I am looking for a motherboard-processor combination that will cost up to around 200 dollars US (for just the mother and proc) and will maximize performance. As I respect the opinions of my fellow LQ addics, I thought I would ask for suggestions. Here is what I will be using it for.


Obvious day to day activities
Dual booting RH9 and Win2K
Gaming (Prep for Doom3)
Some video editing (w/radeon all-in-wonder)
Lots of music editing.
programming
etc etc.


Any thoughts? Any to stay away from? Bueller?

This would be my suggestion. Rock solid board, with the Nforce chipset and an athlon 2700 to boot.

Now, I know that some people have had problems on certain distro's with drivers for the Nforce, but I think that most of those problems have been taken care of.

slight

Thanks for the suggestion. I found a delux edition of that board with two NICs and onboard 6 channel sound. Very tempting.

Any other candidates?

And what about graphics cards. Things have come a long way since I bought my non-radeon ATI all-in-wonder card. Should I go with an all-in-wonder or get a seperate tv-card?

Unless you're going high end and planning on making your own TV show I don't think you can go wrong with the all-in-wonder. Great card.

slight

Thanks for the input Slight. I ordered the deluxe model of that board with the 2700 and 512 in DDR400 ram. The reason I did this is I needed to get my wife a desktop (her laptop is failing) and she doesn't need any more power than my current desktop has (Athlon 1.3, 512, K7S5A) and I figured we could both score If I upgraded. :-)

Now for video card shopping......;-)

Ahhh the trusty old K7S5A..... I have one sitting in my main box right now.

Good luck with the rest of the upgrade.

slight

I don't know why people dog on ECS mainboards. My K7S5A and the K7SEM boards I put in family machines served me very well.

Thanks.

Anyone have links to cool sites selling cases, video cards, and the like? :-)
I bought the mobo and proc from newegg

You might want to try www.pricewatch.com or www.tigerdirect.com . They both usually have pretty good deals on hardware. I've picked up a bunch of stuff at pricewatch when building machines from scratch and was pretty happy with it.

Just from my own experience, ECS motherboards can be hit-or-miss. My guess is that it's a Q/C issue.

Cases and cool extras - www.nexfan.com

Tigerdirect is cool, and pricewatch is the place to start for OEM stuff. I do most of my shopping through www.bzboyz.com , and www.Amamax.com .

Enjoy.

slight

<b>Anyone have links to cool sites selling cases, video cards, and the like? :-)
</b>

http://www.sysopt.com

do you live near a fry's electronics store? if so, they sometimes have fantastic
deals on cpu-mobo combos.
like this past wed - thur:

ECS k7VTA3 (Via KT333 mobo) + Athlon XP 2600 for $106! (and i think the
cpu is a barton -- because last week they had the exact same combo for $160
and i inquired and found that the XP 2600 in that ad was a barton).

Unfortunately sales are short lived and prices fluctuate a bit. (not to mention
service that really sucks) usually though, about 1 week per month you'll
get a really good deal there.
Also of note, from time to time there, you'll see an ECs mobo + athlon xp 1800
for $59. (since i'm in l.a. i can check www.latimes.com ad section every Mon.
Wed. and Fri)

other places:
http://www.techbargains.com - great deals but VERY short lived
http://www.pricegrabber.com
http://www.reselleratings.com - very much like pricegrabber.com except that
the merchant reviews here are more extensive. (also has an active forum)

two stores i've found but haven't tried yet for older stuff (used/ opened/
fact cert/ refurb):
http://www.compter-show.com
http://www.matrixsurplus.com - where you can find some reallly el cheapo
stuff

some stores i've bought from:
http://www.centrix-intl.com - great for scsi, offers oem and pulled components
narrow selection though
http://www.axiontech.com - see quicksell section some system pulls
http://www.spartantech.com

I also do a bit of music work and am looking to buy Suse 9.0 because I hear
good things about it when it comes to audio.
One thing I notice that *REALLY* makes a big difference is disk (and controller
to some degree) when dealing with a/v editing (though not pure
softsynths--unless it's some multitrack combination with synth/sampler)

LSI logic U160 (53c1010) controller, 64-bit wide, 32-bit compat
@ spartantech.com = $32.00

Fujitsu 18GB 68pin Ultra-160 SCSI 15,000RPM HD
@ directron.com = $89

I think using 3 of those 15k rpm fujitsus in a raid 0 array with XFS or JFS
would scream! of course this is with software raid.. centrix-intl.com has some
linux supported HW raid (mylex - now lsi logic) controllers .. axiontech.com
sometimes have very limited quantities of nice raid controllers (but bare) as
well.
.... now going over your $200 budget, athlon mp mobo (using two L5 modified
athlon xp cpus) with 64-bit / 66 mhz pci, with U320 controller and 6 scsi 15k
rpm hds in hw raid 5 (just in case) ..

I don't live near a Fry's unfortunatly. I ordered the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe with a Athlon 2800+ from newegg.

I am sooo mad at Worst Buy right now. I went there yesterday to pick up a NVidia GeForce FX 5200 Ultra (on sale) and their sales guy talked me into the Radeon 9200 instead. He said he personally benchmarked them and the ATI card won. I then go to HardOCP and find the benchmarks were a landslide in NVidias favor between the two. Back to bestbuy I go. :-(

He said he presonally benchmarked them? AND YOU BELIEVED HIM?!?!?!?!?

BestBuy hates me anyway. I usually go there only for a very specific item, and almost always I end up fending off sales people and fighting to get to the checkout. It is fun to make their 'techies' look stupid, though.

slight

I know. I feel like a fool . I guess I was nervous about buying a NVidia graphics board, as I have used ATI exclusivly for over 10 years. What was I thinking? I didn't open it and I am going to go switch it out for the FX 5200 Ultra.

My parts arrived from Newegg!!! Four days early.
I can't wait to put everything together tonight....


Thanks for all the advice slight. I will be posting from a bad*ss system tomorrow.

You're welcome.

One thing to mention (and I kick myself for not bringing it up earlier) is that I think most AthlonXPs (OEM) ship with a very generic heatsink, and I should have mentioned that a high quality heat sink is a *must*. If you did get an OEM chip, I would strongly suggest some better cooling. If you got a retail Athlon chip, then it probably has an OK heatsink, although an upgrade is never a bad idea.

slight