Trying to AVOID PC Chips Mobos

[BOHICA]

I have had it with PC CHIPS based motherboards, and I believe their crap gets hawked by many other vendors, so I am trying to compile a list of known motherboard makers that also use PC CHIPS based motherboards and private label them, so that I might avoid the pain and agony in the future. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

PC CHIPS:-> <-ME

[NooNoo]

Pc chips
Hseng Labs
ECS
AMPTRON

Many Many no name boards - hard to identify

While you are about it, steer clear of Jetway too!

[BOHICA]

rgr that! Thanks for the info!

Seems that if the board is a good one, it is a good one, but we have had a roughly 55% RMA + DOA rate with PC CHIPS based boards! (out of about 200 clones for the drones) Totally unacceptable!

[Ruslan]

Originally posted by NooNoo
Pc chips
Hseng Labs
ECS
AMPTRON

Many Many no name boards - hard to identify
While you are about it, steer clear of Jetway too!

That's not all PCChips clones...
I'm going on:

Matsonic
Elpina, an numerous PCChips resellers/dealers :
http://www.stud.fernuni-hagen.de/q39...ips/links.html


Besides PCChips, stay also away from PCPartner, Zida and Acorp motherboards...

[NooNoo]

Originally posted by Ruslan


That's not all PCChips clones...
I'm going on:

Matsonic
Elpina, an numerous PCChips resellers/dealers :
http://www.stud.fernuni-hagen.de/q39...ips/links.html


Besides PCChips, stay also away from PCPartner, Zida and Acorp motherboards...

heh Ruslan, those where just the ones I have thrown aw... err worked on...

[Garak]

ooh broken motherboards?????????? woot!!!

[stompinne]

"I have had it with PC CHIPS based motherboards",

what's exactly the problem with these mobo's?? What can happen?

[DocPC]

Originally posted by stompinne
"I have had it with PC CHIPS based motherboards",

what's exactly the problem with these mobo's?? What can happen?

55% RMA + DOA rate with PC CHIPS based boards! (out of about 200 clones for the drones) Totally unacceptable!

This is typical........

[asm481]

OK OK I have always read on here how bad PC Chips Motherboards are. Now you're telling me that ECS boards are really PC chips boards? I thought ECS made their own boards, boy do I feel stupid now! Do they make all ECS boards? And if not how do I tell if I have one? (besides it blowing up!)

[houseisland]

This is not discount anything above. I just have to say that it is not all bad.

I have a PC Chips M560 TXPro motherboard which has and continues to provide rock solid stable service. It has also been enhanced by a bios update for it which I found somewhere. Great little board. I can't say that PC Chips made it, though. It just has a PC Chips sticker on it.

It has been my understanding that PC Chips often re-brands product made by others.

I have been led to believe that the PC Chips GygaPro VIA C3 all-in-one boards are actually made by ECS. My experience with these boards has been generally favourable. They make good, extremely inexpensive, light duty, non-gaming, PCs.

This said, however, I am well aware of PC Chips' generally evil reputation. I suppose that I have just been lucky.

[Ruslan]

Originally posted by asm481
OK OK I have always read on here how bad PC Chips Motherboards are. Now you're telling me that ECS boards are really PC chips boards? I thought ECS made their own boards, boy do I feel stupid now! Do they make all ECS boards? And if not how do I tell if I have one? (besides it blowing up!)

Actually, far not all ECS' motherboards are in fact PCChips' models - they have quite a few own models (and not so bad ones, by the way)... But it is true - I've seen also few ECS models, what were in fact PCChips models. Just to be sure, you can check, who is manufacturer of your motherboard using either "ctbios" utility, either "hwinfo" utility from www.hwinfo.com ... Good luck!

[ironwill99]

With the exception of ECS, I have heard of none of the manufacurers you guys speek of. If you want a cheap, reliable mobos EPoX rules! ECS is not bad though, their manufacturing techniques have impressed companies such as ABIT so much that they are going to manufacture most of ABIT mobos.

[Silverman]

Alot of ECS boards are manufactured by PCChips but PCChips favors using AMI BIOS quite a bit where ECS will use Award Bios even in the PCChips manufactured boards which can make the board better and more stabile, many PCChips boards can be reflashed with the ECS Award Bios equivalent. Check out http://www.stud.fernuni-hagen.de/q3998142/pcchips/ for more info. It's a wealth of info.

[nytiger73]

I've had an even worse experience with PC Chips. I used to work for a company that used them, the failure rate was usually around 70%.

These boards are the worst of the worst. Stay CLEAR away from them.

[BOHICA]

Wow! Lots of traffic! Thanks for all the input!

To be a little more specific on what the problems have been:

Across many part numbers:

1.) Incredibly shoddy manufacturing. (i.e. ATX power connectors not grounded, capacitors rolling around in the box, resistors "pre-cracked" from the fab-plant, PCI/AGP slots not soldered down...) <- some extreme examples

2.) Some of the boards have electrolyte capacitors next to some significant heat sources (primarily too close to the CPU sockets, and/or overheated voltage regulators. Perhaps with the latest P4 specs, this won't be as much of an issue because of the "no fly zone" around the sockets). This will always, over time, dry out the condenser/capacitor = dead board, end of story. They could use temperature proofed components, but that would be more expensive...

3.) Just DOA, or dies while configuring the BIOS on first POST.

Many other numerous problems with the basic quality of assembly, and the parts used to make the boards. I only wish it was as simple as a BIOS flash! (Hard to flash a BIOS when the board won't POST, 'cuz it is D E A D, dead!) BIOS instability is an entirely different discussion where these POS boards are concerned!

When I first heard this nightmare, I was thinking there had to be a systemic problem with the way the company (the white box OEM) was assembling the boxes (hiring n00bz, and not training them, etc.). Solid state is solid state after all right? Bueller? When they simply changed to other brands of mobo, and imposed no other changes to protocol, their problem rate dropped to the more typical 5-10% range, leading me to conclude that while PC Chips mobos may have a lower per unit price, the costs are not balanced by such a horrendous defect rate. You should hear some of my German contacts rant about these things! lol!