# Chinese motherboards?????



## mcc1961

I am wanting to know if the Chinese mobos on eBay are any good.Looking at a Intel 1156 socket mobo.


----------



## Darren

Got a link?

Things from China aren't inherently bad, but I'd be leery in this situation.


----------



## Intel_man

A lot of mobos are "made in China" nowadays. Doesn't really mean much if the QC is up to standard. If it's a random Chinese branded mobo... I'd beware though.


----------



## beers

Which specific board?


----------



## Laquer Head

Crappy mobo aside, I'd be more questioning the purchase of an ancient and discontinued platform in 2016.


----------



## spirit

Maybe he's in the same situation that I was in years ago where his 1156 board died but he didn't want to buy a new setup. I ended up buying a second-hand ASUS P7P55D-E from eBay - it was a better board than the Foxconn I had that died!

Which brings me neatly onto my next point: my Foxconn was a Chinese board and it was rubbish if you want something decent, but if you only require a basic 1156 board to get a computer up and running and you're not interested in overclocking or features then it's OK. My mate has a Foxconn board in his PC and it's been good for 5 years but he's not into overclocking or anything like that. What specific brand/model is it? Is the board from a Chinese manufacturer or is it a decent board from somebody like ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI etc just shipped from China? If it's the latter then if it's too good to be true it probably is (check the shipping costs too, if the board itself is cheap the shipping may be extortionate!)

By the way, you're going to struggle to find an 1156 board with modern features like SATA 6GBps and USB 3.0 and none have PCI Express 3.0 (doesn't matter anyway, the CPUs don't support it). There were only two boards I know of that had both of those: a Gigabyte P55 one and the ASUS P7P55D-E boards (the regular one, the Pro and the Deluxe) that I owned. The Intel P55 chipset doesn't natively support either so both of those boards use third party SATA 6GBps and USB 3.0 controllers. I think my P7P55D-E had a Marvell or a J-Micron SATA controller, or one of each. It had a third party USB 3.0 controller too (can't remember which brand, possibly J-Micron) which was slower than any other USB 3.0 controller I've ever used. They were fine but not as stable or fast as the Intel ones that followed on the later Intel chipsets.


----------



## Intel_man

Does foxconn still make mobos? Its been awhile since I've heard of them.


----------



## spirit

Intel_man said:


> Does foxconn still make mobos? Its been awhile since I've heard of them.


Not sure. They actually manufacturer a lot of products, including motherboards, for people like Apple and ASUS and Microsoft/Nokia as I'm sure you know, but they were certainly making Foxconn-branded motherboards back in the 1156 days because I had one with my i5 760 in my first custom-built PC. My Grandad also has one too with his Pentium Dual-Core but I think his might be 775. My mate's is an AM3 one (he has a Phenom II X4 840).

The company I used to buy these Foxconn boards from haven't stocked them for years and instead they now use low-end Gigabyte boards in their 'motherboard bundles' instead. All of the CPU and board combinations I've just mentioned were purchased as bundles from this company.

The Foxconn board I had was the H55M-S. It was Socket 1156, Intel H55 chipset.


----------



## Intel_man

Well yea... I know they make mobos for other vendors but I wasn't sure they still make mobos under their own brandname or not.

Hence why I said it's been awhile... lol. I've seen them in the 1366 days.


----------



## spirit

Intel_man said:


> Well yea... I know they make mobos for other vendors but I wasn't sure they still make mobos under their own brandname or not.
> 
> Hence why I said it's been awhile... lol. I've seen them in the 1366 days.


Looks like they still do: http://www.foxconnchannel.com/LatestProduct.aspx?T=Motherboard

I haven't seen them for sale at any of the online vendors in the UK since the days of 1155 or AM3 though, so that's about 5 years ago.


----------



## Intel_man

Interesting... doesn't look like they have any high end boards though.


----------



## spirit

Intel_man said:


> Interesting... doesn't look like they have any high end boards though.


They never did really. They had one board years ago called the Blood-something (Bloodhound?) that was but it wasn't really that great. Worst thing was it still came with the typical non-existent Foxconn Chinese support.


----------



## Laquer Head

spirit said:


> They never did really. They had one board years ago called the Blood-something (Bloodhound?) that was but it wasn't really that great. Worst thing was it still came with the typical non-existent Foxconn Chinese support.



BloodRage ... I think it was on the x58 platform


----------



## spirit

Laquer Head said:


> BloodRage ... I think it was on the x58 platform


That was the one!


----------



## StrangleHold

They not only make boards for other manufactures, they almost make every part that can be found on boards. its unbelievable, about any board you buy how many Foxconn parts are used.


----------

