Does Manufacturer Make A Difference?

[Ensamvarg]

As I've been trolling through these forums I've seen alot of people like to use EVGA for graphics cards and motherboards, or Seagate/Western Digital for hard disks. Is this for any particular reason? Does the manufacturer make that much difference? Could anyone recommend to me for any future upgrades (most likely a complete overhaul) which manufacturers I should go for?

Thanks

[zanzabar]

for grafix people like evga becouse it lets u step up and u can remove the hS and oc without voiding the warranty, (never buy and nv chiped MB unless u want trouble so stay a way), for hard drives WD and seagate are the old brands but samsung is the fastest for 7200 rpm and seagate has failing standards adn arnt used in enterprise applications so i wouldent get them any more

[mpilchfamily]

Well its not the manufacture name per say. Its the quality of the indivigual items. All manufactures have there good and bad products. You just need to do reasearch on each part your looking to get to find which one has the quality you need and fits your price range. Its all a matter of what your looking for in the part. But many of these better parts come at a higher price that many people can't afford. So have a look threw reviews from more then one place and then make your desision. Do not pay any attention to reviews posted at online retailers. Those customer reviews are worthless. The only thing in those you should pay attention to are the complaints about the products. Then verify those problems by checking real reviews and forums.

[Bradan]

Well its not the manufacture name per say. Its the quality of the indivigual items. All manufactures have there good and bad products. You just need to do reasearch on each part your looking to get to find which one has the quality you need and fits your price range. Its all a matter of what your looking for in the part. But many of these better parts come at a higher price that many people can't afford. So have a look threw reviews from more then one place and then make your desision. Do not pay any attention to reviews posted at online retailers. Those customer reviews are worthless. The only thing in those you should pay attention to are the complaints about the products. Then verify those problems by checking real reviews and forums.

exactly what i do.

I probably spend more time than its worth doing this, as I hate being regretful of little things like... ummm.... a 680i board... lol:)

got mine for free tho

[mpilchfamily]

Can't argue with free even if it is a POS.

[zanzabar]

i think that u can since the 680i tends to kill nice ram

all that u realy need to do is, for NV products for grafix buy a refrence card, for MB buy a non refrence. then for hard drives, ther is a reason why the enterprise drives are $10-20 more so spend the extra, and only get WD, smasung, and hitatchi for 3.5" and for 2.5" only get the raptor or a fujitsu, adn sas/scis only get fujitsu. and for samsung teh F1 is the way to go and in the US get them from www.atacom.com , they are the only ones who carry the f1 adn f1 raid drives other than the 1TB

[Ensamvarg]

i think that u can since the 680i tends to kill nice ram

all that u realy need to do is, for NV products for grafix buy a refrence card, for MB buy a non refrence.

What's the difference between a reference and non-reference card? Also I was thinking of buying a 680i chipset, is that a bad idea then?

[Buckeye]

For Motherboards I only go with ASUS and Intel core logics, no exceptions. Great support and reliability is 2nd to none, have had 5 ASUS boards and they all are still alive and kicking, no such thing as RMA yet.

All the motherboards I have purchased over the years have not given me any problems, from Nvidia SLI boards to Intel.

Currently I am running a EVGA 790i Ultra and not having one problem, same with my ASUS Max in my main rig. I did have a bad flash on a Striker before but I was able to fix it.

I have heard many bad stores about RMA's to ASUS and just as many about bad boards with Nvidia chipsets.

People here on this board seem just as biased about Nvidia motherboards as they do AMD/ATI.

Basically decided if you want to go SLI or single GPU or Cross Fire. That will decided what motherboards you can pick from.

Good Luck and come back with a board you have been looking at and see what people think. Do a bit of research for your self so you can what others think of them.

But yes EVGA is a great brand, not just because of the step up. Also BFG also does has a step up and is a great brand also.

[s1nykuL]

Of course manufacturer makes a difference.... Support, RMA terms, warranty period, quality etc.

I bought a Jetway motherboard once:rolleyes:

[zanzabar]

What's the difference between a reference and non-reference card? Also I was thinking of buying a 680i chipset, is that a bad idea then?

for NV (they are the only company) they have a reference build that is made by foxconn and all reference are the same with different stickers (evga, bfg and xfx sell reference only), but then asus/gigabyte make non reference with different configurations in grafix and MB, the MB are usually better but the non reference grafix are worse in most cases (790i should be bought as reference only its an exception, but it has its problems)


then on the 680i, its a broken platform and shoves amps into the ram and cpu when they dont need it and will kill any micron based ram, then the NB tends to die in 1-3 months, if u have to go sli get the 750I FTW, but i would only get intel chipsets (never intel MB) and go with DFI or asus, the intel chipsets are way more stable and u can get better pwm systems, like the dfi digital 8 phase or asus's 16phase analogue. then with evgas grafix step up program and the GX2 it makes a sli board a bad investment when u consider that sli dont help in most cases and just adds numbers if u use alternate frame rendering and the other modes dont do anything so getting midrange now then stepping up to the 280gtx or getting an ati hd4 card since they keep up and cost 1/2-1/3 the price


so getting the NV chipset will limit your oc and greatly increase the chances of MB ram or cpu death, and cost more since u get a low or mid range board for $200+

[tetete]

there's really alot of difference between Manufacturers.

like earphones price range from $0.1 to $10000

they all make sounds, but the sound quality is different.

same 500GB hard drive, constent copy speed, seek time, noise, heat, stability, all can be different