For me, "High Performance" motherboards were not good until the 775 era. I did kill my Soyo Dragon, Abit NF7-S, Abit AN8 Fatal1ty, Asus A8N whatever the top end was. And many pairs of DDR2.. pretty sure those were suicide, maybe I taunted into doing it not sure. 1 for sure was my fault.. but they were OCZ, so they would have died anyways.
I had good luck from 775 to 1366. I had 1 1155 suicide, and 1 AM4 death. Not sure if it was me or suicide. Gotta send it out. Love that board.. she is missed.
I guess even later, as if I'm right, 775 was the first socket/generation with lead-free solder (sometime in the middle of its life, and it was quite long). Socket 775 mobos had some design flaws. It was the first socket that was burning or was too fragile - some batches of some brands, like the first Foxconn vs Lotes LGA fight, and which one to buy. Biostar had top RAM/FSB overclocking mobos, but the power section for RAM was dying at higher voltages (the same as some models from other brands). Their P45 motherboards were good for 3-4 months of benching, and then it was time for RMA. I had 3 or 4 of them, as they were cheap and were overclocking well. You couldn't even buy a 2nd hand Biostar mobo as all were dead after a couple of months of overclocking and regular users were not buying them. MSI back then had VRM problems, and it was a long list of failures until X79. ASRock had nothing except for the budget series.
I feel like the only good LGA775 ones were Gigabyte P35/45/X48 and the top ASUS mobos, as they were manufactured in a "better" factory and were somehow of higher quality.
From good series that are still alive, I remember higher ASUS P3/P4 series, ASUS/Gigabyte 775, ASUS/ASRock X99/299, and ASUS/ASRock/MSI Z77/87/97/490/590. No matter what generation, there are always good ASUS mobos, but mainly from the ROG series. I'm not talking about single failed models (like APEX Z690), but you can always remember a top mobo from each generation, and usually it's ASUS. I dislike their internal policies, how support often acts, and some more, but it's hard to pick any other brand that keeps their enthusiast series at the highest level for so many years.
EVGA has a great design but usually fails BIOS or has some weird compatibility issues. The last 2-3 series were pretty good, and BIOS was also not bad. If they disappear from the market, then you will hear legends about them, the same as about Abit or DFI. I have X299 Dark, but for some reason, 2-3 CPU socket pins are bent. It works fine, but it's still weird as when I bought the mobo, I installed the CPU once, and it was working like that for over a year. Later I removed it for delidding, and I noticed the bent pins. I'm sure it was fine before. It sometimes happens with LGA sockets. A lot of cases like this were in some Z590/690 series. MSI is still leaving a sticker not to overtighten liquid cooler screws. ASUS was rejecting RMA because of that saying it's user's fault.
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