Need advice on mobo, please

[Emc2]

I second the Gigabyte GA-7VRX...VERY stable. The onboard sound could be better, but then you could just spend a few $ more and get the GA-7VRXP which has onboard LAN, great sound, and RAID just in case you ever decide to go that route.

I will say that My personal experiences with the Iwill XP333/XP333-R are pretty bad. On both boards, the BIOS kept messing up, beyond flash-repair. I had to send the boards back twice, and both times Iwill tried to say that it's my processor or RAM, but both the same processor and same RAM is sitting on a Gigabyte board running fine right now

[nork]

I just read RustyGT's response and re-read my response to Upinya.

To Upinya:
Sorry, I wasnt trying to be demeaning or anything like that. Just giving my opinion from what I have heard on many forums and what I have experienced myself. I don't even know for sure if pc chips and ECS are the same. I just went to the ECS site and they seem to have more support and such than I have seen at the pc chips sites. But the boards look somewhat the same. They put same things in the same places as pc chips. But then you have had good experience with them, so maybe I am wrong about this. I dont know. Anyway, didnt mean to hurt anyones feelings or anything like that.

To RustyGT
Thanks for pointing things out and for the website info.

To Emc2
Thanks for the info.

[RustyGT]

Nork.

I dont think any offence was given, or taken.

Bloke.

Pointed you to motherboards.org because they are a bit more obsessed about mobos.

Maybe it was useful. Maybe not.

Dont fret.

ChrsR.

[nork]

Thanks, just that I read my own reply and felt that I was a bit sharp in putting down pc chips boards. Here's a person telling me of a good xperience, actually 2, and I am putting the boards down. Maybe I shouldnt put as much stock in what I read sometimes. I know a person who has a pc chips board, running a p4 1.6, had it over a year with no prob. So maybe I am being a bit too hard on pc chips boards.

Anyway, thanks for reply.

Anyone else with good pc chips stories? My attitude is changing here!

[RustyGT]

I was a bit sharp in putting down pc chips boards.

I think plenty folk do! Isn't that the FORD* of mobos?

*= Cheap and Nasty.

Nork, having worked for a HP and IBM warranty agent.

Big brand names, use the ugliest most anonymous mobos in their SOHO PCs.
It's frightening actually.
No small wonder, that geeks, "roll their own." [build their own]

ChrsR.

[John Prophet]

Well Nork...About a year ago when I first was getting into pc hardware I also heard that PC Chips sucked. Then I got a job in a comp store that used PC Chips 810 LMR motherboards in their standard builds.

I can tell you the one reason they were used...price. Dude was/is a corner cutting tightwad. Over the course of the year I worked their I saw probably over a dozen of those boards need replacing. Now...what do you think my opinion of PC Chips boards is at this point? It seems maybe they are ok for durons etc but if you try to push a strong vid card and a strong cpu..they just dont hold up. At the very least one could say they dont seem to have high Quality Control standards. When there are so many other good boards just a few bucks more..why take a chance?

As far as ECS...I was under the impression that they were once a seperate company that was acquired by PC Chips so now they are in the pc chips family. Im not sure though. Maybe now they are made by the exact same peeps at the same facility...either way ECS seems a slight notch above pc chips to me. I know that Peter and others have high regard for pc chips..but IMO..if the average tech cant get them to function consistently good..and if they have high RMA return rate....Im not gonna mess with them.

To me..this is a good deal http://store.yahoo.com/justdeals/abkg7raidmot.html

I posted a thread about it when they had a coupon for 6$ off...I doubt the coupon is still good though. http://www.techimo.com/forum/showthr...threadid=36883

This is an abit motherboard that uses an AMD 761 chipset. For less than 50$ you get a top notch board that is within 5-15% points of todays performance. In other words...its all you need unless you are an extreme power user. It has RAID and after the easy to do BIOS flash, you can use Athlon XP cpus.

Sites like justdeals or even compgeeks often have motherboards that are 6 months or a year out of the limelight for around $50 or less.

For instance I bought an Abit KR7A RAID board for I think it was $55 from compgeels. THAT was a ridiculous deal for a top drawer super stable..very overclockable board.

If you are not a bleeding edge power user then you dont need this weeks latest hype hardware. If we built a comp with a KR7A and put it up against a comp with todays latest stuff..only a tiny tiny percentage of people would be able to tell the difference.

To be honest I would think for most applications...browsing the net for instance...most peeps wouldnt notice the difference between a duron and an athlon.

Ive done a couple builds with ECS k7sem boards....I think its a decent board if you dont need the blazing edge.

BIOSTAR also makes good solid boards that arent priced too high.

best thing to do is go on pricewatch and look up board/cpu combos and then look up a review on the board. Find one you like and get it with a year warranty...I bet you can find a nice AMD setup for around 100-120 bucks.

Happy hunting, JP

[John Prophet]

I know that HP uses some ASUS boards...but probably not really the top models obviously.

The two builds I did with ECS K7SEM boards were to replace the cheap burned out motherboards in compaq presarios. I think they were UWAVE or MWAVE boards. probably they were Uwave cuz after about 6 months u wave em goodbye!

The scary thing about HP and (I shiver to even mention it) Emachines are the totally underpowered wimpy power supplies that come with them.

JP

[RustyGT]

Yep JP.

I'm running an IBM Aptiva in my herd.
Bought s/h, is an 'all on board' 333 celery.
Originally had a 90W P/Supply in it [?]

This stuff is such crud...
Yet it proudly wears an IBM badge.

No shame. No respect.

Maybe thats a 'Marketing Mission Statement '

ChrsR.

[nork]

To John Prophet:

I take it one can use this board and even make use of all the ide channels without taking advantage of the raid setup?


Most of us do repairs for friends and I am in that category. And I have seen Asus boards in HP computers. I dont think they are cheap boards in that they lack quality, just likely not too upgradeable and dont have a lot of extras other than a basic mobo.
On the other hand, I have heard more of the stories that RustyG is telling about being "frightening". I won't go near a name brand, not when I can build a new unit for the same or less than a "brand name" unit that likely will have, at the least, a non-upgradeable mobo, and may have a cheap, fairly junky mobo and usually a poor power supply. If only the public knew and would believe it!! No wonder Dell does so well when their competition is bargain basement! Makes Dell look good. And I believe that they are among the best in that area.

[John Prophet]

Yes, you can use the IDE channels without messing with the RAID.

You have 2 IDE controllers and 2 RAID controllers. You can also use the RAID controllers as regular IDE controllers and that way you can have up to 4 devices before you have to have more than 1 on a cable. each device being set to master on its own cable. Although some boards dont like to have CDRW or DVD drives on RAID controllers.

With the 2 IDE and 2 RAID controllers you can have up to 8 IDE devices.

JP