gigabyte motherboards

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ad356

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i have had several gigabyte motherboards and while they are trouble free for several years eventually they just die a strange death from various issues. the most recent is the AM2+ GA-MA770-UD3 board in my wife's desktop. the board is probably 4-5 years old. it had some issue where it would refuse to post unless you pulled out the memory and re-seated it. it progressively got worse and now i can hardly get it to post at all. the computer is an antec basic case with a 380 watt power supply (antec as well), an ati HD 3800 graphics card, 4 gb of corsair DDR2. the other gigabyte board that i had fail was an AM2 gigabyte board; will not post. does anyone know why these boards keep failing. is there a brand that will absolutely last well into obsolescence. i know that most people would say its time to upgrade anyways, but what my wife had was a quad core phenon with 4 gb of ram and she doesnt even game, it was more then enough performance for her. now i could replace the board but most boards sold now seem like they are DDR3 and they are now excluding IDE controllers from boards (i dont know why IDE is still very common, at least it is in all of the computers i own). my wife has 3 drives in her machine and only one is SATA all of the other drives are IDE. i could buy an IDE PCI controller card for an additional $20.

i would just like to fix this computer without spending very much money on it. she has been out of comp on an injury and it was being supplemented with unemployment; this has now run out and she's only getting COMP now. money is fairly tight and i just want to get something running reliably for a while. it needs to have IDE, DDR2, and AM2+ or better socket (her AM2+ processor will work on an AM3 board but will not work on an AM2 board).

is gigabyte a poor manufacturer or are all of the manufactures prone to PCI-E (video card) and ram socket failures. seems like every board i have ever had fail failed in these two areas.

who makes the most reliable board at the best price for AMD processors?
 
Actually Gigabyte is the best board out there right now. Asus would be the second best. Are you sure you don't have memory issues? I haven't had one single Gigabyte board go out but I've had a few Asus boards die on me. You also may want to blow out the memory slots with compressed air or try resetting the cmos by removing the battery or using the jumper on the motherboard.
 
i already blew the board out. i have a large shop air compressor in my garage/barn. this board failed but it is probably 4-5 years old if not more, what is the life expectancy on a motherboard. there are some old; very old computers that still run (IBM PC's) now granted you can't use those old dinosaurs for much any more but many of them still function as a novelty item; the point is the still work. i have had fairly good luck with gigabyte boards until they are about 4-5 years old and then i have found all bets are off. i dont think its a memory issue because i could make it run by playing around with it (re-seating). i made it work like that for a month or two and now its completely dead. i would think that if the memory was bad it wouldnt work at all, would it?? i could try and take the memory out of my desktop and try it in the other computer and see if it posts? is that a good idea?
 
Another possibility is the power supply. If using the same one for both boards, bad output from a psu will kill a board. But 3-4 years for a board seems like average anymore. You'll get some that won't last that long and some that will last 6-7 years. Just depends on different things like power outages, brown outs, not getting clean power from your utility company. All this will hurt a power supply which will in turn damage your hardware but mostly things like ram and motherboards.
 
i know there arent too many boards with DDR2 anymore, i just want a direct replacement for the existing board for 40-60 bucks. i think the different between ddr2 and ddr3 is negligible. too bad they did make ram backwards compatible the way AMD builds processors, i can buy a brand new board and still use the existing processor. i knew the other board i had laying around was bad as well, it did not come as a shock to me i just wanted to see if could bring it back from the dead. so it appears the only way i can fix this thing is to buy a new board.

why is it that some of those old IBM computers from 20-30 years ago still function. think about how old those things are they are dinosaurs and if they are still running thats amazing. they must have had really high quality boards in them.
 
I think you just had a bad run. I have boards put away that I know some are 17 years old and still work. Most of those are Asus boards but I have some Gigabyte boards that are atleast 10 years old. On the other side I have had some from both brands be DOA/ went out in a few days/months or years.
 
I think how long a motherboard last is by how much you stress it. The PSU have a lot to do with it also. A poor quality PSU can't regulate the voltage very well so it subjects the mobo with spikes and brown outs. This is why a quality PSU is a must, just pay for it.

So you load the motherboard with a 4 core CPU, attach 3 HDDs, a high def video card and so on you are really loading the board down, it's working its butt off and shorten the life.

I haven't needed more than 2 cores, one HDD and one DVDrom using the onboard video and sound in my AMD X2 3800+. It's now over 5 years old and still going strong. The mobo is an MSI K9MM-V which is an ok board.

My new system is pretty much the same, dual core, one HDD and one DVDrom. Onboard video and sound again.

I realize that not everyone can get by with a simple system but if you're going to load it down spend some money and get the best you can buy.
 
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