Originally published: January 2017
In this write-up I publish a series of mini-reviews of some desktop motherboards I have owned and used over the years. Due to lack of real need, I have not built a new desktop in a rather long while, so by now all my boards are old enough to be classified as ‘retro’. Since they belong to distinct time periods (corresponding to the different desktop systems I built over the years), I’ve separated these pages into sub-sections according to these periods. This makes sense both historically, and in terms of supported feature sets.
I call these ‘mini-reviews’ not because they are short (they are not; few things I write are ever short; I wish I got better at being concise), but rather to differentiate them from the standard format of motherboard reviews, which usually attempts to survey all features, run certain benchmarks, and provide comparison between similar boards. My write-ups do not qualify as full reviews; I do not have the time, the skills or the equipment for such an effort, nor do I think it would have much value – these boards are old, in their time they were reviewed thoroughly and professionally, and this information can still easily be located on the web. I could hardly add anything meaningful to what’s already out there.
What I do hope to contribute here is mostly personal usage experience, some background as to why I chose this or that board, what I liked and disliked, and how my perception may have changed over the years. I feel that such information can be more valuable to someone considering building a particular retro system than just benchmarking and comparing outdated hardware.
Cloaked Thargoid 