I used to buy a lot of motherboards and build computers - and the one thing I definitely learned was that it really does pay to buy quality. I havnt' heard of ECS - so don't know their reputation - but I found ASUS motherboards exceptionally good ( they were a little more expensive - but top quality ) but I also bought another make ( medium budget ) which were very reliable (QDI) and now have a 3 year warranty - and the cost is only around 120 usd ( equiv in UK) Maybe yours is a top notch board and you were just unlucky. In fact I bought probably over 100 QDI boards and can't remember ever having one problem with them. One of my customers insisted on supplying his own equipment and had his friend build the computers which used the cheapest motherboards and we had nothing but problems - he ended up scrapping them after six months - so it always pays to get quality on the motherboard.