What's the best (type) of motherboard out now?

[phillai]

Yep, I need a new motherboard at the mo and I can't wait any longer!

Please excuse my lack of PC geekiness at the moment as I really have been out of the PC scene for a while.

I was thinking of getting another Nforce 2 board (I got the early revision ASUS A7N8X Deluxe) but what are the Nforce 3 boards like?

Also my mate swears by the Pentium 4 boards with the 800 fsb...

As always I like a nice balance between price, features, overclockabilty and stabilty.

The main thing is it's got to have SATA support for my two Maxtor 160 GB hard drives as I can't get them to work on my mobo now.

Which make and type of motherboard should I go for or should I wait a month? All replies much appreciated as always!

[Ish]

I've (as in this week) just built a new P4 based machine. I went for an ABit MAX3 board (its a 800fsb canterwood based SATA board, up to 6 SATA drives I think) - it was simple to fit, seems well made, all the drivers installed fine on XP without a hitch, and (most importantly) the system absolutely flies. As in really flies. In fact its hovering a metre off my desk right now

I think the most important thing to decide on the P4 boards is which chipset you want to go for. Canterwood or springdale (errk - senility setting in - I think its springdale). Canterwood is the 'higher end' chipset but when I was researching what to buy some of the springdale based boards were turning in great performance.

The only other thing I'd say on the boards is to bear in mind that there's no point buying one high performing component and bottle necking it with cost saving elsewhere... but then it sounds like you've built PCs before so no point teaching you to suck eggs!

Some people seem to prefer AMD others Intel. My last machine was an AMD but this time round the P4s seemed better for high end performance. Doubtless others will disagree

[Ravon]

Ish: What cpu r u running and memory...

Im looking to upgradesoon as i see D3 on the horizon...but the last pc i built was a AMd 1.4 ...

Im lost on this new pc equipment

[Ish]

The new boxes specs look like this:

3.0GHz Intel P4 with 800 MHz FSB
1Gb Dual Channel DDR Kingston HyperX PC4100 RAM
Abit IC7-Max3 Motherboard
120GB SATA Maxtor Hard Drive
128Mb 9800 Pro videocard (which with stock cooling I've managed to overclock by 50MHz on both the GPU and memory side with no 'artifacts')
Antec 480W TrueBlue PSU (sounds dull but a decent PSU is key to a reliable PC)

I was tempted to go for a 3.2 chip as the 3.4's have just been released and bumped the prices down a little. But the 3.0 seemed a reasonable price / performance buy.

Its sat inside a new Antec Super LANBOY case which looks pretty cool and keeps the whole thing quite light. Its cooled to buggery too - in total there are 7 fans running!!! Amazingly it doesn't make too much noise (which is a stroke of luck rather than any skill on my part).

My previous machine was a 2 year old (I tend to upgrade every couple of years) AMD 1700XP with 512Mb of very early DDR ram in a huge tower. I was the same - when I started looking at the upgrade the technology (or at least the buzzwords) had moved on so much I was lost for a while. Had to spend a weekend reading before buying anything.

All worth it though this new machine really flies when compared to my old one - I've got both running a clean Windows installation with UT2003 installed and the difference is oustanding. And X2 runs silky smooth - where it was a bit of a chug-a-thon on my last PC.

I'm chuffed as chips you might say . It should definetly do me for another couple of years!

[Ravon]

Thats some serious kit .. and serious money spent... Sounds good though.. cheers

[Ish]

Yeah a tad pricey. But to put it in perspective:

When I'm not gaming or down the gym I'm coding (on the same PC and the main reason for the gig of RAM)... My 'regular' PC must get 25+ hours a week spent on it. Its like my 'thing' if you know what I mean.

So approx. 800. to 1000 every couple of years doesn't seem too exhorbitant!

Plus I got a huge amount of overtime in this months paycheck - this weekend is about my first full weekend off since christmas.

If your looking to upgrade yourself but not wanting to go 'all out' (admittedly its that last bit that you pay the premium for) I priced a pretty killer PC recently for a friend at around 500 quid (I don't build them as a job but don't mind doing it at cost for mates). Basically by cutting back on the RAM, going for a 2.6 processor and 9600 based video card, and a cheaper motherboard.

[Ravon]

The one good thing about my current pc is i already have a GF4 top of the range so, i can hold off buying a new GC for a while.

Well until the killer games come out anyway... then its more money to spend..

[charlesr]

And if anyone wants to donate their old **** to me, much obliged. Thanks.

[yashiro]

Is it ok to send **** in the post?

[Montaver]

Ish, with RAM like that you could ramp your FSB up to 450-500 (900-1000) no problem, as long as your cpu had ample cooling. You'd then be pretty close to 3.4 if not more

[Ish]

Ish, with RAM like that you could ramp your FSB up to 450-500 (900-1000) no problem, as long as your cpu had ample cooling. You'd then be pretty close to 3.4 if not more

Yeah thats why I bought that RAM. Overclocking is today's job