WTF is up with BX2's?

[ibleet]

I constantly see issues with the BX2 mobo and I've been wanting to ask this for a long time. WTF is up with that? Is the board that bad?

[DL126]

I have 2 that I built for customers:
Raptors on the Marvell controller in mirroring raid.
SATA DVD on the Intel controller
ATI HD 2900 (One is running dual 22" flat panels - the other a pair of 19's)
Both have the xtra Thermaltake PSU for video.
2 Gb RAM & both running C2D E6600's
Both running Vista Ultimate X86.

The specs on mine are in my sig.

Thus far, none of the three have given any problems whatsoever.

It did take me a while to figure out why my front audio ports wouldn't work.
But that's not really a problem with the board.
Just that the case doesn't have HD ports on it.

There have been times when I wanted to throw my mouse thru the monitor because something or other didn't work right concerning software.
But according my lovely wife, "If you'd leave sh1t alone, you wouldn't have any problems!"
I must say that the other 2 guys never screw around with anything. They just use them.
And they have much less frustration than I do.

[kenc51]

I don't think the board is that bad, it's just that we are one of the only forums with a lot of xbx2 users.

This makes the board look even more troublesome than usual as we are basically doing Intel's job and providing support for it!

[Sparky]

Yep, mine's been pretty good to me so far. I agree with kenc51 that you read more about it here because this is about the only forum I've ever some across with so many XBX2 owners.

[DMB2000uk]

And i think that because there are a lot of bx2 owners, the ranking for google results must be pretty high, so we get more bx2 owners with problems looking for fixes.

Think of all the bx2 owners that are out there not having problems and then not commenting on our forums

But yeah, it really does look like we have a forum full of bx/bx2 problems

Dan

[cyclo]

Satisfied BX2 owner here... no major problems even with when using the Marvell eSATA port to which I have connected an eSATA external drive. One very minor problem I do have is the Processor Thermal Margin reading sometimes gets lost... easily fixed by unplugging the PSU though. I have recommended the XB2 to another friend of mine and he too has no problems.

[Monk]

As with most forums, folks come and leave a message only when they have a problem. Seldom does anyone post that they turned on their computer and it works fine (even though the "works fine" may be 99% of the user experience). As was noted earlier, this forum has a large number of BX2 users. Scroll thru the posts and you go back a few months very quickly. Whereas, with some other board's forums a half dozen pages of scolling will only take you back a week or so. I think that alone says that basically the BX2 is a reasonably reliable board.

I have had mine for just about a year. Very few issues other than the Marvell controller that were not my own making. I don't need the Marvell controller, so it is a non-issue for me.

I suppose there might be boards that might over clock better (not sure which ones). But I don't rally over clock that much anymore and the overclocking boards can have their own set of issues. I tried overclocking a couple years ago with a DFI board. Great over clocker but Lord it was picky about almost every other component attached to it. So personally, I wouldn't have a DFI board if it was given to me. I am sure others have had opposite experiences with them. For me it boils down to personal preference and experience.

The only possible negative I can say about the BX2 is that it has been around for a while. There are newer boards out there. I am not sure they are any better though. Depends on what you want. DDR3 memory? SLI?

Good luck with your choice!

[ibleet]

Thanks for all the comments. I thought either the board was bad or it was just popular. Seems the latter is the case.

Even with all the problems, a lot of you come running to its defense...I guess thats a good sign.

[ubiquityman]

There is still a number of unresolved issues:

1) some keyboards don't work after the initial power up.
System must be rebooted for the keyboard to work.
Affects only PS2 keyboards. USB Keyboards don't have this problem.

2) Drives connected to Marvel chipset "disappear" after S3 suspend and wakeup. This happens quite regularly on my machine. About 1/2 the time.
Sometimes the drives are not available after a warm boot.

3) Audio stops working after S3 suspend. This was greatly improved with a bios or driver update a few months ago.
It seldoms happens now, but I do see it once it a while.