews did not reflect and which hasn't affected me) so they had an issue with a bad batch and I don't know if it is fixed. It's not a problem for me but I mean if you were to go buy that board now, you could get one from the bad batch; I don't know. But I had the bad Asus motherboard as well, and previously I had to return a DOA Gigabyte Z68 board so it's not like any other brand is going to be guaranteed problem-free.

ASRock is my recommendation of brand, bad batch or not, but I don't know if I recommend the Z97 Extreme4 in specific at this time. Hopefully they already fixed the issue.
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The likelihood of a bad batch is the problem with ASRock. Their QC is hit and miss to non-existent at times. They are getting better, but I have to admit I don't have the confidence in the brand that I do out of the other big names. I get that your experiences with ASUS may not have been great, but in general I'd gladly match up most of what ASUS has to anything with the ASRock name on it. For one thing, you won't see wavy PCBs with the strength of uncooked bacon, and unmarked components pulled from the bargain bins. The lower end ASRock boards have some scary looking components. These motherboards have made it through our testing which is saying something, but I'd be concerned over the longevity of these parts. Higher end models are good to go, but the build quality fails to impress me when I compare ASRock's offerings to MSI, GIGABYTE or ASUS. I did review an ASRock X99 workstation board which I thought was an exception to the rule.

dandragonrage said:
I would also buy Gigabyte (which has been better in regards to PCI-E compatibility in my experience and also didn't have the stupid 64KB option ROM limit) and several other brands over Asus. In fact Asus is one of the very few brands I will never consider ever again.
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Fair enough on this point. All we have are our experiences to go on. I've had bad experiences with every brand at one time or another. The great thing about testing so many boards the way I do is that I get to see the ups and downs of each brand. There was a point about 10 years ago where using a GIGABYTE motherboard would have been a nightmare in my mind. Right now if I had to pick a favorite Z170 motherboard, it would probably be the Z170X Gaming G1.
 
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