Ok im a noob to this forum, tho i been a fan of TPU for a LONG time, since i started getting ati bios/bios tweak programs here for my 9600 way back when it didnt suck
i have to comment first about people bitching about SiS,ECS and Foxconn
first off any board you choose can have problems, do your research, I have a few tips that will help you choose a good board from any brand.
1. avoid via chipsets at all caust, amd+via=headakes
2.avoid via chipsets especly on "value" brands of boards, ECS and Foxconn have both made some pretty sticky board based on via and to a lesser extent the cheaper SiS matx boards(foxconn admits they had a bad cap problem, if your board has bulding/bad caps conntact them, even out of warr boards have gotten replaced by them for me(not to far out of warr, 6-8mo or so they just replaced them and appologized)
3. look at what your getting and what you want to do with it, dont buy an ecs SiS 755/756 based board and expect to overclock with it, You cant because ECS didnt make those boards to support overclocking(no multi level voltage controls for starters), sames true for any brand.
I have had worse luck with gigabyte,asus,and MSI then ecs and foxconn, and on a truely sad point, i have gotten FAR better and more responcive service from them as well, foxconn sent me a new bios chip for my 755 based winfast board(good server board for 754 chips), ecs sent me a top hat flasher for my l7s7a2 when a beta flash they sent me to fix a dual video card problem dissabled the board(flash file was flawed) no charge from eather, the top 3 i listed all wanted 20-30 for new bios chips when they had bad flashes or had the chips die(msi had a whole seirse of boards whos chips would die if flashed more then 3-4 times)
SiS has a bad rep because of the boards they are put on, en large the boards u find them on are EXTREAM budget boards cut down as much as possable to meet a price point, there where a few gems made with SiS over the years for axp tho, the k7s5a rev1 and 5 where good, some of the middle revisions where buggy and had bad runs, they also needed a psu with VERY clean 3 and 5v lines to use pc1xx ram(sdr) because the ram voltage was pulled dirrectly from the psu and not cleaned in anyway.
The l7s7a2(ecs) was and still is one of the best darkhorse socketA boards you can ask for, it dosnt have alot of extra fetures like firewire or sata, but it makes up for that because it was 1.cheap, 2. VERY overclockable with cheapo bios, 3, ROCK SOLID STABLE 4. LOVES memory deviders, just like A64 chips onboard memory controler the sis memory controler dosnt/didnt suffer from poor perf/latancy when using memory deviders, nvidia,ali, and VIA all lost perf if you had to take the ram out of 1:1 mode.
via chipsets are the bain of an amd tech's excistance, via has never worked all the bugs out of there chipset since the MVP line(socket7) they still have some things they havent changed/fixed properly.
Now as to brands i like, well thats quite a list
seagate,hitchi(not ibm, the ibm deathstars where made with cheaper parts then the hitchi branded drives), and maxtor have all treated me well
motherboards, these will be listed in no real order and some of the companys dont make boards anymore.
ECS, yes ecs, but only there FULL atx SiS and Nvidia boards, a coupld of there matx sis 76x chipset boards, there ati chipset boards are good in my limited exp(only used/tested 6 boards using them so far so no concrete oppenion is formed yet)
Chaintech, the VNF3-250 is one of the best socket 754 boards u can get, very clockable, very stable, great communit behind it, onboard sound thats above avrage, all in all a very good board.
Biostar Tforce line, i have setup a good number of Tforce boards, they are quite impressive really, the componants used in my oppenion are of higher quility then there msi,asus,gigabyte,abit,exct equivlants, the bios on these boards are EXTREAMLY good for overclocking, and the supports pretty good as well, tho you need to be willing to wait a couple days for a responce to an email form a real tech, these boards are DFI expert class for overclocking fetures but without the extream price, also they arent picky about ram at all ^^
Epox, i have used epox for YEARS and they are as a company VERY responcive to costmers, as long as the costmer is polite that is, if you are rude in an email they tend to ignore you. Overall i have had very few problems with epox.
Abit, use to be good(nf7-s was my 2nd fav axp board, just under the l7s7a2, tho they are in diffrent classes) now days i wouldnt grab an abit board, maby i will once they settle into there new surroundings(buyouts tend to lead to problems at first)
Foxconn for full atx sis 755/756 boards and nf2/3/4 boards, anything else i avoid due to large problems in matx boards with bad caps, this hit a few other makers such as msi and asus/asrock OEM boards(for dell/hp and such) foxconn support was VERY helpfull, the guy sent me a new bios chip when mine got crupted during a flash(power went out during flash) no problem and he even sent it 2nd day
i have some other boards i like such as the FIC au13(fic version of the nf7 boards) very good clocker but hard to find even in its prime.
Ram
PQI, used them for years, only ever had to rma 2 sets of ram and they took care of it super fast, with the 2nd set they payed shiping both ways(long story) neither where things i could blame on poor design or build, just those "sh!t happens" kinda situations.
Kingston ValueRam(hyperX sux)pc2700(ddr333) most of these sticks can do 400+(3200 or better) easly unlike corsair value ram and it comes cheap, the elpida(sp) chip based sticks tend to beable to hit 466 or better clocks with a little extra voltage.
Gskill, good stuff in my exp, never had to return a set to them.
A-data, vista is GOOD stuff, i have put 4 of their 2gb ddr1 kits into systems and every time i got ddr500+ clocks out of them with ease, the smaller size kits are in my exp very good as well, never had to return a set of them.
Patriot, simlar to gskill and a-data but i have had to rma to them, it was a little slow because they where out of the kit i had, they did however endup calling me and offering me a better kit since they where out of stock on the one i had sent back and it was looking to be weeks b4 they would have more, good deal they sent me ram rated for 2-2-2-x in place of 3-4-4-7 stuff i sent back, tho it did take it a couple weeks to get to me(3.5 weeks total down time on that system due to ram)
gigram, carsair, crutial, geil all where good for me tho i have had to rma stuff to them all more then once due to diffrent issues.
ocz, well i have only used 2 kits from them the first one was ok, didnt clock for sh!t tho and caust to much(ocz gold crap,,,,,*grummble*)
Mushkin, here where i got mixed feelings, i had a few great kits from them back in the day, then i had a HUGE problem with an RMA on a kit of ram that had both sticks just DIE, both sticks got so hot when pluged in that they would burn ur finger, well i got an rma number and shiped them back, was sent a confermation of recevial(sp?) and then NOTHING, after sending multi emails and trying to call them i gave up, it just wasnt worth the hassle, since then i have avoided them, i dont need to loose another 200+$ on a kit of ram that go's bad then never comes back from rma.
but i cant list them as bad because the other kits are still working fine in systems i sold after alot of heavy use.
Video cards.
Ati based cards from
power color
ati
msi
asus(yes msi and asus sell/support there video cards decently, just not there mobos)
elsa(miss them alot :/)
HIS(iceq=the pwn)
Optical drives
BENQ
Optorite
PSU
Fortron sorce power(fps) also known as sparkle
Epower/tagen
Enermax
Epower has some of the best price/perf/quility psu's around check out there 500/550 watt psu's with 20+20 amps on the 12v rails, steller units, Any of these brands will deliver.(all are or are made by top OEM's)
and last but not least Vantech for there chipset coolers, the coper icberq 1(orignaly for video cards) these units work for YEARS and cool motherboard chipsets as well as units selling for 3-4x the price, and they are SILENT.
the bad
Motherboards
ECS, yes they are a favorite but they are also a HATED company by me for there via chipset based boards.
asus,msi,gigabyte: these i lump togather because i have had the same or simlar problems with them all, poor bios support, tech reps that want to blame user error for everything or blame other companys when a bios bug is found they dont want to fix or dont know how to fix, then they put out a fix months later quietly and never admit they where WRONG to blame users. they also are SLOW and unreliable for RMA, asus is HORRID about just cleaning boards off and sending them back as "repaired" after posting them 1 time, i got the same board back 4 times in a row NOTHING WAS FIXED, they finnly gave in and sent me a new boxed delux board i proceded to sell to a buddy and replace with an abit board.
gigabyte sent me bios 4 diffrent times for boards to fix issues i found, each of those times the flash killed the board(had successfull flashes between them on diffrent boards tho) and then wanted to charge me 30bucks a pop for new bios chips or i could spend 26bucks to FedEx them the boards( they wouldnt take usps.......)
HDD
WD, i have had ALOT of problems over the years with WD drives dieing or buggin out, i have been a tech for over 14years, i started at 12/13 building my own systems with parts places/schools where throwing out, or ppl would give me systems they didnt want, then i started working for a local computer shop, i saw more dead WD drives then all other brands combine, that includes, seagate,ibm(yes deathstars died less...),toshiba,fujitsu,masxtor,quantium,micronics,conner,maxgate(rare but good drives)...think i missed a maker or 2...but the point is that all the other brands we sold didnt have as many deaths as WD had, since then i have had or seen 30+ dead raptors that cooked themselves dispite acctive cooling being on them.....just bad stuff.
Ram
mushkin: as stated can say they are all bad, but having a 200+$ ram kit go in for rma and just dissapear puts a sour taist in ones mouth.......
Corsair valueram, nasty stuff, over heats in sff systems to much and has no headroom for clocking at all.
psu, anything thats not made by a top OEM, any case that comes with a common case(got enermax psu's with my enermax toolless cases that are still going 5years later dispite being HEAVLY overloaded the whole time
)
video cards,
s3/via poor driver support
sis poor driver support, but very stable....so its not all bad i guess
nvidia, long story as short as possable, i LOVED nvidia till the fx5800ultra they sold me that sounded like an 80's dustbuster and was slower then a 9600 256mb(non pro) at dx9 beta games i was officaly testing, the 9600 was less then 1/4 the price mind you........
the 6800gt was dissapointing to me as well, driver issues with Image quility and studders(known issue nvidia admits happens but cant seem to fix) just got sick of it, use to hate ati because of poor driver support(rage128=useless in anything but windows 9x) but someebody brought me around and showd me how ati grew up and started to make driver support a real priority
oh and another note on the look at what your buying for what you want to do thing, dont buy a cheap entry level board for overclocking, you will just be dissapointed, you can however buy a relitivly cheap board such as the tforce 550(80buck new on the egg) and get a board spicificly made to overclock, do your research, dont just read review sites, read forums, ask questions, look into things b4 you buy parts of any kind, its a lession most true enthusists learn early on, we talk to eachother and find out what there is to know about diffrent parts befor we buy them.
my current system was build to be cheap as possable whal still being very overclockable and upgradeable(holding out for the new x2 256k 65nm chips or k8l(quad core) b4 i upgrade the cpu)
and it is very clockable, very stable once u workthe best way to clock with am2(little diffrent from 754 and 939
)