I'm still looking at mobos at Newegg, and the three I've found so far that have what I need are Asrock (1) and Foxconn (2). Is there any reason I should avoid those brands? I've already been warned here to avoid PC Chips and Asus.

I have a Foxconn and a PC Chips board - I like both, however they don't seem to support Compiz (3D) natively; I probably could get them running by installing the drivers but I'm too lazy, other than that . I run Linux and XP on both. Never had a problem with them.

I had a Asrock once. No problems with that. I remember Asrock being part of Asus as well, so probably Asus make the boards. I recommended you not to get an Asus, but you may consider it too. Just make sure to avoid Asus boards with parts that you may need to replace. For example, Motherboard or graphics card with FANS. Because as I told you, I could never find replacement for both when I needed. However, the gfx card my son has on his machine, a Asus Nvidia 8600 silent(no fans then), is pretty good.

Never heard of Foxconn myself. You should consider MSI as well. My first homemade computer had an Abit motherboard and it worked pretty well. In fact, it is still alive and kicking. Abit is definitely a board I will consider again (are they still around? They were having financial issues years ago) if I ever will want to go to the trouble of building a computer and save a few coins.

Now the question is: Do you really need to build a computer yourself? If you are planing to save too much money, you won't. Also, you run the risk of buying crappy components, such as the Powersupply, which is very overlooked and people usually save money on the PSU when building computers themselves. A low end Dell is most likely as cheap as you can build yourself. You also get free shipping and one year warranty and don't have to think this or that component. Also, the few Dell machines I had are extremelly durable. I still have a P2 - 400 Mhz somewhere in the basement and it probably will work still

Just a friendly advice. Another friendly advice would be to keep all the thread about boards on the same thread, it is still the same subject after all

I thought a motherboard would have to have fans to avoid overheating.

No, but I like having control over what goes into it. I'm committed, anyway--I've already bought the chassis, though nothing else.

Build your own for sure. Make sure to research the components well.

Foxconn builds lots of boards for companies like HP. From what I could gather when I researched them a couple of months ago, they build decent motherboards at a good price. You will be hard pressed to find reviews on individual boards though.

All manufacturers have some "lemon" boards. You need to research each model you are interested in. The Newegg reviews are a good place to start and check the rankings at motherboards.org

Asus is, mostly, overpriced. Quality is not what it used to be. Ram compatibility used to be a big problem - not sure about now. Asus refuses to supply their economy boards for review.

All of the mobo manufacturers segment the market is some way or another. I believe that Asrock was started as Asus's 'low end' brand, but was quickly cut loose to be a self-standing operation - there was a lot of Asrock are/aren't owned by Asus, are/aren't just Asus boards with another logo stuff at the time. Foxconn are an ambitious middle market supplier (were largely into the 'integrated graphics'/'business sales' markets getting the majority of their volume from supplying boards to OEMs. They now seem to be introducing more enthusiast boards, where, presumably they see higher margins.)

So there will be boards by both of those suppliers that will be good (and you can say the same about Gigabyte, MSI, etc). Just ensure that you are getting a good chipset.

I've had a Socket 478 and 775 ASRock board, both have been great.

Ive had 2 Asus boards to date and theres not a thing wrong with them!

ASUS needn't be overpriced although they tend to be if you want the latest and the greatest. I spent 200 euros on a mobo 18 months ago that they now sell for less than a quarter of that price, which makes it just as affordable as the other brands.
As for Asrock, I have one of those too. Decent stuff, not as fancy as the more expensive brands but more than good enough for most people. And I used a PCChips mobo with an onboard CPU for over five years until it simply couldn't keep up with today's applications any longer (667Mhz CPU, 256MB RAM, onboard graphics) - still worked fine, though, but they tend to have limited features (like only 2 SATA controllers or only 2 RAM slots).

Yes, well, I'm going to avoid Asrock, because Mega Man suggests it's owned by Asus, and on another thread, someone (I forget whom) told me Asus is not very compatible with other brands.

Foxconn is owned by intel's motherboard division and they have their fair share of problems too.

Can you show us the asrock/foxconn mobo's you've been looking at on newegg?

I'd have to find it again, as I seem to have eliminated it from my consideration. If Foxconn is owned by Intel, I might as well look only at Intel mobos. At least one is on my short list.

Better be weary about motherboards that have ATI chips. Gigabyte motherboards may be an interesting option, I'd recommend them any time over MSI, which appears to use a lot of that dreadful ATI stuff. Pay attention to the details, many mobos promise "RAID" when in fact you get only very limited RAID support.

I have no reason to believe that Intel own Foxconn.

• There is no mention that I can find of this on Intel's site
• There is no mention that I can find of this on Foxconn's site

and it would be likely that this would get mentioned if it was the case. I didn't have time to go throughthe investor's report to see if profits/losses from an Intel shareholding appeared there.

Note that Foxconn probably supports more platforms (chipsets) for AMD than it does for Intel. Given Intel's position on supporting AMD, I'd find this unlikely if Intel actually owned Foxcon, rather than was just an important customer.

On the other hand, Foxconn does OEM motherboards for many of the players in the volume market and I'm pretty sure that at least some of the 'Intel' branded motherboards are bought in by Intel in just this way.

Now while that is true, almost everyboy's latest and greatest motherboard (particularly if it is 'high end' or has the latest chipset) will be overpriced, even a traditionally 'value' supplier like Foxconn. The industry's revenue model seems to depend quite heavily on gouging early adopters, although whether this is the motherboard manufacturer or the chipset supplier is hard to be sure. Probably a bit of both...

I assumed - possibly wrongly - that we were primarily discussing boards that support Intel processors. That would more or less cut out ATI motherboard chipsets from consideration. Be wary about relying on boards that use add-on devices to support, e.g., raid and/or extra pata drives.

While the chips themselves can easily be adequate for particular applications (CD/DVD drives, for example) these are often problematic at install time, requiring a certain amount of intervention to ensure that the correct drivers are loaded. Support for the basic chipset (without add-on raid, etc, controllers) is almost always more widespread amongst distros.

Ah! DENIS DENNIS! Man Dennace!

Heh heh.

I'd like to just say, avoid budget hardware. I built a computer for a friend with budget hardware, and the results have come to bite me from behind. Bad drivers, questionable quality, and etc. If I had the chance to re-do it all, I'd probably choose an intel motherboard for reliability, and one of the cheaper core2 processors.