Read the user reviews at the Egg, & if you're thinking about a new model, check out a manufacturer's older ones using the same chipset. We've had good luck recently with a couple of Foxconn boards -- Foxconn makes the boards for several brands, & does a lot of stuff for Apple.

I bought a Gigabyte 2 years ago, the MOSFETs were too small, & the burnt silicon smell took days to leave the room [my advice didn't work then as it took 6 months or so before they burnt up, & it hadn't been out 6 months when I bought it]. Gigabyte was fairly quick/easy to get an RMA, but I didn't wait for the month or so it took till I had a replacement. Bought an Abit, almost identical, that performed well but had a short draining the CMOS battery. Eventually I got an RMA & sent it in (both lazy & tired of crawling under the desk to replace it every few weeks), & the tech support crew were great about replacing it. We've had ECS boards last 5+ years of heavy use, Abit's even longer. In fact, we haven't had any experiences which would name one brand as troublesome, though every brand out there's had lemons from time to time.

Don't have any recent experience with Intel, or their chipsets -- I believe in voting with my wallet so-to-speak, so I've been buying AMD/ATI as my small contribution to keep competition going for all of us.

I only consider tech support as issuing RMAs & writing/releasing good Bios code -- again something you can check out in the Egg's customer reviews... the pro type reviews tell you how fast and capable a board is, but not over time in the real world. I also try to buy boards that have been out a few months and check to see how often the bios have been updated in that time -- nobody get's it right out of the gate, plus every new CPU seems to need Bios fine tuning... no updates means there probably won't be one if/when you need it, so you're stuck. A good user forum like Abit has can be invaluable -- nothing like a bunch of overclocking fans to try every imaginable tweak, & find most design weaknesses.

Otherwise, in case it helps, find the level of board you need, then buy something a notch or two higher. Most manufacturers have a base-line, economy series, with little or no bios adjustment possible, and components that meet the board's needs, with little wiggle room. Lower end gaming boards OTOH can have better components, usually better cooling, & much more bios settings -- you can ignore the second graphics card slot if you want. And they usually cost just a little more than the econo versions. Bells & whistles on the full-tilt boards costing $300 - $400 don't do it for me.

i've talked to people @ asus when I've needed help. They're no better/worse then most out there. Except I've never needed to call them because a product of theirs broke, ends up a power surge took it out.

If you've got the money Supermicro. You see racks full of their gear in render farms running 100% 24/7. Mine has been 100%.
Gigabyte mobo I bought when I bought V4 still going. One I bought for XP and V8 running very nicely, lots and lots of ports, even the RAID0 hasn't hiccuped once.
Several Shutlle XPC boxes running OK apart from one that had both the CPU and RAM go in one hit. Probably a power thing.

Tech support on any of this apart from Supermicro is as others have said limited to BIOS updates. I did get a response from Shuttle when trying to diagnose what had gone wrong with the unit that had dead CPU and RAM but largely useless. Mostly issuing RMA's is about all tech support can do with this kind of stuff.

Bob.

Ralph,

Good board selection. This is one of the few boards that actually has the new USB3.0 already installed, may come in handy down the road when we will see that become the preferred 'transfer' link.

Regarding mobo mfgr and support, I think they all pretty much do the same thing. Motherboards are quite complicated machines, and the only thing some tech on the phone can do in most cases is get you an RMA, so you can get a replacement, as troubleshooting over the phone gets to be rather difficult.
All the ones you listed seem to be able to offer good RMA support. Certainly Newegg here in the States is pretty good in replacing defect material as long as you are within the warranty period.

Ted

The problems come with the intro of new functions as in my Gigabyte running SATA Optical drives when SATA opticals were just coming out. The drivers did not function and hung up the whole system. Waited and got the correct driver and everything ran fine. Supermicro is the tops and require fat wallets. They are built like a Sherman Tank. Somebody could mug you with one and not hurt the board.
JJK