Which motherboard?

[Molly]

I'm looking for the best value motherboard for my first HCPC.
Spec required:

Socket A AMD XP 2000+
PC3200 ram
Firewire
USB 2.0 x 2
LAN

No built in video or sound required.

Any ideas or websites to try

[owain_thomas]

I've got an MSI K7N2 delta. You can get this from www.scan.co.uk for less than £70. It performs well, has the bestt AMD compatible chipset (the nforce2) IMO, and does dual channel RAM well.

One word of warning - if you get an nforce MB be VERY careful of what RAM you chose. I can tell you that samsung PC2700 works fine as long as it comes from Korea (uses infineon chips). I'm pretty sure that I've read that PC3200 is not any better, but costs a bit more, so might be worth a bit of research.

HTH

Owain

[Kramer]

Abit NF7-S V2.0

£85 from

here (http://komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?action=info&p=34155&t=845&l=2&AvdID=1&CatID=10&GrpID=5&s=pl).

2x 256mb Twinmoss (Winbond CH-5) shold do quite nicely - running at 220 FSB (Turbo) in dual DDR in my board.

Cheap too :eek:

[Molly]

Thanks for the replies. Do I need the Abit NF7S nForce2 or will the Abit AT7 Max2 VIA KT-400 do the job? Is it worth paying the extra £10 and what would is the difference?

[Gary Lightfoot]

Why do you need such a high spec?

If you're only after DVD playback, then you only need something like the ECS K7S5A Pro for £25, a Radeon card (start from about £30), Soundblaster 4.1 OEM £13, 128meg sdram £15, LiteOn 165 DVD player £24, Seagate Barracuda IV 40gig £46, firewire card £20 (?) Lan card £4.

Gary.

[Molly]

I would like to use the HCPC for :

Lossless audio jukebox
Nebula card for PVR
Firewire for capturing home video
DVD playback for a projector

Will I need a good motherboard to achieve the above?

[Thrash]

The Asus A7N8X Deluxe board is maybe a bit OTT but it is a very nice board with USB 2, firewire, optical out AGP Pro 8x and serial ATA. It would meet and exceed your needs.

Gary is right though if you are after the minimum spec the ECS is a good basic board that will do the job with the addition of a firewire card etc.

[james.miller]

the abit nf7-s is the best amd board you can get - faster, and cheaper than the asus.

i would personally stay away from ecs. when their boards work, they are fine. but ECS's boards are plagued with problems. my ECS k7s5a was good for around 2 years, but it has suddely decided to forget the time and it also now has boot issues.


if you are not gaming on it, then a board such as the abit nf7-s is definatly not needed. a cheep kt400 board will be more than enough.

edit:

such as this: the abit kd7-s kt400. lan, on-board 5.1 sound(though no where near as good as the nf7-s),s-ata, usb2.0, £56.40 inc vat. bargain.

[Gary Lightfoot]

I've got two ECS K7S5A boards now (one is about 2 years old), and no probs yet. :)

I think the ECS can suffer from bad battery's, but new ones cost around £1.50 and that can solve the boot probs.

That Abit board does look excellent value though. If you did consider the ECS and bought an oem SB 4.1 the price would be about the same as the Abit board, except you get lan and a better quality board with the Abit.

kd7-s kt400 Seems like a winner. :)

Gary.

[james.miller]

unfortunatly, as others have found, it wasnt the battery in my case:(

Lately, abit have really been knocking the boards out and damn fine they are too. You wont get better value for money than the kd7-s. Although, if i were you, id seriously concider the nf7-s version 2. As well as being the best performing AMD board out there, It has nvidia "soundstorm" 5.1 on-baord sound, which is right on par with an audigy 2.

concider the price of the nf7-s, and the price of a mobo+audigy2. you know the nf7-s makes sence;)

With eother board though, your getting your money's worth.

[Molly]

Thanks for all the different advice.

I've paid a few extra quid and gone for the nf7-s version 2.

[Gary Lightfoot]

Where'd you buy it from?

Cheers

Gary.