Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
On Fri, Nov 07, 2008 at 05:39:43PM -0600, Mark Allums wrote:Asus is fantastic! for a consumer-level board, especially their enthusiast line.However, do not buy Asus for production work. For workstations, servers, and non-consumer-grade desktops, Asus is subpar, as are many other popular brands. The goal is not "high availability".What brand board would you use for a reliable box? Doug.
Sorry, it's a bit of a pet peeve of mine. I should have kept my mouth shut. :)
I do not stick to a particular brand, because in 20-plus years of doing the build thing, the one constant is that no single brand is consistently reliable. At one time, the answer might have been "Asus" for desktops.
Now, I do research before a build. I try to look for something that will last three years without issues (or up to six years if possible). I look for a good "build-quality" like heavier gauge materials, better specs on components like caps or voltage regulators. I don't get carried away with it, I don't spend a year looking, or pay sixteen times the going rate just to get gold-plating on my chipset heat sinks.
If I bought a desktop for Windows *right now*, I might get a midrange DFI or Gigabyte. Maybe. (Not that impressed with anyone right now, really.) For Linux, it might be Intel. This is for Aunt Petunia.
For work, I don't really have an answer for you. Tyan used to be a sort of boring-but-steady-and-reliable. They have kind of moved into mainly workstations and servers.
For video, I was an nVidia man for years, but with that last fiasco with the chip packaging, I think I will let ATI/AMD have a turn this next time.
I will try to avoid clogging up the list with this drivel from here on. I plead temporary insanity.
Mark Allums