I worked for a small company who built white-box PCs in the late 90's thru the early 2000's. The Intel desktop boards were far and away more reliable than any o

I worked for a small company who built white-box PCs in the late 90's thru the early 2000's. The Intel desktop boards were far and away more reliable than any other manufacturer's boards. The Intel boards weren't flashy or as feature-filled, and they did have some "duds" (particulat board models with various "erratum", the whole 820 chipset SDRAM controller debocle), but their manufacturing consistency was excellent. I don't believe I ever encountered a DOA board coming out of the box, which I can't say for ASUS or Gigabyte. Edit: Power supply quality helps a lot, too, as others have said. I can't remember the brand of power supplies we used, but that definitely mattered.