MSI motherboards

[Lord Alibaski]

Just a question regarding MSI boards I haven't purchased one since the K7N2 delta with he old Athlon 3200+. I just remember this board being a decent board for its time things seemed much quicker on this board than others at that time.

So jump forward is it 23 years! since then how do MSI compare now. I've been a gigabyte fan for the last 15 years tried to stay away from Asus never liked their RMA process but would still consider using them . Never been an Asrock fan so I would just want to know how MSI compare to Asus and Gigabyte for reliability, rma and speed in 2025.

Currently still on a Gigabyte x58 ud7 with a xeon X5675, so looking to upgrade this year sometime. Will worry about what board I need when I know how much the wife is going to let me spend on a new PC.

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[Subliminal Aura]

I dumped Gigabyte during the k7 as one of their boards fried three of my CPUs

MSI Have come a long way, during that time you wouldn't touch them with a barge poll but they're pretty decent now. In fact I'm writing this from one. Brands like Asus ROG have nose dived in their quality imho

 

[Lord Alibaski]

Looks like Asus hasn't done well then, think the last ATX Asus board I had was the P5B Deluxe which was ok. I still have a mini itx Asus with the amd 5350 running kodi and it's been crap since the day it was purchased. This isn't the reason I am staying away from them it's the constant topics on this board about their RMA that's put me off so it looks like I will give MSI another chance.

 

[Subliminal Aura]

Looks like Asus hasn't done well then, think the last ATX Asus board I had was the P5B Deluxe which was ok. I still have a mini itx Asus with the amd 5350 running kodi and it's been crap since the day it was purchased. This isn't the reason I am staying away from them it's the constant topics on this board about their RMA that's put me off so it looks like I will give MSI another chance.

Out of curiosity what board are you going for?
Might help having a second pair of eyes on it

 

[Subliminal Aura]

Haaah

I was searching through my email trying to find what model of PSU I'm currently using and came across this email that I sent Asus

Once built the system appeared stable but after several hours or in some instances as soon as you started web browsing the onboard network card and sometimes ACHI controller would unplug rendering the devices invisible to the operating system.

I spent 4 whole weeks diagnosing this issue.

Swapping components like CPU, memory and GPU - using different operating systems Windows 10, Windows 11 and Linux all fully patched and with the latest chipset drivers to no avail as I wanted to available a long and cumbersome rebuild

Having tried all available avenues including all your BIOS releases I ended up purchasing an MSI motherboard and swapped over the components. The system is now working perfectly

I am literally livid over having so much of my time wasted by what is clearly a product this is not fit for purchase. The specifications indicate that it should be compatible with my components but this was clearly not the case,

Having been a customer of 20+ years I will honestly have to think twice before purchasing another Asus motherboard

 

[Tetras]

Never been an Asrock fan so I would just want to know how MSI compare to Asus and Gigabyte for reliability, rma and speed in 2025.

MSI were one of the top recommended when AM4 was current, the Tomahawk (B450 and B550) was very popular and their MATX boards (like the Mortar) did pretty well too.

They have some decently priced boards on AM5 and do good deals on older gen parts.

Asus Prime boards have not performed well in HUB's roundups lately (especially thermally), but the TUF boards are fine for their specs and price. The ROG boards are often overpriced, but the Strix B650E-F and B650E-E were one of the best equipped/priced B650E (PCI-E 5.0) boards until X870 came along.

I know you're not a fan of ASRock, but they've been doing well with AM5. Good price, specs and very decent thermal performance, from the lower-end to the higher-end.

Gigabyte's B650x/X870x boards have been fine, the original Aorus Elite had a great VRM until it was downgraded in the newer version. They seem to have slipped down the charts somewhat with X870, but they're still alright.

I can't speak for reliability or RMAs, but I'm not aware of any manufacturer having major problems, except Asus getting a lot of stick for issues with their early AM5 boards (wasn't just Asus, to be fair, everybody published the same fixes).

 

[Subliminal Aura]

Asus Prime boards have not performed well in HUB's roundups lately (especially thermally)

YES That's the pile of **** that gave me so much grief
Swapped for a mag b550m and it's been solid for the past 2 years

 

[Lord Alibaski]

Out of curiosity what board are you going for?
Might help having a second pair of eyes on it

I don't know which one yet but I will be getting a 9550x later this year. I don't game I just want a new CPU for encoding (CPU encoding not GPU) that will last me for many years, this xeon is past it's sell buy date. I just wanted to know if MSI have improved over the years and it sounds like they have. I will probably have a budget of about £300 for the board not really wanting to spend more than that on a board.

Nice info there Tetras will have a look into what you've said the closer it comes to me buying.

Looking at the boards now I would go a bit higher I do like these

Gigabyte X870E Aorus Elite

Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite​

MSI MAG X870 Tomahawk​

 

[Subliminal Aura]

I will probably have a budget of about £300 for the board not really wanting to spend more than that on a board.

Nice info there Tetras will have a look into what you've said the closer it comes to me buying.

Good man, don't skimp on the board or a PSU .... The 2 most important components for your build

 

[Lord Alibaski]

I forgot about this I did a shopping list the other day and the Gigabyte board is one I had in the basket.

 

[wij]

Cannot comment about MSIs RMA process as I never had to use it.

My old system was an MSI B450 Tomahawk and that has worked very well since 2019, and still was getting BIOS updates at the end of 2024.

I just did a new build with 9800X3D on an X870 Tomahawk and so far I am pretty happy with it - I'm not doing any overclocking beyond enabling PBO and EXPO though, and this is only a few days in though so time will tell but the physical build quality at least seems to be decent.

Not sure if you are looking for an AMD or Intel board but if you are going for AM5 and were looking at an X870 board do take a bit of time to check how the PCI-E lanes are shared on the various boards X870, a lot of the reviews often gloss over the PCI-E lane sharing or certainly do not cover it in much detail. The upcoming B850 boards seem to have a few less compromises in that regard, as do a lot of the X870E boards.

 

[Tetras]

Looking at the boards now I would go a bit higher I do like these

Gigabyte X870E Aorus Elite

Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite​

MSI MAG X870 Tomahawk​

I'm not sure how those particular boards measure up for the current gen, I think HUB did another roundup here:

What kind of work do you do on the PC? Does it leave it running at 100% for long periods?

For most users, £300+ isn't necessary and B650, B650E or X870 are sufficient, but X870E does get you more lanes (m.2 slots, pcie slots, etc) and X870/X870E should have PCI-E 5.0 graphics and USB4.

 

[Lord Alibaski]

I do a lot of VHS capturing and recording, won't be on this PC that's done on a old Windows XP PC. Then I do a lot of cleaning up of these recordings and then I encode using several different software's and this is very time consuming sometimes I leave them going all night doing a 2 pass using Staxrip for my end results.

I think doing GPU encoding is a bit pointless when you have a good CPU so saving money on a GPU will help me spend a bit more money on a decent board.

 

[Tetras]

I do a lot of VHS capturing and recording, won't be on this PC that's done on a old Windows XP PC. Then I do a lot of cleaning up of these recordings and then I encode using several different software's and this is very time consuming sometimes I leave them going all night doing a 2 pass using Staxrip for my end results.

I think doing GPU encoding is a bit pointless when you have a good CPU so saving money on a GPU will help me spend a bit more money on a decent board.

Ahh, okay, deffo worth checking the thermals in HUB's roundups then, especially if you go down a tier or two, though the X870/X870E boards in the video were pretty much all fine.

 

[Lord Alibaski]

Finally watched that video left me feeling MSI or Gigabyte is the way to go but still made it hard to choose which board lol

I do like both MSI x870 and e MAG versions.

 

[PaulM]

Don't know if their RMA is better now but I had a bad experience with MSI RMA a few years ago. Bought a motherboard, didn't get time to build the computer until about 6 weeks after delivery... motherboard was DOA but outside the 30 day returns. Had to deal with MSI RMA who had the board for 12 weeks until they finally decided it was faulty and sent out a replacement. It wasn't an intermittent issue or anything that needed extensive testing, it was completely dead, not sure what they did for those 12 weeks.

The board has been good since then, can't fault it, but that RMA experience soured me on the brand a bit.