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Biostar: The Brand Of Controversy?

SkoraSkora
edited April 2015 in Hardware
Biostar, a motherboard manufacturer labeled as one of the worst in the industry. Most of their boards are plagued with BIOS issues, Capacitor quality issues, VRM issues, etc, however, they are also one of the first, if not THE first to introduce USB 3.1 to the market on their higher-end boards. So i ask, where exactly does Biostar land in the market, and where do you think they will land in the future?

Comments

  • SomeGuySomeGuy
    They've always been low end. No idea where they are going, but I still miss Abit.
  • BlueSunBlueSun
    Now, when they say USB 3.1, do they really mean 3.1 or do they mean the new, confusing as fuck, naming scheme whereby 3.0 has been renamed to 3.1 generation 1.
  • SkoraSkora
    BlueSun wrote:
    Now, when they say USB 3.1, do they really mean 3.1 or do they mean the new, confusing as fuck, naming scheme whereby 3.0 has been renamed to 3.1 generation 1.
    In short, both; with a little bit of research, it appears its essentially just USB 3.0 that runs at 10Gbit's, however it's considered to be a "new USB interface", instead of an update, which confuses the hell out of me.
  • SkoraSkora
    SomeGuy wrote:
    They've always been low end. No idea where they are going, but I still miss Abit.
    Who is Abit? Never heard of them.
  • SomeGuySomeGuy
    They were a Taiwanese manufacturer that went out of business around 2008 or so. They made some halfway decent budget motherboards. I considered them a bit better than Biostar, although they competed in about the same market.
  • calvinbcalvinb
    The Abit BP6 was THE standard in budget SMP motherboards in the late 90s. Slap some Celeron 300As in there, and baby, you had a stew going!
  • SkoraSkora
    SomeGuy wrote:
    They were a Taiwanese manufacturer that went out of business around 2008 or so. They made some halfway decent budget motherboards. I considered them a bit better than Biostar, although they competed in about the same market.
    For some reason that reminds me of ECS.
  • dosboxdosbox
    ampharos wrote:
    The Abit BP6 was THE standard in budget SMP motherboards in the late 90s. Slap some Celeron 300As in there, and baby, you had a stew going!

    I have an Abit BH6 motherboard laying around.
  • TCPMetaTCPMeta
    Biostar was a dime a dozen back in the day. About 90% of 386 and early 486 motherboards were Biostar that I ran across. ECS was decent as well in the 90s. Only Abit motherboards I ran across had Cryrix CPUs.

    From my findings USB 3.1 is 10Gbps to compete with Intel's Thunderbolt. Uses a new connector style that is reversible and can use up to 100watts.
  • calvinbcalvinb
    TCPMeta wrote:
    From my findings USB 3.1 is 10Gbps to compete with Intel's Thunderbolt. Uses a new connector style that is reversible and can use up to 100watts.

    The reversible connector is USB-C, which is excised from USB 3.1 (the new retina MacBook uses it on 3.0) and can carry power both ways as well as DisplayPort.
  • BlueSunBlueSun
    Relevant: http://www.zdnet.com/article/what-is-us ... 3-1-gen-1/
  • DuffDuff
    I built a 'gaming' computer on the cheap for my brother with a BIostar A770E3 motherboard. It served it's purpose and gave me no problems over two years. Sold it earlier this year.

    If I'm building something where I have at least some budget flexibility I prefer to go with a brand with a better reputation.

    I recall one customer review summarized one of their boards as 'adequate and works but not something you'd want to gloat about in a specs list'.
  • SkoraSkora
    Duff wrote:
    I built a 'gaming' computer on the cheap for my brother with a BIostar A770E3 motherboard. It served it's purpose and gave me no problems over two years. Sold it earlier this year.

    If I'm building something where I have at least some budget flexibility I prefer to go with a brand with a better reputation.

    I recall one customer review summarized one of their boards as 'adequate and works but not something you'd want to gloat about in a specs list'.
    Hmm, interesting. However it appears good experiences with Biostar aren't that common with computer technicians. There's one i watch on YouTube named Carey Holzman, who made a video working on a system questioning the existence of Biostar, and explaining that the only boards he uses are Gigabyte or Asus boards because he's never had an issue with them.
  • BlueSunBlueSun
    edited April 2015
    I certainly wouldn't buy a Biostar motherboard. I've seen a lot of bad ones.

    Gigabyte and Asus... not sure of. I've seen people have issues with Asus boards and I've personally had a couple of issues with Gigabyte boards. Not a lot, but enough to make me a little gun shy.

    My personal favorite are MSI and Asrock.

    I've seen Carey Holzman's videos before. Occasionally useful for picking up a quick tip here and there, but his videos are targeted toward an inexperienced audience and as a result he often dumbs things down so much that he sometimes presents wrong information. But like I said, you can sometimes pick up a quick tip here or there.
  • SomeGuySomeGuy
    I have one of those A770E3s, it's an OK board. Awesome thing is it has a full set of "legacy" ports, including both PS/2, serial, parallel, and a real floppy controller. And plenty of PCI/PCIe expansion ports. Only thing I don't like about it is the AMI bios, (Award is, or at least was better)

    Also somehow managed to wind up with three of the same ~1995 Biostar Pentium 200 motherboards. Those were fairly solid motherboards for the day. The only negative is the integrated clock-battery chip. At least on these boards they are socketed. (If it were soldered on, all you can realistically do is throw away the board when it dies)
  • SkoraSkora
    BlueSun wrote:
    I certainly wouldn't buy a Biostar motherboard. I've seen a lot of bad ones.

    Gigabyte and Asus... not sure of. I've seen people have issues with Asus boards and I've personally had a couple of issues with Gigabyte boards. Not a lot, but enough to make me a little gun shy.

    My personal favorite are MSI and Asrock.

    I've seen Carey Holzman's videos before. Occasionally useful for picking up a quick tip here and there, but his videos are targeted toward an inexperienced audience and as a result he often dumbs things down so much that he sometimes presents wrong information. But like I said, you can sometimes pick up a quick tip here or there.
    ASRock is probably one of the best brands in terms of outright value. Later this year, around August i'm looking at building my brother a gaming system with one of these. Coincidentally it'll also because the first system i've built.
  • TCPMetaTCPMeta
    I always ran into issues with ASRock and Asus. I prefer MSI, Intel and Gigabyte.
  • DuffDuff
    SomeGuy wrote:
    I have one of those A770E3s, it's an OK board. Awesome thing is it has a full set of "legacy" ports, including both PS/2, serial, parallel, and a real floppy controller. And plenty of PCI/PCIe expansion ports. Only thing I don't like about it is the AMI bios, (Award is, or at least was better)

    That's why I went with it at the time even though I was reluctant to buy something Biostar as I had heard the stories...but the Newegg reviews seemed to be relatively positive and it definitely offered the most features and value per dollar, at that time, I think I got it on sale for ~$65 CAD at most.
  • BODBOD
    Back in the early 00s I delved into the area of cheap(er) boards, and had multiple issues, failures and driver issues. Since 02/3 I've used either Gigabyte or MSI exclusively.
  • WhitePeléWhitePelé
    My Grandad had a custom build with a Biostar motherboard in it. Thing didnt even POST 30% of the time.

    Its fate was soon sealed when the PSU fell down from the top of the case taking the CPU, GPU and Soundcard with it. Good Riddence.
  • BlueSunBlueSun
    WhitePelé wrote:
    My Grandad had a custom build with a Biostar motherboard in it. Thing didnt even POST 30% of the time.

    Its fate was soon sealed when the PSU fell down from the top of the case taking the CPU, GPU and Soundcard with it. Good Riddence.

    That must have been one shitty case...
  • DuffDuff
    I'm trying to imagine a case so shitty that would allow the power supply to just let go like that, even if it was only held in by 1-2 screws, they aren't overly heavy. Especially if you consider even most of those cheap $30 cases tend to have those 'rails' the PSU rests on, if only to make mounting it in place easier.

    But anything can happen I suppose...
  • BlueSunBlueSun
    Duff wrote:
    I'm trying to imagine a case so shitty that would allow the power supply to just let go like that, even if it was only held in by 1-2 screws, they aren't overly heavy. Especially if you consider even most of those cheap $30 cases tend to have those 'rails' the PSU rests on, if only to make mounting it in place easier.

    But anything can happen I suppose...

    Yeah, it's a little surprising to me as well. I've seen some pretty weak sauce cases, but usually it just bends a little rather than falling off entirely. I'm wondering if perhaps the wrong thread of screw was used?
  • WhitePeléWhitePelé
    Wasnt even a bad little computer (Was built in 2005 died in 2011)
    AMD Sempron
    2.0GB of crappy no-name ram
    300GB HDD
    Windows XP Pirate Edition (Professional)
    And I fondly remember playing MOHAA and Call Of Duty on there.
    Im 90% sure it also had a GeForce 3 Ti

    Good memories. Did I mention it was also filled with Adware becasue of my nan?
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