What do you think about Foxconn?

I'm interested in Foxconn P35A-S available in local stores. Is it good?

Did anyone use either P35A or P35A-S or any P35 motherboard from Foxconn? If so, which model of motherboard do you use? How good/bad is it?

P35A-S specifications:
http://www.foxconnchannel.com/product/Moth...ID=en-us0000318

My requirements:
- Mainstream/budge build
- LGA775 Socket
- support 4 DDR2 RAM, at least 8GB
- 2 PCIe x16 for 4 monitors [CrossFire is not required but nice to have]
(I also accept any motherboard with open-ended PCIe slot
- decent (not necessarily good) overclockability

Overclocking needs:
CPU: OC my E2180 to 3.0Ghz. Change of voltage will be minimal.
RAM: I want it to be 1:1 FSB:RAM ratio, so I will probably not OC at all. May want the ability to change RAM voltage.
Video card: I will try to OC my ATI HD2600Pro anyway. I'm a light gamer.
I don't OC my second ATI HD2400Pro.

Foxconn is one of the oldest manufacturers of motherboards. They make rock-solid reliable motherboards but they're squat for overclocking. If you want a rock-solid overclocking board with more control then you could ever get your head around, get yourself an ASUS P5Q Deluxe, with it's 16-phase VRMs you can work with 0.00625 voltage stepping with the CPU. That's without mentioning the plethora of overclocking options and control you get in the BIOS. Otherwise, most ASUS motherboards are good choices for overclocking. If you're on a budget, the ASUS P5K-E overclocked my previous E2160 to 3.2GHz at it's stock voltage without any problems.

Also keep in mind, no motherboard will be able to do the overclocking job you want without having the proper cooling on your CPU and at the moment, there are only two champs : ThermalRight Ultra 120 Extreme and Noctua NH-U12P. I have the Noctua with a 1200RPM Scythe Slip Stream and on idle, it keeps my overclocked E8400 to 20C (even when my motherboard is at 32C).

This is what I want to hear. I wonder if this motherboard has all sorts of bugs/incompatibilities etc.

About OC, that's really true. But there is something interesting about this board. This board has a decent overclockability (not excellent though). I'm interested to know more.

It's sold for US$8X. What a great deal with a lot of features. What board can beat this one with about the same feature at a cheaper price? I'm afraid not.

I read the reviews from newegg. Most customers gave a thumb-up to this board. But are those reviews reliable/trustworthy?

Does anyone know where I can find more reviews from the customers who used this board?

The board looks solid. As said above, if you aren't a hardcore overclocker go for it. I've never had any trouble with Foxconn hardware either. I think you'll be able to get 400MHz FSB out of that one so you'll be able to run DDR2-800 at 1:1.

This post has been edited by Th3_uN1Qu3: Jul 16 2008, 09:23 AM

NewEgg can be a great and reliable indicator of a product's performance and reliable simply based on the fact that NewEgg serves more customers by themselves then any other independant computer parts retailer in the US (aside from OEMs like Dell). It's plain statistics is what it is.

Are the Newegg reviews trustowrthy?
Not talking about the quaity of the reviewers themselves, but whether Newegg will filter reviews, or allow manufacturer representative to leave comments etc.

Foxconn.

Linux-stifling-behaviors aside, their hardware is pretty good. It's their software/stubbornness that is bad.

Turns out that wasn't the case at all. There's very little reason to believe half of what you read on a community site hell bent on making anything MS look evil/bad and such (everything there is heavily biased), and where everything must be some kind of conspiracy theory.

Other manufacturers also have the problem (namely ASUS and MSI), and the problem originates with the the BIOS, which was entirely written by AMI in the first place (not Foxconn). Similar boards with a non-AMI bios work fine. Foxconn is pressuring AMI to get a fix, so it's very much the inverse.

/. is a yellow journalism site of the IT world (worse than INQ most of the time). They use such shocking titles and bad summaries to make people read & comment on them (hence page views -> ads served -> $$)

Seriously, it's pretty sad when one OS (which pretends to be Windows no less), has some issues with a specific build of a American Megatrends BIOS (bugs? never head of those!), and that gets turned into "Foxconn hates linux!".

Meanwhile, most people are ignoring the issues of lots of GeForce GPUs (G84/G86 chips) failing in massive quantities... I wish I bought a Radeon HD2600 instead now. Oh well.

This post has been edited by crahak: Aug 1 2008, 11:47 PM

*cradles his 8600GT*
"It's ok... I'll always love you..."

That was also reported on Slashdot... just so you know. And there was equal uproar. You may be right in what you say, but that issue was just heavily publicized on /.

Not surprising. Sounds like a story that would get lots of page views, hence make them a lot of $.


Not surprising either. There's pretty much uproar on everything over there, as the stories are mostly picked for what will generate user reaction (hence page views/ads served), factual correctness and such being mostly irrelevant.

All I'm saying is, a LOT of story titles there are inflammatory or sometimes outright false, and things like misleading summaries are quite common. And then users usually find a way to say it's Microsoft's fault for a reason or another, and even if it's Microsoft (or Bill Gates) doing something good (like giving money to charity or open source projects or such), then it's still bad, it must be a conspiracy or something... Some decent articles are bound to get linked by there too (and there are some good comments), but you eventually tire of the overall hell-bent-on-bashing-teh-evil-evil-M$ style. The funniest part about it all, is that half the time, there are Microsoft ads on that page, which is what's making slashdot money, i.e. bashing the company that's actually feeding them.

Sensationalism sells. slashdot and the inquirer are good examples of that.

Foxconn is only guilty of negligence at the most imo, and they arent the only ones.
Otherwise the "news" helped and Foxconn has improved the BIOS for the affected boards already:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/02/1552226