And, of course I'll be the first one to bitch:Soyo System Boards:
I've had a PIII 550 in my system for about 18 months with a 6BA+ system board. It worked great until one day the system board went out. I thought it might be because it got to hot, so I added another fan and ordered a new system board (out of warranty, only about $80)
About three months later the power supply went out. Ok, replaced it ($25.) Shortly after that the system board went out again. This time it's still under warranty, so I send it to the place where I got it. They tell me the manufacturer has discontinued that model and it will take over a month to get a new one. Not wanting to wait a month I order a similar model, 6BA+ III. This is where I start getting pissed off.
The 6BA+ III is essentially the same system board with some added features to support more over clocking and faster Intel processors. I'm not doing any over clocking.
After three separate re-installations of Windows 98 SE and 2000 (four, if you count the current dual-boot install) I'm not able to get this thing to be stable. It will lock up, exit out of IE 5, exit out of games, etc.
So, I just recently received the replacement for the original system board. I just installed it and am re-installing W98. I was able to use sysprep to preserve my install of W2K. We'll see what happens now...
If anyone is going to be building a system, steer clear of Soyo for your system boards. Maybe some of their newer models or models for AMDs are better, but I've had pretty bad luck. Of course, it's probably just me....