Do motherboards either fail early or keep going, like CPUs? Or can they sputter and malfunction and keep going? Thank you.

"Or can they sputter and malfunction and keep going?" Quite recently I posted about a "sputtering" motherboard. It was an Asus board with some weird SMBus issue. The onboard NIC was also randomly dropping out. As long as the SMBus wasn't accessed, the board kept on going. -- With good, clean power feeding the system, a well-built motherboard should last nearly as long as the CPU. In other words, it should last much longer than you'll ever need it to. The Firewall/Print/File Server: 1.26GHz PIII-S 1GB RAM Radeon 9700 Pro 2 x GigE Remote on/off 4 x 750GB HDDs Storing 200 DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD/Laserdisc faves

Some MBoard killers can be: Defective PSU. ESD (ElectroStaticDischarge). AC line voltage fluctuations due to brownouts, lightning, downed lines & circuit overloads. Folks accessing the board while under power.

Like mentioned above, motherboards are pretty reliable. For intermittent problems I always suspect devices connected to the motherboard first.

Thanks for that. Since we have some motherboard persons here, I'll ask now rather than start another thread. I'm going to have a computer built for audio recording, but I know very little about hardware. I don't need the best box, but it should be respectable. After being advised, I decided on the Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3P mb, but I can get a bit of a deal if I use an Asus mb. (1) Which Asus mb is equivalent in specs to that Gigabyte? (2) Asus seem to have fallen a bit in reliability in the recent past. Yes? If it's a matter of "run or don't run" on purchase day, then I don't mind, but audio recording is tricky enough without a demented mb act up when it's having an off day.

"Asus seem to have fallen a bit in reliability in the recent past." I would agree. I have a P5K motherboard from Asus which is working fine for the most part, but a lot of people on the forum for that board have experienced a lot of problems. I also see that board returned a lot at the computer store where I bought it. That doesn't mean that you shouldn’t buy an Asus motherboard, but you might have a better chance with Gigabyte. Another more reliable board to consider is the Abit IP35 Pro.