[mythtv-users] AM2 Motherboard with PCI slots galore

[Marvin Match]

On 14 Feb 2008 at 20:27, Calvin Dodge wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 8:22 PM, John Drescher <drescherjm at gmail.com> wrote:
> >  Your best results with AMD cpus will be with asus for desktops and
> 
> Asus is my first choice, too.
> 
> >  Also try to avoid motherboards with chipset fans. That is my only
> >  complaint for asus. I have seen at least 25% of the chipset fans in my
> >  department die in 1 to 2 years of 24/7 usage.
> 
> Amen to that. I've replaced all mine with Zalman chipset heat sinks.
> 
> Calvin

Agreed. I'm fond of Asus, but for a seamingly high quality product, 
they appear to go out of their way to use the cheapest, most short-
lived fans they can find these days. It's not a matter of if, but 
rather when that fan will become noisy and then die completely. I 
built 78 workstations for work with ASUS AMD boards a while back and 
the fans started failing at only 3 months! In a year they were ALL 
trash. These were desktop machines that ran only 6-ish hours a day on 
average.

Unfortunately, as often as not the aftermarket chipset heatsinks 
won't fit without sacrificing a card slot, or interfering with the 
DVD drive, or interfering with something else on the board, or some 
such, so your stuck when the darned thing quits. I've since replaced 
them all with fanless INTEL mobos.

Personally, I've sworn off fans as much as possible, and NEVER accept 
chipset fans these days. If it has a fan, I don't buy it, no matter 
how good a choice the board seems to be otherwise. I've learned my 
lesson.

Marvin