save yourself the effort of a survey, just pick a quality board and parts from a reliable supply.
Avoid the very latest and (supposedly) top speed stuff, something from the upper mid to lower top range will add reliability.
Be careful and install systematically, avoid blind shots of trial and error.
That's all about it
you can do - the rest is up to the grace of Windoze

I've seen it handle the very same hardware differently on 2 installs, time and again...
It
is that stupid, or how'd you call a system that starts copying a ton of vintage driver crap for devices that most current users don't even know they existed ?
You cannot manually configure it in this or that (fixed) way, it will always stick with it's built in automatisms etc etc...
If you ever had trouble with any non-bells-'n-whistles Intel, Giga or Supermicro board, then most likely you screwed something during install - accidently, by impatience, or just by bad luck.
The latter is rather unlikely with the afforementioned brands, but it still can happen.
You may also have a close look at some benchmark data of memory and mobos, a real close one with a focus on the diagram scale first - not it's content

Then you will notice that they usually exaggerate results, as the difference between the 'winner' and the weakest is often less than 10%.
Accord to statistic examination you don't even notice anything below a 25% improvement by yourself under 'blind' conditions. Much system praising is driven by expectation eventually...
Don't forget about the fact that of lot of that technology is dead cheap today.
It's not unreasonable to associate a higher degree of unreliability with falling prices.
Don't even get me started on harddisks...
cheers, Tom