Motherboards question

Ok, I've never built a computer from scratch before. I am wondering about motherboards. Mainly which brands are good. If all of the specs are the same, IE, can use same memory, processor, etc, are two brands pretty much equal?

Specs I am wanting: At least 3 slots for memory (each supporting around half a gig at least). Want it to be able to use SDRAM and pc2100 (or 2700). The reason is I won't be able to afford everything at once, and at least I'd be able to use the comp with my crappy 192 megs of SDRam.

Processor: I want it to be pretty flexible. Probably an Athlon. Guys here at school usually will sell a processor. There is currently an athlon 1900+ for $70 and he'd probably go as low as $60 for it, but I also want to be able to upgrade later.

AGP slot mandatory, 4x or 8x, doesn't matter TOO much, but probably 8x.

IDE: Want at least 2 IDE channels, can always get a PCI slot IDE adapter later.

Anything else I am missing? Suggestions?

Spud (who wants a desktop he can actually play games on and have lots of storage).

Oh, and the way I understand it, as long as the front side bus on the processor is supported by the motherboard it will work? So if I get a motherboard with a 333 or 266 FSB for athlons, I can use tha XP1900 at 266 and still have plenty of room for upgrades?

I would suggest that you to do a lot more research. There aren't very many boards that support PC100/PC133 and PC2100 (I only know of ECS, but there may be others). I don't know of any that support PC100/PC133 and PC2700.

Every current mobo comes with AGP and 2 IDE channels except for some of the really cheap or really small ones. Your best bet is to save up your money and buy it all at once. You can get a mobo, 512MB DDR, and a processor for around $300 if you shop around (and stick with Athlon's).

I personally have had MSI and Abit boards with no problems. My xmas present to myself was this MSI board, a 333MHz FSB Athlon XP 2600+ and 512MB of PC2700. The mobo has everything you might need, including serial ATA. A month before xmas, the total cost was around $600; it's probably close to $450 now. If you settle for the 266MHz FSB 2100+, it's less than $300.

One other thing, the graphics card is extremely important if you want to play games. A GeForce 4 Ti 4200 will hold you over for quite a while, and they're not too expensive ($100-$150). The prices may drop further with the introduction of the GeForce FX line.

Hope this helps.

Allen

I usually stick with Asus motherboards for good reliabilty and support. Check out their site for specs on different boards. You can also learn alot at anandtech.com. There are many good boards out there, stick with the name brands.

I would try to get what you want the first go around. I have found that, regarding motherboards and processors, if you buy stuff now with the idea of upgrading in the future, by the time you actually get around to upgrading, the technology has improved to the next level and it doesn't pay to upgrade to a new processor on the old motherboard. YMMV

Feel free to email me for prices on parts. I can have them drop shipped directly from Tech Data to your door. Sometimes I can beat the online stores' prices, not always. I would be careful buying used processors and motherboards. hth

I agree with stingray. Asus motherboards are easy to setup and very reliable. Just built a computer with the Asus P4B-533E. Nice motherboard.

Allen hit it right on the mark. You need to do a lot of research before choosing a motherboard. Doing it now will help you to avoid problems in the future.

For what it is worth, I think MSI, Abit and Gigabyte all make nice motherboards.

Cheers,
Kev

I recommend Abit motherboards. Reliable, fast, great software upgrades, and no jumpers to mess with!

You can check out the top rated motherboards here:
http://www.motherboards.org/motherboard-rank.html

I just built a new system for myself. Some things I compromised (CPU, memory, graphics) to save money... and some things I went all out (hard drive, motherboard, power supplies, cooling). You just need to decide for yourself.

New hardware:
Abit IT7-Max2 V2.0 motherboard $170
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=1771&p=1
Abit Media XP Pro Accessory $63
Intel P4/2.4G/533FSB $191
Kingston 512MB DDR333/PC2700 $119
ATI Radeon 9500PRO $197
In-Win IW-Q500 Full Tower $70
PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 475 Power Supply $200
PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 2X $45
PC Power & Cooling Baycool III $45
Seagate 15K.3 Cheetah 36GB Ultra320 $367
Antec Case Fans $47

Old hardware being re-used:
3.5" Floppy
Plextor PX-412 CD-R
Plextor PX-32 CD-ROM
Seagate 10K Cheetah 9GB Ultra2

Great vendors:
www.pcpowerandcooling.com (Power Supplies & Cooling)
www.newegg.com (everything)
www.hypermicro.com (hard drives)
www.buy.com (misc)

For your first PC build, I would recommend an Intel brand motherboard (not just an Intel Chipset) and Intel Processor.

Why?

It just works better. It is stable, robust, solid, it just works.

Now, Abit and Azus are nice motherboards also, but there is every setting known to man to "tweak" the motherboard.

Now, I am all for overclocking and tweaking! However, when I re-built my Dad's PC, I did not want to be traveling over to his house every week to fix his computer, so I went the complete Intel Route, and I was glad I did! It has been rock solid for over two years!

AND, I saw reviews of the class of motherboard (Intel D845 Pentium 438 pin with PC 133 memory), and the difference between the intel brand mb and a super tweaked "other" mb was like 4 % difference.

Tom's hardware has lots of good reviews:
http://www.tomshardware.com/

If you are adventurous, Pricewatch.com has some GREAT prices!
http://www.pricewatch.com/

Actually I disagree with this. With Abit, you can simply do a "Load Optimized Defaults" and it'll automatically configure for your hardware at non-overclocked settings. There is no need to muck around at all.

I would definitely not use an Intel or any other motherboard for a new user. Playing with jumpers??? I think not!

Originally posted by BuddTX:
For your first PC build, I would recommend an Intel brand motherboard (not just an Intel Chipset) and Intel Processor.

Why?

It just works better. It is stable, robust, solid, it just works.

Now, Abit and Azus are nice motherboards also, but there is every setting known to man to "tweak" the motherboard.

Now, I am all for overclocking and tweaking! However, when I re-built my Dad's PC, I did not want to be traveling over to his house every week to fix his computer, so I went the complete Intel Route, and I was glad I did! It has been rock solid for over two years!

AND, I saw reviews of the class of motherboard (Intel D845 Pentium 438 pin with PC 133 memory), and the difference between the intel brand mb and a super tweaked "other" mb was like 4 % difference.

Tom's hardware has lots of good reviews:
http://www.tomshardware.com/

If you are adventurous, Pricewatch.com has some GREAT prices!
http://www.pricewatch.com/

Click to expand...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">

http://www.motherboards.org/rank/Intel/total/motherboard-rank.html

Abit has motherboards scored 94 (#3), 88 (#8), and 72 out of 100 points.

Asus has motherboards scored 95 (#2), 92 (#4), 91 (#6), 89 (#7), 86 (#10), and 71 out of 100 points.

Intel has motherboards scored 80, 72, and 64 out of 100 points.

Even though a motherboard has the ability to be overclocked, you don't have to actually overclock it.

Almost all motherboards nowadays have a jumperless mode. Abit was one of the first with jumperless boards, but that was years ago.

I have had better luck overall with Asus boards vs. Intel boards in terms of stabilty. In fact, I have found Asus boards to be the most stable of all brands, generally speaking. There are always exceptions, and there are many good stable boards from other manufacturers. I have probably built over 150 computers with Asus boards and I can only remember one motherboard having a problem, and that was do to shipping damage, it was DOA. YMMV

Originally posted by BuddTX:
If you are adventurous, Pricewatch.com has some GREAT prices!
http://www.pricewatch.com/

Click to expand...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">If you do decide to browse pricewatch.com...check the vendor over at www.resellerratings.com before you order...MANY of the low priced vendors are an absolute HEADACHE to deal with...
Stick with the likes of mwave.com or newegg.com and you'll do just fine..you may pay more than the cheapo PC houses..but you'll actually get what you asked for !

I don't know if there is a Fry's in St. Louis, but they often have combo specials with ECS mobos (they seem to have run a ECS K7S5A and Athlon XP 2000+ for $99 a few time in the recent past). Sometimes Outpost.com has similar deals, but they don't seem to be as good. I built my first computer using the ECS board and it was pretty pain free (it only has two RAM slots, but can use either PC133 or DDR). Not much overclocking ability, although there is an overclocking bios available (not from EliteGroup, though).

John

Is newegg.com the Amazon mirror remake of egghead.com? Egghead used to be a great source a few years ago.

Originally posted by Skyline:
[QB]I would definitely not use an Intel or any other motherboard for a new user. Playing with jumpers??? I think not!

Click to expand...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Jumpers? There are no jumpers on the intel motherboard. Maybe a 10 year old one.

How can you go wrong with an intel mb? They make the Chipset, the chip, and the motherboard.

Sure other mb offer more "stuff", but the intel is rock solid. And look how many other mb's use the Intel 845 or 850.

I stand by my recommendation. For a first timer, Intel is the way to go. Rock solid, well built, great web site, will be around in 2 years.

Asus, A-bit, Gigabyte, A-Trend, Soyo, and others offer lots of options, lots of tweaks, lots of ways to get every bit of extra speed out of the Processor and Bus speed, and I am not saying that they are bad, probably most of them will, when properly tweaked, outperform a similar Intel MB, but only by a few per cent.

THEN, when you overclock the MB or memory, or bus speed, or AGP port, you have the possibility of timing issues. So you overclock the processor, and bus speed, and instead of running at 1.8 gig, you are running at1.92 gig, and instead of 100 MH bus speed, you are running 125 MH bus speed? Everything appears to be running faster, right? BUT now you have timing issues. The video is not talking to the AGP port as quicly as it should, maybe the PCI bus is a little out of whack, and every once in a while, your system crashes. Oh that's just the way windows is, right? NO, it is a slight hardware problem that only rears it's head every onece in a while.

Anyway, that is my opion, take it or leave it, but no, the Modern intel mb do not had jumpers or dip switches.

I don't think Tater Rocket is planning to overclock his board right off the bat. The tweaks are there if you want them, but not required to be used. You can overclock the CPU without overclocking memory, AGP, or PCI. They are usually separately adjustable on the good boards, have been for a long time now, at least on the ASUS boards I've dealt with.

As far as I know, there's nothing wrong with today's Intel boards, they make some very fine one's.

I remember when the Pentium II 350's and 400's first came out and the only motherboard you could get for them was an Intel board. I probably built 10 or 12 machines with that board before other manufacturers came out with theirs. The board was built rock solid physically, very expensive, heavy PCB (7 or 9 layers I think back then, I forgot), but it was so unstable and had so many bugs and bios fixes needed that I ended up having to replace them with new ASUS boards in half the machines (at my expense), in order to keep those customers. That was the last time I ever used an Intel board. I'm not saying that's extrapolatable (is that a word) to today, but just relaying my experience FWIW.

I would agree with BuddTX that for a first time builder, and usually for anyone when it's the only computer they will have, a premium name brand board is the way to go. Doesn't have to be Intel IMHO though. The cheap all in one boards are good for secretary workstations and so forth where cost is the driving factor and backups are available. Just my .02

I have to, strangly enough, strongly not reccoment Asus motherboards. Maybe my family just has bad luck with that compnay, but my brother got 3 DOA ones in a row before switching to an Abit and being fine. I just tried up upgrade my sisters computer (I think a cap went bad on her old mobo, either way it died--a Soyo) and got 2 Abit boards that would not recognize the RAM (It's compatable, Crucial lists it as compatable and there are dozens out there using it with this board) and so then we switched to a Soyo and it's been going strong for a week now.

I'd have to go with the Soyo K7V Dragon PLUS. Among other things, it comes with USB ports to mount up at the front of the case. We're down to 2 desktops in this house, and they're both running that board. One with an Athlon 900 and one with an Athlon XP 1800. My brother (Lives away from home) is also running a SOYO now.

We're a SOYO+AMD family. It's just been a combination that's worked great for us. Heck I'd take one of these (I'm on my dads computer as I type this) Athlon machines over my Intel (266 Mhz) machine any day!

So, to recap...

After 5 DOA Asus boards this family has officially sworn them off for good. Bad luck on our part? Probably--maybe we're just slopy (But every other brand has been ok...) Soyo and Abit have worked great for us with excellent day to day performance. We don't do tons of Half Life and Counter Strike and we don't overclock.

and now the real reason for this post...
Unlike DOS and other numerous things that I refuse to totally abandon (Knowing how to write a .bat files came in handy just the other day...) jumpers are one thing that I hope never to see again.

DOS!

THE WAY GOD INTENDED MAN TO COMPUTE!

My mission critical applications at work are still in DOS!

You know what is cool about DOS! Run a DOS app on a 2 gig machine, it will run soo fast, you can actually GO FORWARD in time!

I work for Intel and I wouldn't recommend their motherboards if you want performance. They are great for stability, but you pay a high price for it and lose flexibility.

I would definitely say go with the Intel processor though!

If you do research on the internet and see all that has to be done with an AMD processor (adding a aftermarket heat-sink, finding the right power supply, compatibility issues with certain motherboards, etc.) when building from scratch, its not a good choice for the beginner.

Of course, I won't claim that I don't have a bias.

Motherboard companies I have built computers with in the past and can recommend are: Asus, AOpen, Soyo, Gigabyte, and Soltek.

You might want to look at Shuttle's XPC Barebone systems. Its probably more than you want to spend, but its damn worth it, as all you have to do is drop in a processor and memory, then you can upgrade other stuff later if you feel the need. I highly recommend this design! http://www.shuttleonline.com/

You won't find a good motherboard that has a combo PC133 / DDR2100 / DDR2700 memory controller. That is because the chipsets that run these combinations are fundamentally different. Intel tried it before with PC100 in a RDRAM 800 controller and we had to recall all those boards because it just doesn't work.

I suggest you suck it up and realize you're going to have to take the DDR hit.

As from where to buy this stuff, I can also recommend:
http://www.newegg.com/
http://www.googlegear.com/

http://www.pricegrabber.com/ is a general search engine. Both Newegg and Googlegear have their good price points and bad ones, so make sure you shop around on price! But give or take a few bucks, these are the places with the best selections and prices I have ordered from the past year with good service to boot.

Good luck!

My homebuilt system is:

Giga-Byte GA-7IXEH 200 Mhz FSB Athlon/Duron mobo
2 x 512 MB PC133 sdram for 1 GB RAM total (max 1.5 GB)
1.1 Ghz Athlon Thunderbird
2 x 60 GB Western Digital 5400 rpm, ATA100
2 x 61 GB Maxtor 5400 rpm, ATA100
Benq 56X CDROM drive
Cyberdrive 16x/12x/40x CDRW drive
1.44 MB floppy drive
1.2 MB floppy drive (5.25 inch)
Promise Ultra100 pci eide controller
Dlink DFE-530TX+ ethnernet nic
ATI XPert 2000 Pro AGP
Soundblaster PCI 128
Case: 12 bay Supercase (full tower)

Operating Systems: Win98SE and Mandrake Linux 9.0 Powerpack Edition

Note: with current ATI drivers for win98se, win98se works with the FULL 1 GB RAM.

Stability: 100 percent in both OSes

I grant that this is not the latest and greatest, but I needed 1 ISA slot when I was shopping for a mobo (for parallel port card I have).

I have yet to see a mobo with more than 2 sdram AND 2 or more DDRAM slots. It is usually 2 and 2, BUT, you can only use one type (no mixing of sdram and ddram).

If you want to use an Athlon XP or Pentium 4 (overpriced), you need a 450 watt ATX power supply.

You also need a case with more than adequate ventilation and load it down with as many case fans as it can handle. Front one sucks air IN, the rest on back of case blow hot air out.

Also, if you are using Windows XP, you HAVE to buy a NEW copy of it, because of the WPA. To Microsoft, a new mobo equal a new computer, and XP is tied to the bios of the mobo.

Best thing is to go browsing on eBay: great for info fishing (research), as many sellers list the manufacturers website for further info. You don't have to buy there, you know (or even have an account), just to browse listings.