Brand Names in PC Hardware

When buying computer hardware, one of the questions asked is “Would it matter if I buy a certain brand?” Well, there is no definite answer to this since you really can’t say until you have tried them. There are lots of people that I know who prefer the ASUS motherboards but I have been using MSI for years. Intel has its own line of motherboards but the other manufacturers usually battle it out with added features.

On processors, you don’t have much of a choice since the market is with Intel and AMD. So it’s pretty much 50/50. As for video cards, it is the exact same opposite of processors, since you have lots of brand names to choose from. You have evga, asus, msi, gigabyte, xfx, bfg, palit, powercolor, and more. You even have lots of graphics chips to choose from between NVIDIA and ATi.

With all those brand names, what things can you consider then if you’re torn between those brands? First of all, check the chipsets or the product they are supporting. MSI, ASUS, Gigabyte, ECS, XFX motherboards with an LGA775 Intel P45 chipsets perform nearly the same. However, if you want to go deeper, you’ll know that there are lots more factors to consider such as features, product support, capacity (memory, number of devices or slots), power consumption, heat dissipation, size and more.

One thing that could help you decide is to check reviews on the internet. There are some brand names that do perform better than other brands. Let me give you an example. This is my personal experience and it does not mean that it will happen to you as well. A couple of years ago, I decided to upgrade from the AMD K6-III line to a Socket A Duron. My main choice in motherboard is an ECS because it’s really cheap. However, lots of problem occurred.

On the first ECS board, it can’t detect my hard drives so I had it replaced. On the second ECS board I got, it was the video card that’s having problems. It couldn’t see my TNT2 video card so I had to change it again. The inconvenience was really frustrating. The third one had problems when I installed the memory. I’ve had enough and changed to ASUS. My system ran flawlessly.

The ECS boards are significantly cheaper than the other brands (at that time here in the Philippines though) and I decided to shell out more to get that ASUS board. Well, I can’t really say now since they may have done improvements in their manufacturing and quality assurance. But for now, I’ve had good experience with MSI. Same goes with video cards, there are lots of brands but if you search around the net, you’ll find lots of reviews for different brands with the same chips.

So, I can’t really advice on a specific brand but the best thing you can do is to do some research. Ask around and use your resources to find the suitable hardware for your needs. Sometimes, it could also be disappointing to shell out big for a branded hardware when you can get the same performance on a not-so-famous brand.