Ask Slashdot: Which Motherboard Manufacturer Provides the Best Support?

New submitter Hrrrg writes: A number of years ago, I built a computer with an Asus LGA 1150 Z87-Pro motherboard. Since the discovery of the Spectre and Meltdown CPU flaws, I was hoping for a BIOS update to address them. However, it seems that there will be no BIOS update forthcoming for this 5 year old motherboard. I would prefer not to repeat my mistake with future builds. Can you recommend another manufacturer that is doing better?

Comments

SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

Their support is so great, it's almost like they're watching what you're doing.

Re:SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

Their support is so great, it's almost like they're watching what you're doing.

"Super micro" sounds like your little pale white shrimp dick. Nothing like the ENORMOUS nígger cock you love to lick caress and suck on.

Re:SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

"Super micro" sounds like your little pale white shrimp dick. Nothing like the ENORMOUS nígger cock you love to lick caress and suck on.

Please take your cucked-by-BBC fantasies elsewhere.

Re:SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

Free remote Chinese Goverment login capability with every high volume product:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies?srnd=businessweek-v2

Re: SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

Your mom should have pulled out.

Re:SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like when you have an Intel or AMD CPU on the board because of the "management" platforms?

Re:SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

Their support is so great, it's almost like they're watching what you're doing.

"Super micro" sounds like your little pale white shrimp dick. Nothing like the ENORMOUS nígger cock you love to lick caress and suck on.

talking about penises is so telling about yourself. the more you talk about it, the more you want to be the next goatse. it's ok that you like dick, half the population does. that doesn't mean you have to make up for the other half of the population. life is not an all-you-can-suck buffet of dicks, regardless of how much you wish that were true.

Re: SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

Your mom should have pulled out.

Actually nígger females get most abortions in the US. Amazing considering they're less than 7%!

Also amazing, nígger males account for just over 50% of all US murders. Also less than 7% of the population.

If past injustice is the root cause of things like that, then the Jews should be some of the most violent people in the world. They're not. As a group they're doing quite well for themselves.

You think using a word like "nígger" makes me racist? No. Here's real racism: treating them like hapless children totally incapable of any sort of personal responsibility because of the past. Sending the implicit message that it's unreasonable to expect them to make better choices. Convince yourself that believing this makes you good, then make sure the blacks believe it too. You really want to keep a people down, that's how you fucking do it. Saying "offensive" words is NOTHING compared to that.

Re: SuperMicro

[Narcocide]

Dude you're posting this to a comment thread about motherboard manufacturer support and you're expecting us to believe that you're any better? Get fucked.

Re:SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

Their support is so great, it's almost like they're watching what you're doing.

"Super micro" sounds like your little pale white shrimp dick. Nothing like the ENORMOUS nígger cock you love to lick caress and suck on.

the best part of you ran down your moms ass crack and stuck to the floor of the gas station bathroom where you were conceived. you are one step down from a living abortion, and two steps down from being human. better teach your daughter to take it in the ass, otherwise there may be more of your degenerate dna mixed in with the general population.

long story short, fuck yourself with a red hot poker.

Re: SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

Get fucked racist

Re: SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude you're posting this to a comment thread about motherboard manufacturer support and you're expecting us to believe that you're any better? Get fucked.

So are you too prideful to admit that you have no ability to refute anything I said? I mean if you are so right and I am so wrong this should be trivial. Or are you too cowardly to try?

Do you think that after I offer stats and reasoning, that your hollow insults prove that you occupy some kind of high ground? No.

You're little more than a buffoon of the highest order, so confident that by thinking as you were told to think from such a young age, the choir of similar voices will confirm your righteousness. A religion not unlike any other. This is what all religions have in common, they are backed by passionate faith, not facts, not reason, not any ability to articulate their truth.

Re:SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

Their support is so great, it's almost like they're watching what you're doing.

"Super micro" sounds like your little pale white shrimp dick. Nothing like the ENORMOUS nígger cock you love to lick caress and suck on.

the best part of you ran down your moms ass crack and stuck to the floor of the gas station bathroom where you were conceived. you are one step down from a living abortion, and two steps down from being human. better teach your daughter to take it in the ass, otherwise there may be more of your degenerate dna mixed in with the general population.

long story short, fuck yourself with a red hot poker.

Such hatred. If you were truly any different from what you seem to be against, you wouldn't revel in a slightly different kind of hate. You think the object of your hatred makes your hatred better? That's a very sad way to live because people like you never seem to figure out why that doesn't work.

Re:SuperMicro

[e3m4n]

and I actually liked quite a few of their boards.

Re: SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

bwahahaha you beat me to it! You win the internet today

Re:SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

So happy that I came here and saw the exact same first post I imagined making myself.

Re: SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

You are transparent and so are your intentions. Further discussion is nit necessary. Thank you.

Re: SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

You are transparent and so are your intentions. Further discussion is nit necessary. Thank you.

Whatever your blustering ... So you concede, then?

Here is real transparency: tell me why expecting personal responsibility of EVERYONE is somehow unfair, while exempting black folk from it is somehow not sending the message that they cannot handle it? You expect them to improve and better themselves when nothing they do is ever their fault? You seriously believe that acting this way is somehow HELPING them?! Based on what theory?? Do tell. I want your reasoning.

Once again I offer you fair contention of ideas. Once again you shrink away from it. Am I transparent? Yes, I am transparent as facts and reason should be. You, however, are quite opaque. You claim the high ground while backing it up with NOTHING. Is this truly the best you can do?

You think agreeing with the majority will save you? The majority once thought that Galileo was a madman and that looking through his telescope was heresy. The majority once thought that smoking was healthy because doctors on TV said so. The majority once thought that the king had a divine right to rule. You are nothing but a sheep. If you weren't, you could tell me why you believe what you do as I have done for you. Your turn. Or you can be a sniveling coward once again. That's up to you.

Re: SuperMicro

[Cmdln Daco]

You've been trolled by a crapflooder. /. really is going to shit.

Re: SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

Dids't thou know that onceth upon a time the world was flat? Refuteth that!

Re: SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

Dids't thou know that onceth upon a time the world was flat? Refuteth that!

Yeah, it "was". Then it came into contact with facts. Facts won out. They always do.

So where are the facts that treating black people like children who are never responsible for their own actions because past-stuff! Is somehow helping them and not serving to keep them down like a second Jim Crow with a nicer smiling face on it?

As an analogy compare it to someone who grew up as a spoiled child and never had to be responsible for anything. You want to make damned sure a people never grows as a people, do something like that to them. When their males are 6.5% and murder each other more than half of all murders of 100% of all people, tell them it's because of the past. When their black children don't have black fathers nearly 90% of the time, tell them it's because of something white men do to them. When all of them have more than double the obesity rate of the rest of the (fat) nation, tell them what, that evil racist whites are shoveling food down their mouths and thwarting their exercise plans? When blacks have a far higher teen pregnancy rate, I guess that's because evil whites are grabbing black dicks and forcing them into black vaginas ruthlessly? Shall I go on? I could. Drug abuse, prison inmate rates, average IQ, I mean I really could go on and on.

Would you expect anyone to take responsibility when they are told all their lives that nothing is ever really their fault, that they are helpless victims? When generations of this go on? If we are all truly equal then what happens when you selectively tell blacks that all of their problems are due to whites and they should never think of solving them themselves within the black community? Do you have any idea how often "black lives matter" leaders are shot by other blacks? But that's ok, whites made them do it. They put the guns in their hands, put their fingers on the triggers, and squeezed the trigger for them. Yes, of course, it is so simple now.

Still waiting for someone to use psychology, reason, facts, evidence, SOMETHING other than insults, hand-waving, down-modding, and other cowardly acts. You are all so certain of your righteousness, great, then stand and deliver. You may not like my message but the truth is, you have no honor.

Re: SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

You've been trolled by a crapflooder. /. really is going to shit.

The description of the hatred that so many crapflooders seem to experience still seems apt.

APT!!! to quote Lisa Simpson.

Re: SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

Get fucked racist

Already did. BTW, mommy says hello.

Re: SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

You dirty redneck bastard. Why are you fucking your own mom? You give the rest of us non-motherfucking rednecks a bad name.

Re: SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a stupid asshole because you think he cares. GFY

Re:SuperMicro

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have to agree. The Supermicro boards that I have been using for literally 15 years, they still give me good support on when I ask. Maybe not the best English, but they really do answer your question on the first try.

Re: SuperMicro

[Woeful Countenance]

Do you think that after I offer stats and reasoning, that your hollow insults prove that you occupy some kind of high ground? No.

You have not offered any stats or reasoning. As far as I can see, you presented a couple of numbers with no sources for those numbers and no definitions of what they mean.

In case anyone who happens to read this is actually interested in how such analysis can be done, I offer this. First, I find it helpful to make a list of knowns and unknowns: (1) Some number of deaths occur. (2) Of the deaths that occur, some will be detected within some period of time, while others will not be detected. (3) Of the deaths detected, some will be classified as homicide. Some of these classifications will be erroneous, in both directions: manner of death may be classified as homicide when it actually wasn't, and some actual homicides will be classified otherwise. (4) Of the cases in which the manner of death is homicide, in some cases some perpetrator will be identified; in other cases, no perpetrator will be identified. This is a key point. (5) Some of these identifications will be erroneous: the wrong person will be identified.

Now we can look at some actual numbers, from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) for 2016, the latest year available:

Table 1: Note the column "Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter" for the year 2016: 17,250.

Table 5: "Offense Analysis", Murder, 2016: again, 17,250 (although this title doesn't mention "nonnegligent manslaughter").

Next: Expanded Homicide Data Table 3, showing the races of victims and offenders. When I added up the numbers, I got a total of 6,676 victims and 6,676 offenders.

17,250 (total homicides) - 6,676 (total offenders) = 10,574, which is 61% of the total. So this table is missing 61% of the crimes listed in the previous table. Where did they go? See the footnote: "This table is based on incidents where some information about the offender is known by law enforcement; therefore, this table excludes data when the offender age, sex, race, and ethnicity are all reported as unknown."

Again, a key concept: In 61% of the murders reported, the race of the offender was NOT KNOWN. So your assertion that "nígger males account for just over 50% of all US murders" is just not supported by evidence.

Further, consider the cases in which "race" of the "offender" is "known" (for some definition of "race", "offender", and "known"):

White offender: 2854 + 243 + 56 + 43 = 3196 (48%)

Black offender: 533 + 2570 + 37 + 16 = 3156 (47%)

Other: 40 + 17 + 123 + 4 = 184 (2.8%)

Race Unknown: 72 + 40 + 5 + 23 = 140 (2.1%)

(Total) 6676

So, in 2016, slightly fewer than half the murders (not "over 50%") were committed by black people and half by white people -- again, only considering those cases in which the race of the offender was known, which comprised 39% of all cases identified as homicide. Assuming these numbers are correct, an offender was classified as black in 48% of 39%, or 19%, of all homicides. Again, in 61% of homicides, the race of the offender was not known.

I don't know the FBI definitions for "race" or "offender", but I do know the "clearance rate" in most of the US is less than 50%, and for most jurisdictions, "clearance" means that some suspect has been arrested for a crime (usually within the same reporting year in which the crime was detected). Not convicted, not even guilty by plea bargain -- just arrested. How many of those are actually guilty, of course no one really knows. The low clearance rate partially explains the number of cases in which race of the offender was not known, because no offender was identified.

Re: SuperMicro

[Woeful Countenance]

When their black children don't have black fathers nearly 90% of the time, tell them it's because of something white men do to them.

Actually, that is one factor. See this, for example.

Another factor is the differential incarceration rates for black men. For more background on that issue, see The New Jim Crow , by Michelle Alexander.

On the other hand, I'm not at all sure what "black children don't have black fathers" is supposed to mean. I can think of at least three definitions. None of them hits 90%.

Spectre and Meltdown

[110010001000]

What BIOS update are going to fix those? They are unfixable without re-architecting the chip. There might be some software mitigations, but good luck with that.

Re:Spectre and Meltdown

[Anonymous Coward]

The BIOS update permanently updates the CPU microcode, which is preferable to the soft patches coming through Windows Update.

Re:Spectre and Meltdown

[Anonymous Coward]

Not permanently. The BIOS update just includes a microcode update that the BIOS reloads every power-on/restart. Just like an operating system might do it, but earlier.

Re:Spectre and Meltdown

[hcs_$reboot]

It's not a BIOS update, it's a PURCHASE update. Buy AMD.

Re:Spectre and Meltdown

[Tough Love]

Meltdown is far more serious than Spectre. To fix it, get a Ryzen, that's all there is to that. Spectre has a bunch of fixes merged to mainline Linux now. So if you're worried about Spectre, your best remedy is switch to Linux. Linux + Ryzen: the current sweet spot for performance, security and value.

Re:Spectre and Meltdown

[Tough Love]

There are no good fixes for Intel Meltdown, microcode or otherwise. Intel's patches just plain kill performance, putting single thread i7 performance well behind Ryzen. So much for the last remaining thing Intel had to crow about. It's a Ryzen world today, I heard it's already north of 30% of new desktop parts and still climbing. If TSMC 7nm plays out without production glitches, Ryzen will take the lead on desktop this spring and keep it for the foreseeable future. AMD is not ramping up their laptop effort, with a highly credible low power GPU heavy lineup. And Epyc is reportedly already up to 5% of server shipments, with 64 core (128 threads!) chips now rumored to be in the pipeline.

Well, drifted off a bit there. The point is, just don't waste your money on Intel desktop or server parts, Meltdown is a complete disaster.

Re:Spectre and Meltdown

[AlanBDee]

If TSMC 7nm plays out without production glitches

Now that's funny right there. But I agree, if I were building a new machine right now it would be AMD.

Re:Spectre and Meltdown

[Tough Love]

The jury is very definitely still out on whether TSMC actually has achieved high volume defect rates at 7nm. But maybe only another three weeks or so. If you hear a lot of complaints about backordered iPhones later this month, it most probably means that TSMC also has issues. The truth really hasn't leaked to any great extent.

Meanwhile, I'm optimistically planning a 7nm Threadripper build for approximately 8 months from now. Until then, even the 1000 series Ryzens provide me with more than satisfactory workstation power. The 2000 series Ryzens are a no brainer.

There will be two distinct flavors of 7nm Threadrippers, maybe half a year apart. The first wave will be a pure shrink, much like Intel's recently deceased ticktock. I guess I will jump in with the first wave, I would rather not be part of the debugging team for the next gen architecture.

Re: Spectre and Meltdown

[Cmdln Daco]

Drink Pepsi, not Coke!

No! Drink RC Cola. Be a rebel!

Re: Spectre and Meltdown

[higuita]

Drink water, that is what your body really wants, everything else is a waste of money and a good way to f*ck your body

Re:Spectre and Meltdown

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel's patches just plain kill performance, putting single thread i7 performance well behind Ryzen.

This sounds a lot like give candy to a child and then take it away.
The child is no worse off than it was to begin with but it will still feel cheated and cry about it.

Saying that the patches kills the performance is is a bit like saying that memory swapping kills performance.
While true in some sense an OS that doesn't support swapping isn't faster.

Intel never had that extra performance to begin with, they just cheated their way to it by doing things the insecure way.
Benchmark the processors with proper operation, relearn what you knew about the performance and move on.

Re: Spectre and Meltdown

[Anonymous Coward]

Drink beer!
1/9 supreme court judges thinks that beer is great.

Re: Spectre and Meltdown

[Cmdln Daco]

Heck, I even remember the previous President having a 'Beer Summit ' once.

MSI

[DarkRookie2]

I have had no problems with them.

Re:MSI

[Anonymous Coward]

No problem with their products or their support?
For example I've never got any problems with their products (still a sample size too small to be significant). Of course that means that I never used their support and therefore don't know how good it is if you run into a case where you would actually need it.

Re:MSI

[msauve]

So, the OP has a 5 year old LGA1150 Z87 MB, and is looking for ongoing BIOS updates. A quick Google shows a MSI Z87-G45 from that timeframe.

Latest BIOS update? 2014-07-22. Want to take another try at being responsive?

Re:MSI

[Anonymous Coward]

or their support

Define "support." In this case "support" is providing BIOS updates for old hardware. Since you have MSI products, what can you say about that?

Re:MSI

[Woldscum]

Z170 / Skylake 6xxx is the oldest that will get the Meltdown updated BIOS. This is Intel making that call. Xoo Z97 and older are SOL.

Re:MSI

[Woldscum]

*X99 / Z97 and older are SOL

Re:MSI

[Anonymous Coward]

or their support

Define "support." In this case "support" is providing BIOS updates for old hardware. Since you have MSI products, what can you say about that?

For me "support" means, "I can read a goddamned manual and don't expected to pay inflated prices to subsidize the costs of those who can't, but if something is actually defective then I expect a swift remedy". Who is offering that?

Re:MSI

[Woldscum]

Z170 / Skylake 6xxx is the oldest that will get the Meltdown updated BIOS. This is Intel making that call. Z97 and older are SOL.

first post

[Anonymous Coward]

frost pist

Re: first post

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumbest comment ever.

Re: first post

[Anonymous Coward]

You should have seen their last one...

A suggestion

[Anonymous Coward]

Avoid Supermicro!

Mitigations will be in the OSes

[Anonymous Coward]

Meltdown and Spectre mitigations will be in the OSes you run. The only thing a BIOS update will get you is updated microcode, but updated microcode is available at the OS level for all major OSes (e.g. Linux, Windows, macOS).

Re:Mitigations will be in the OSes

[Tough Love]

Meltdown and Spectre mitigations will be in the OSes you run.

Not true for Meltdown, the only OS level mitigations are rip your face off slow. You fix Meltdown by buying AMD. intel doesn't even have a Meltdown fix for Cannon Lake, even if they were able to manufacture them reliably. Intel doesn't have a whole lot to say about this. If they do decide to come clean I suppose it will be roughly along the lines of, reengineering the Cannon Lake cache logic, redoing all the masks, and redoing all the testing would delay another six months than it already is, not going to happen.

For your concern, it is irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

Specter/Meltdown cannot be fixed by a bios update... that's not how it works.

Re: For your concern, it is irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop bundling spectre and meltdown together. Specter can be and has been mitigated at software or firmware/microcode level. On the other hand, Meltdown affected all Intel and a few Qualcomm chips and cannot be mitigated, for the current lineup of CPUs.

Asus, Gigabyte or MSI

[rsilvergun]

are all about the same and none of them will support a board much past 2 years. After 6 months all your getting is the occasional new CPU.

There's nothing wrong with ASRock but they're not known for durability. I will say I seldom see them on the second hand market which implies that's for a reason.

There's probably some server board makers out there if you want to spend $600 and you'll get your bios upgrades, but you could buy 2 or 3 good boards for that price. Plus the chips they take usually cost 2-3x times as much too.

Basically, it's consumer grade hardware. The best you can hope for is that it doesn't break in 5 years. Everything after that is gravy.

Re: Asus, Gigabyte or MSI

[OneOfMany07]

This. And agree best bet otherwise is server hardware. Can't guarantee anything, but businesses use hardware for years and partially pay to get that support.

Re:Asus, Gigabyte or MSI

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure you have to go all the way up to Server hardware to get that support. I think you'll find it in Workstation land too. But yes, still more expensive.

Re:Asus, Gigabyte or MSI

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing wrong with ASRock but they're not known for durability.

I can second this. I got an ASRock Z97E-ITX/AC in March 2015. Failed in late 2016; my only ever motherboard failure. Replaced with a Gigabyte board which is still going strong.

Re:Asus, Gigabyte or MSI

[thegarbz]

No I cannot support a recommendation for Gigabyte given the question being asked. To be clear I have a complete Gigabyte setup. I have had Gigabyte motherboards for the best part of 20 years. They are very reliable and well built having never had a failure regardless of how much I've pushed the boundaries overclocking.

However... Their software and BIOS can only be described as a complete crock of shit. They should outsource their software to the lowest bidder in India, it can only improve the current state of it. Their manuals are poorly written. There's headers and options on in the BIOS that are not described at all. The only BIOS updates they ever seem to push out are the occasional compatibility upgrade.

I have the opposite experience software wise with ASRock. The software and support is great, however the one non-gigabyte motherboard I do have is AS Rock and is also the only motherboard I've ever had to RMA due to randomly failing in operation. The RMA process was great, but the fact I needed to do so, not so great.

Mind you the question is irrelevant for Spectre and Meltdown. Meltdown can't be fixed in soft/firmware and Spectre is a microcode update. You don't need the BIOS to do that, every OS has this capability already.

Re:Asus, Gigabyte or MSI

[harlequinn]

You jumped the gun a little there in regards to ASRock.

Reasons for not seeing them on the second hand market:
- people are keeping them because they are going strong
- they don't have high resale value so they are binning them instead of selling them
- they are failing prematurely
- or most likely of all, your sample of the second hand motherboard market is incredibly small

Re:Asus, Gigabyte or MSI

[harlequinn]

Not a useful anecdote to dissuade people away from one of the companies that did in fact update many 5+ years old motherboards with firmware updates for Spectre and Meltdown.

Rest assured, every motherboard maker out there has a certain percentage of products returned as faulty every year. Yours was one of them.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

How did this dumb ass question get posted on / . ?

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Posted by msmash. 'nuff said.

Bad time to say it, but they do support, update

[raymorris]

My thoughts exactly. Supermicro boards are normally used in servers, so their customers have certain expectations. Here is one list of Spectre patches for a bunch of Supermicro motherboards:

https://www.supermicro.com/sup...

If anyone missed the news, just recently it was discovered that the Chinese manufacturer added a very suspicious chip to a small number of Supermicro boards. That's obviously very bad news.

Re:Bad time to say it, but they do support, update

[Anonymous Coward]

You wanted slant diversity ... you got slant diversity. Chi.com uber-alles ... foeva! Buy American designed/built/tested products instead ... or are you a Quizling Trotsky bitch and vote DemoSlut on principle?

Re:Bad time to say it, but they do support, update

[Anonymous Coward]

That's obviously very bad news

It's not really bad news. I mean, as a western citizen, I have already all of my private information being handed to the western agencies. I'm afraid that my government can use that information against me. But I don't care that now the Chinese, the North Koreans, or the Bolsheviks have also access to my data. It means nothing to me.
I would be worried if I were a large business, but as an end user, nothing at all.

Can't go wrong with Abit.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear the KT7 is a good mobo.

Re:Can't go wrong with Abit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Still running a $60 Abit AMD board with the original Phenom. The sound circuits said their goodbyes after 8 years and the memory training has become very slow with all sockets full, but the latest Window 10 still works with the storage controller in IDE mode.

Re:Can't go wrong with Abit.

[Agripa]

Still running a $60 Abit AMD board with the original Phenom. The sound circuits said their goodbyes after 8 years and the memory training has become very slow with all sockets full, but the latest Window 10 still works with the storage controller in IDE mode.

I am in almost the same position but the only thing which has failed on my system are two power supplies and one video card. I am still running an almost 10 year old ASUS M3A78-T (2008) with a Phenom II 940 (2009) and I have no complaints. I am in the process of building a Ryzen system to replace it.

My previous Asus P4C800-E Deluxe with Intel Pentium4 2.4C still works fine also and I am in the process of refurbishing it for use as a file server. My even older Abit BX6 Revision 2 which currently has a 1.2GHz P3 is also fully functional and serves as my Windows XP and ISA legacy system.

The only thing unusual about all of these systems which they share in common is more than sufficient air cooling and ECC memory.

The only motherboards I have had fail are even older ones which use embedded lithium batteries for the CMOS memory and clock and each one with an nVidia chipset.

Are you kidding me?!

[Gravis Zero]

The chips Intel are putting out still have the same deep flaws as before, slower and are more expensive than AMD chips. Why in hell are you still wanting to use an Intel chip?!

Re:Are you kidding me?!

[Anonymous Coward]

The question applies equally well to AMD-based motherboards.

Re: Are you kidding me?!

[Anonymous Coward]

But the flaws don't.

Stop shilling for Intel.

Re:Are you kidding me?!

[Anonymous Coward]

AMD blows goats dude. If you ain't on Intel you ain't worth anybody's time.

Re: Are you kidding me?!

[Anonymous Coward]

> But the flaws don't.

Yes they do.

https://threatpost.com/amd-rolls-out-spectre-fixes/131135/

Re: Are you kidding me?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you imagine being this brainwashed?

Re:Are you kidding me?!

[Anonymous Coward]

The chips Intel are putting out still have the same deep flaws as before, slower and are more expensive than AMD chips. Why in hell are you still wanting to use an Intel chip?!

For my personal machine the last motherboard I bought was an MSI Carbon Black for Skylake CPUs.

Honestly the reason I went Intel was because of the *massive* difference in TDP. AMD chips in the same class simply ran much, much hotter for the same performance level. I like to keep my CPUs cool, they tend to have a long lifetime that way and overclocking becomes much more viable. This is much easier when the TDP is in the ballpark of 50% of the AMD offering at that time. I could overlook a 5-10% difference but that wasn't the case.

I employ reasonable spectre/meltdown mitigations and I don't have other local users to worry about so for me, temperature was a killer feature. Your use case could of course be different. You have to decide what matters for you.

Re: Are you kidding me?!

[Cmdln Daco]

Most AMD partisans consider it one of their hobbies. A fandom. I am not an 'Intel zealot' but am fairly certain I will be called that by some of the hobbyists.

Re: Are you kidding me?!

[higuita]

Almost all modern CPU are vulnerable to spectre, including PowerPC and faster ARM CPUs

Re:Are you kidding me?!

[thegarbz]

slower and are more expensive than AMD chips

Because for the people who've assessed the risk and determined Meltdown to be irrelevant to them (should be pretty much 100% of consumers) and those people who require single threaded performance, Intel is still very much the performance king.

Re:Are you kidding me?!

[Billly Gates]

Nope AMD has spectre vulnerabilities as well. It may have only 2 of the 3 discovered but it also uses branch prediction. Intel is faster too in gaming as AMD can't keep up if you read any benchmarks?

The best solution is to wait until 2019 or 2020 until CPU fixes come in.

Something with Supermicro

[sentiblue]

Supermicro provides lots of hardware for cloud providers like AWS, Softlayer, etc... I run several VMware clusters that employ a few Supermicro and I've come to learn that Supermicro doesn't care. I've applied firmware updates to all my bare metal hypervisors except the supermicros and it's my plant to replace them all with another brand. But of course, this is server class hardware. I've been using MacBook Pro for the past 10 years so I don't even know anything to recommend anymore. Good luck!

The answer to your question is...

[wezelboy]

ASUS.

They have the best support. You are unlikely to get better from someone else.

Re:The answer to your question is...

[hcs_$reboot]

Did you RTFS?

Re:The answer to your question is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you RTFS?

If the level of support you get from Asus isn't good enough, then just give up: you're probably not going to find anyone better.

Your only other option would be going with an open source BIOS / UEIF: coreboto, libreboot, etc.

Something something something wall of text

[Anonymous Coward]

Having recently used Asus, ASRock, MSI and Gigabyte products for some builds for friends, I would say Asus. ASRock had some questionable at best soldering on the boards (x299) I've seen and their BIOS translations and documentation were sketchy. MSI had a bunch of good things but other things that weren't well designed. I also came across information that was flat out wrong in the manual for the Z2370 board I was working on. Asus seemed to have good documentation and translations in bIOS and a quality built product. Gigabyte seemed to be almost entirely lacking in documentation for the board I used (the manual was less than 80 pages that came with the board). They did seem to do a pretty good job on the build quality though, and I didn't OC on that build so I can't comment on BIOS options.

TLDR: None of them are garbage, but I think the tier list for physical build quality is something like:
Asus > Gigabyte > MSI > ASRock
And from a software/documentation perspective I would say:
Asus > ASRock > MSI = Gigabyte

Just my .02 having built 6 rigs for others in the last year or so.

Re:Something something something wall of text

[Anonymous Coward]

Asus has become very linux-hostile of late (last couple of years).

I've switched to Gigabyte.

CAP === 'chance'

Re:Something something something wall of text

[Anonymous Coward]

how so?

Re:Something something something wall of text

[Kobun]

I agree with your list, with one addition. I've used boards from all of these brands (plus a few I won't mention):

Asus > Tyan > Gigabyte > MSI > ASRock

Any bricked Apple MB works...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you line about 50 of them on their sides and hold them together with duct tape, they support my 55" HDTV.

The Fucking Chip Is Intrinsically Flawed

[Anonymous Coward]

A BIOS update can't fix a CPU design flaw!

Why would you expect Asus to fix Intel(and AMD's) design problem?

Why the fuck are we not DEMANDING new CPUs from the vendors?

Why the fuck are we tolerating a 40% reduction in performance to work around or defend against a design defect?

Intel and AMD need to replace the CPUs with properly designed chips that perform at the stated spec.

ANYTHING less is unacceptable BULLSHIT!

IBM But don't expect it to be free

[Anonymous Coward]

And avoid Intel, AMD. Go with PowerPC

Re:IBM But don't expect it to be free

[Anonymous Coward]

well If I wanted to settle for 90s era performance, I'd just deal with the patches from intel.

MSI stood behind their product

[Tough Love]

MSI did the right thing with their AB350-gaming motherboard, an early, budget Ryzen board. They kept the firmware completely current even though that board was quickly superseded by AB350-gaming 3. At first I really had my doubts whether MSI would stand behind that early board, and maybe I just wasted my $100, but they surprised me favorably. Not only does the board seem to have no serious flaws that they couldn't patch up with a firmware update, it's been a really good performer. More than 150 days uptime at one point, only ended by a power outage when not plugged into UPS. Oh well, it was time to update the kernel anyway.

MSI's prompt firmware updates were particularly important to fix the lockup issue Ryzen chipsets initially had with some power supplies under Linux. MSI released new firmware within days of AMD distributing the fix.

The whole point of that build was to have a workstation class box at budget price. I would definitely go MSI for the next build, but that isn't going to be budget, far from it. It will be a high end Threadripper build. I'm addicted now, you see. Vendors stood behind their products so I will stand behind them.

Re: MSI stood behind their product

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought later than you and got the "gaming 3" version of the board.

It too has performed very well as a home server, very stable, great Linux support.

Re:MSI stood behind their product

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point of that build was to have a workstation class box at budget price

Too bad MSI often lacks ECC support for those of us who want/need it.

Re:MSI stood behind their product

[thegarbz]

They kept the firmware completely current

EVERY B350 / X370 has current firmware.

All manufacturers were forced to issue a BIOS update a few months ago with the release of Ryzen 2 which is incompatible with the existing BIOSes on boards with those chipsets. So incompatible that if you go out and buy a B350 and a Ryzen 2 there's a chance you may think it's Dead On Arrival.

AMD even offer a "kit" for you to fix this. If you take a photo of your 2ng Gen Ryzen, your motherboard including serial numbers for both and a receipt, AMD will mail you an loaner A6 processor and the BIOS on a memory stick so you can get your computer started and perform the required BIOS upgrades.

https://support.amd.com/en-us/...

Break out the lab equipment

[fahrbot-bot]

... 5 year old motherboard ...

Good luck. In the land of consumer electronics, things that old need to be carbon dated.

Re:Break out the lab equipment

[Anonymous Coward]

... 5 year old motherboard ...

Good luck. In the land of consumer electronics, things that old need to be carbon dated.

Not really. These days, computers are plenty fast for most tasks. Unless you're talking about gaming or high-performance computing. For most tasks by most users, five years is fine.

Heck, I'm running a laptop that was manufactured August 2012; 6 years ago. It performs just fine. (Disclaimer: I'm running Linux.)

Re:Break out the lab equipment

[jabuzz]

My Dell Optiplex 790 at work just got another BIOS update in August. That's the second one this year, after one last year for the Intel ME issue. The machine is now nearly seven years old, though has been pimped with 32GB of RAM and an SSD. In fact today I changed the graphics card for something that supports a Dual DVI link so I can hook up a 30" monitor that I got for free of a friend (he has gone 5k and was giving it away). Nothing fancy just a cheap fanless GeForce 710 off eBay, which just worked when I powered backup, because I was expecting to have to fight it (running CentOS 7 on my work desktop). Well other than I have to swap the display layout for the second monitor, but hey I was able to do that with clicking the mouse. A long way from editing mode lines a quarter of a century ago.

Does all I need as a system administrator, just wish I could persuade my boss to fork out on a 5k monitor.

Re:Break out the lab equipment

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

This post is actually insightful - not funny at all. OEMs rarely if ever provide updates for motherboards/laptops older than three years of age.

Re:Break out the lab equipment

[Billly Gates]

My 2014 era Haswel i7 4770K runs VM's and games competitively to newer CPUs with only a 10% to 15% loss in performance. This is 2018 not 1998.

THe only thing a newer system will do is provide more cores which may be nice for a few Vms and NVME drives with theoretical performance as I/O in benchmarks are not the same in the real world, oh and I can charge my phone with a type-C connector.

Change for the sake of change is expensive and many of us prefer Windows 7. My system runs 10 but after the latest update fiasco I don't blame users to keep 7 and older hardware if they don't need to upgrade. It just works and works well.

Moores law has been fulfilled.

Re:Break out the lab equipment

[fahrbot-bot]

Change for the sake of change is expensive and many of us prefer Windows 7. My system runs 10 but after the latest update fiasco I don't blame users to keep 7 and older hardware if they don't need to upgrade. It just works and works well.

All my systems are used or hand-me-downs from friends, though I typically upgrade them when I get them - usually by maxing out the RAM. I currently have the following hand-me-downs: a Dell XPS 420 w/8GB RAM running Windows 7, Dell Inspiron 530 w/8GB RAM running Windows 10, a Lenovo H420 w/16 GB RAM (vendor says max is 8GB) running Ubuntu 16.04 desktop; and a used Dell T110 w/32GB RAM running Ubuntu 16.04 server (at the moment).

Do not buy Asus...

[Anonymous Coward]

At least in Sweden. I have had to deal with their tech support many time. On the few occasions that they have actually accepted a return (laptops) for repairs that have taken their time and the unit has been in worse shape than when it was shipped to them. Usually it also involves some bickering about the wanting you to sign away all your rights according to EU/Swedish law and accepting to pay them a huge sum if they decide it wasn't a manufacture error.

Re:Do not buy Asus...

[Luckyo]

Wait what? You literally cannot sign away your legal warranty rights under the legislation that is compatible with the relevant EU directive, and Sweden must harmonise national law with this EU directive.

They are however well within their rights to demand you pay them for the check-up if they find that you're at fault (i.e. you dropped the damn thing into a pool and decided to pretend this is a warranty repair).

problems not with ASUS

[G00F]

ASUS is a great motherboard manufacture, and has been for a long time. Even when I use other motherboards ASUS is still one of the top tier in my book. Finding a better one....

Your motherboard is using the z87 chipset
Not just ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI (other good motherboard makers) also don't have released microcode
https://www.asus.com/News/V5ur...
https://www.gigabyte.com/Micro...
https://www.msi.com/news/detai...

You'll have to rely on the OS patches.

You bought the wrong hardware dumbass

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM provides firmware patches for POWER9, so your Talos II workstation is protected from Spectre and Meltdown.

In addition, When secure boot is properly configured, and if the mainboard is located in a physically secure environment (e.g., a datacenter or locked workstation case), you can be assured that only your pre-approved and pre-audited firmware, kernel, and user space components are executing on a Talos II system.

ChinaMicro is no match for Justice Rapist.

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump is making America over in his image.

I guess I need to learn Russian. :(

Re: ChinaMicro is no match for Justice Rapist.

[Anonymous Coward]

Get fucked douchebag.

Fuck support; which comes without grain of rice???

[Anonymous Coward]

Priority is keeping my data, mine; secondary priority, is fixing the tech when things go wrong.

5 years?

[hawguy]

Who expects 5 years of free support for a consumer computer hardware product?

Unless you're a large vendor who is willing to pay for extended support from the manufacturer, I don't think you're going to have much luck finding any vendor that will guarantee 5 years of support.

Did you ask the manufacturer how much they would charge for a custom BIOS? Get a few thousand other people together who also want support for that product, and you can probably even afford it, though it's probably still going to cost more than replacing the motherboard with a newer one. Can't find 1000 other people that also want to use that 5 year old product? Well, that's the same reason the manufacturer doesn't support it - that's a lot of

Buy a business product

[Anonymous Coward]

If you care about getting a quality long life motherboard buy a Dell or HP business desktop/workstation. Seriously.

All the 'gamer grade' parts motherboards are total crap these days. When every company pumps out 20 motherboard models every year you can be pretty sure they are all going to have broken unsupported BIOSes on them, and who knows what kind of quality in terms of the actual PCB. They simply do not have the volume per individual board to do any better, and nobody in their supply chain cares one lick. "sell and forget" is the mantra in that world.

Dell and HP make ONE desktop/light workstation motherboard per CPU cycle and sell huge numbers of them. They care about getting it right and provide good long term support.

About the only downside is you have to get a fairly expensive model to support a large high power dual slot GPU. But if you don't care about the GPU, prices are surprisingly competitive

Re:Buy a business product

[mlheur]

Agreed, in consumer electronics one should expect support to end the moment the sale is complete. If you want actual vendor support, you're buying a system, not individual components.

Re:Buy a business product

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't buy Dell or HP if you're interested in overclocking though.

Rasberry Pi (no joke)

[Qbertino]

No spectre, no meltdown, support unmatched.
ARM though, no x86,
Which is one of the reasons the quality is so good.

Re:Rasberry Pi (no joke)

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess.. if you're browsing and playing the occasional video.. I can do that on my phone.

Re:Rasberry Pi (no joke)

[Anonymous Coward]

I like my Raspberry Pis, but it can't do everything I want it too. It can't handle emulating any of the old consoles newer than N64 or PS1, and even those are painfully slow. I'm not compressing my 30GB blurays on it either, unless I want it to run for days. Playing the latest games on it doesn't work either.

Asus and Gigabyte

[AHuxley]

Not had a problem with Gigabyte. Asus products have been working well too.

Re: Bad time to say it, but they do support, updat

[Zero__Kelvin]

It is also not necessarily true that it even happened, actually. You forgot to mention that minor detail.

How about --

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the best mobo brand. Honest tech goobers don't ask for support, so you won't find a good answer.

Why not assemble your own

[Anonymous Coward]

The microcode is just a module in the BIOS image. Use the Google and get a tool that can suck the BIOS out, update whatever component modules of the BIOS you want to change, re-assemble the BIOS image and plop the damn thing on the BIOS flash.

There is and never has been anything difficult about BIOS updates and end-user customization of the BIOS modules.

Why do you want the manufacturer (who only provides support for the 6 month warranty period) to do what you ought to be doing yourself?

Re:Why not assemble your own

[Anonymous Coward]

The microcode is just a module in the BIOS image. Use the Google and get a tool that can suck the BIOS out, update whatever component modules of the BIOS you want to change, re-assemble the BIOS image and plop the damn thing on the BIOS flash.

There is and never has been anything difficult about BIOS updates and end-user customization of the BIOS modules.

Why do you want the manufacturer (who only provides support for the 6 month warranty period) to do what you ought to be doing yourself?

Because you're a morbidly obese fat fucking American who's not used to taking any sort of active role in much of anything?

Re:Why not assemble your own

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you go to Google to find this magical tool you just made up when you should be writing it yourself? There is and never has been anything difficult about writing some assembly to do things you're making up.

Seriously, this might be the funniest, most misinformed AC post I've seen in a long time. Reminds me of that kid in middle school who said he built his computer out of secret components his dad/uncle/cousin got working at Intel/NASA/Microsoft. You know. _that_ kid. Pretty sure we all knew at least one.

Biostar

[Anonymous Coward]

occasionally they respond and a few times I even recognized some english.

Re:Biostar

[Anonymous Coward]

ECS!

Hmm,

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I have not been excited about ASROCK. I called for a week about a problem with my system and everytime I called I got the same ONE person I truly believe that they only have one person doing tech. support so I won't uses them again. This guy didn't even know that MOBOs beep to indicate troubles. I was shocked that a MOBO producer would have such a lame support. In the end the problem was that my video card wasn't being seated correctly as the case was preventing the card from being fulling inserted. But they were no help in telling me what the blinking lights on the MOBO indicated besides blaming my power supply without asking a single question, in addition to not know what the lights meant. Totally clueless. That was two years ago and I'm still pissed off about how bad they were.

The one that ...

[CaptainDork]

... you never had to call.

Not a bio's problem

[NormAtHome]

From what I've read these problems can't be fixed by any kind of bios update. The only mitigations will be through microcode updates to your cpu or updates to your operating system. Also from what I've read Intel does not provide microcode updates for any cpu older than the 6th generation so if you have a 5th generation or older all your going to get is operating system mitigations. I don't use AMD cpu's so you'll have to check what generations of their cpu's have updates available and if you have an older AMD cpu then you're out of luck.

Thinking about what might be on our motherboards?

[Anonymous Coward]

This "spy chip" is supposedly limited to certain SuperMicro motherboards. But am I the only one getting a little antsy about the possible inclusion of such a chip on the garden variety motherboards we mighty be buying?

Gigabyte

[sixsixtysix]

Been using them for a decade+, never needed customer service.

NONE of them.

[Anonymous Coward]

asus, msi, gigabyte are the 'big three' in the retail segment. all three have shitty support and even worse warranty service.

the rest (biostar, asrock, etc) are several tiers lower than that, even.

intel branded retail boards are the exception, but don't expect driver or firmware updates for anything even close to going out of warranty.

those that sell to oem pc builders like foxconn and pegatron don't support their stuff either.. and the companies that use their boards in systems (dell, hp, etc) don't support them either... except the original system warranty and original shipping configuration (and even then, they sometimes refuse to cover something that's entirely their fault).

asrock supports windows 7

[n3r0.m4dski11z]

I am sure that other manufacturers have tools to slipstream all the necessary drivers into the image for you and make it uefi bootable now a days. But thats why I went with asrock 2 years ago, because they were one of the first to support win7 again fully. No problems so far.

People get brand loyal, but all mobo manufacturers are kinda the same. I usually just use newegg to filter for the features i want (be it usb ports, or sata channels, or dual m.2 x4 slots or whatever) and then buy the cheapest one that meets my requirements. asrock, asus, gigabyte and msi, you really cant go wrong with any of those.

And i wouldn't worry about those vulnerabilities. I am pretty sure there is no like, mass exploit in the wild. Its hardly a reason to upgrade. Maybe intel will release an exploit on the darkweb to spur PC sales soon? It always seemed pretty lame as exploits go, just being able to read some random protected memory. I am sure one day it will end me, but somehow i soldier on.

That's now how Spectre or Meltdown are fixed

[thecombatwombat]

Can a BIOS update address spectre or meltdown?

I . . . don't think they can? The fixes from Intel are applied via microcode updates, generally delivered by OS vendors and having nothing to do with BIOS updates.

Am I missing something?

Get yourself a dual socket server board

[williamyf]

But with only one processor, put in there just one Graphics card.

when the time to upgrade comes, instead of buying new processor+memory+mobo+graphics card, add a second processor, a second graphics card with NVLink or xFire, or more memory as needed, depending on bottle-neck.

More money upfront, but less money and hassle on the long run, and better support, to boot.

Update your own BIOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could try updating the microcode section of your current BIOS if that suits you.
https://www.win-raid.com/t154f16-Tool-Guide-News-quot-UEFI-BIOS-Updater-quot-UBU.html

SuperMicro

[sremick]

Honestly. Listen, I know they're being trashed right now but it wasn't them... it was outsourcing 2 layers removed. It's unfortunate that they're young to take the sword for this.

I've been building PCs for over 25 years. I used to love Asus but recently switched to ASRock (Rack) and SuperMicro. Both provided excellent personalized support when I needed it. In fact it was just earlier this week that I emailed SM with a tech question and they responded relatively immediately with a detailed and enthusiastic answer. Not even an initial robo email with a ticket # and false promise to respond in "24-48 hours". It was only 3h.

I hope they get through this. I'm not even sure my board would be targeted... It's a full ATX style, while it seems the targeted boards are blades used in HD racks.

Thanks for pointing that out

[raymorris]

At the time I wrote that, I hadn't seen anyone question whether it happened. Thanks for mentioning that.

Re: Thanks for pointing that out

[Zero__Kelvin]

There are so many idiots on Slashdot these days, but at least when it comes to technology you have always been pretty spot on, so it makes sense, and no disrespect intended. I should have probably guessed you just hadn't seen the additional information yet, but in any case much respect and I'm glad there are still a small handful of people here that belong here. Cheers!

Re: Thanks for pointing that out

[Anonymous Coward]

Suck his dick a little more, I think he's about to CUM!

Racists gonna race

[Anonymous Coward]

Your entire argument cannot be approached with "psychology, reason, facts, evidence" because it is based on none of those. Your argument is based on statements that you say "we" make but "we" do no such thing. Your first sentence of the second paragraph is one of those. You claim we treat black people like children. We do? Where? When? How? You say we think they aren't responsible for their actions. The incarceration rate disagrees with you. You throw out some "stats" and then claim the reason is X because "we" said so. Where did we say what the fuck ever you've dreamed "we" said. In none of the posts you've made have you specifically mentioned a real occurrence. You just say some shit you dropped right out of your asshole, and then claim that's what "we" think. That is the same rationale used in racism, sexism, or any other -ism and THAT is why you're racist.

Now here is the part when you, ummm, quadruple(?) down on the derp and write another screed saying SEE SEE YOU CAN'T REFUTE IT! just like the post I responded to. Have fun with that. You'll still have nothing to insightful say.

Also, let me help you with your trolling a bit. I am certain that you are not American or at least a first gen immigrant with English as a second language. You type things Americans rarely, if ever, say. I'm gonna point out one for you. Do you actually think your last sentence was an insult? America does not, in any shape, form or fashion, give 2 runny turtle shits about honor. That hasn't been an insult since the last of the original 1776 British immigrants died off. You know who does care about honor? CHINKS and other Asian people. Chinks and Ruskies have been actively sowing discord and infiltrating American companies, governments, and hardware. That is a FACT. You like those right? You gonna get pissed that I suggested, with no evidence at all, that you are a CHINK and called you a CHINK? That isn't racist. You said so 2 posts up. Now you may begin typing your hypocrisy.

AsRock provided BIOS for my Z77 board

[Anonymous Coward]

My z77 mini itx board got a bios update to address spectre/meltdown. Its the first update in years and its marked beta, but it exists. I doubt it will ever be marked non beta.

Buy workstation boards, not consumer "Pro" boards

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy a real workstation motherboard. Here is an ASUS motherboard from 2011 with updates in 2018: https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/P8B_WS/HelpDesk_BIOS/

See also: https://www.asus.com/us/support/FAQ/1035538

Meanwhile, the ASUS Z87-PRO's Z87 came out in 2013, but despite the "PRO" name, it is really just another consumer board with consumer level support.

I've bought whatever had the best features for the

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got an ASRock Z270M-Pro4 board that's been very stable in my i7 build. No-name, low-spec boards go into Dell/HP/Acer desktops and they last a decade or two (and probably longer), and these boards have cheap caps, skimpy VRMs and so on, so a board by ASRock or Biostar with slightly better components couldn't be any worse. I've got a six-year-old machine that runs 24/7 as a server with a Biostar board (think I paid 40 bucks for it) and it still works.

Usually it's hard drives and power supplies that bring a machine out of commission. Motherboards usually only die if a power surge makes it past the surge suppressor/PSU, poor handling (ESD or excessive flex) or due to excessive humidity. RAM seldomly dies and I've never heard of a dead CPU not caused by physical damage or ESD damage (even though when I was 12 years old, I put together a Pentium III machine and used a whole bunch spare parts I had laying around, including the PIII cartridge CPU that I stored away my sock drawer without any ESD protection whatsoever, yet the PIII CPU still worked fine).

Apple.

[Anonymous Coward]

The end.

Just check the motherboard box

[LordHighExecutioner]

The motherboard whose box is the most sturdy, will offer an excellent support when standing over it.

Re:Break out the lab equipment - Seagate

[Anonymous Coward]

... 5 year old motherboard ...

Good luck. In the land of consumer electronics, things that old need to be carbon dated.

Seagate used to give 5 year warranty's on their hard drives.

5 years...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't expect many system board manufacturers to continue support after 5 years...

HP and Lenovo, really

[Anonymous Coward]

HP will support their corporate desktop and laptops for at least 8 years, often more. And that includes bios updates.

In fact, HP is to thank for all the last microcode updates the Core2 had, Intel made them on HP request and HP was thr only one that bothered publishing them as updates. Too bad it wasn't possible for the Spectre Trainwreck.

Lenovo updates their stuff as well, again only the corporate models (think line, not the crap Lenovo and yoga lines), but they won't go as far back as HP unless a large client asks for it.

Supermicro has always had good support and a crap firmware team, so it ends up being an internal fight. Don't go there.

Asus, MSI, gigabyte... They add crazy crap to their motherboards and have no concept of a corporate line (no extended support for real). The ceazy crap gets in the way of third-party firmware like coreboot, so it is the trashbin in five years :(

Wait until 2019

[Billly Gates]

AMD Ryzen3 Zen2 will be coming out with security fixes and so will Intel's next generation CPUs. Also DDR 5 is coming out making your DDR 4 investment obsolete fast.

It is a CPU problem as stated as the bios can only do so much when the circuitry itself by default generates all sorts of forgone conclusions which is what branch prediction is.

A CPU fix will be needed and none are around. AMD is a little more secure but it too has 2 of the 3 spectre bugs that Intel has.

Recommend another manufacturer?

[Agripa]

Yes, I can recommend another manufacturer, AMD.

Vendors vs. users

[DrYak]

These days, computers are plenty fast for most tasks. {...} For most tasks by most users, five years is fine.

Sadly, the hardware vendors don't seem to agree with you.
It seems that if it's older than a couple of months, you're basically on your own.

(Except maybe for the "business" line of some manufacturer like Dell or Lenovo. But definitely the case for separate motherboard manufacturer as in TFS).

Heck, I'm running a laptop that was manufactured August 2012; 6 years ago. It performs just fine. (Disclaimer: I'm running Linux.)

That last part might be the reason why you and I can pull such a stunt, including the latest kernel. The same hardware will probably refuse to run anything more recent than Windows Vista.
(And let me guess, also using Nouveau due to Nvidia dropping support of the embed GPU in your laptop ?)

Microsoft supplying Intel microcode

[Anonymous Coward]

I realize this is probably the wrong forum to bring this up -- but Microsoft was pushing a Windows update that included new microcode.

See https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4093836/summary-of-intel-microcode-updates