Motherboards... The best for $$

[+Major Lee 18]

OK, anyone have a suggestion for the best motherboard @ $100 or so? Are you/ have you used the board you are noting? I would prefer an Intel 775 board that will be compatible with future CPUs from Intel... Intel seems to have a better grasp on moving ahead at this point. (45nm CPUs and all that) A compatible single core cpu would be fine for now, I just want to be able to expand piece by piece in the future.

Edited January 7, 2008 by Major Lee

[BUFF 8]

what do you need in terms of features (e.g. firewire, RAID, Crossfire/SLI ability etc.)?

 

I guess the $100 limits you quite a bit so probably something P35 based.

[+Major Lee 18]

I don't think I'll need RAID. I wouldn't need Crossfire because I will stick with NVidia video cards. SF isn't set up to use SLI, so that isn't a priority, but might be nice for other games.

[+Gunrunner 314]

Given the budget and a personal focus on stability and service rather than performance and extra functionalities, I would select a P35 based MB, probably an Intel DP35DP or an Asus P5K (depending on the service quality Asus offers in the US).

 

For SLI you would have to turn to a nVidia nForce 650i SLI based card, that would be an Asus P5N-E SLI or a Gigabyte GA-N650SLI-DS4L.

Unless you really need SLI, I wouldn't advise an nForce based card as they tend to perform well but tend to be more unstable.

Nowadays you are probably safer, cheaper and better with a high-end GPU than 2 mid-range GPU in SLI (that would depend on the games of course).

[+streakeagle 871]

With all the issues people have had with hard drive failures, I would think most SFP1 modders should use RAID 1.

Using 2 drives to do the job of 1 is costly in terms of power, noise, initial purchase cost, and 1 more potential point of failure.

But the benefit of being able to run your PC even if 1 drive completely fails and to be able to rebuild the 1 that failed automatically is worth it.

Plus, you can read files from the drive faster since RAID 1 permits reading from both drives at the same time.

 

Both my wife and I have RAID 1 and furthermore we mirror our personal photos/videos and other important documents between our pcs.

So 4 hard drives have to fail for me to lose important files.

 

I have considered using RAID 0+1, but I can't bring myself to use 4 drives just to get a slight speed gain in writing.

Drives will fail with time... of course the hope would be that the drives would outlast the life of the PC given about a 3 to 5 year replacement cycle.

Edited January 8, 2008 by streakeagle

[JediMaster 451]

I bought an external HD for important file backup along with DVD Rs.

Granted if my C: drive goes I'm SOL, but I'd have to redo my entire system to do RAID 1. I have 2 DVD drives (one reader, one writer thanks to game CPs hating my writer) and 2 HDs split in half for 4 logical drives. I'm still running IDE, BTW, so I'd have to put ALL my 4 logical drives onto a single (much larger of course) physical drive. I think my 2 are a 160 and a 300? So I'd need a pair of 500s minimum.

 

Anyway, I've decided I'm going to build a new PC for Vista instead of upgrade the XP one so I'll have it around for backwards compatability. I don't want to mess with dual-booting! I'll probably start off with RAID on that one.

[Fleet Command CC 0]

OK, anyone have a suggestion for the best motherboard @ $100 or so? Are you/ have you used the board you are noting? I would prefer an Intel 775 board that will be compatible with future CPUs from Intel... Intel seems to have a better grasp on moving ahead at this point. (45nm CPUs and all that) A compatible single core cpu would be fine for now, I just want to be able to expand piece by piece in the future.

 

How about the ASRock 4Core1333-FullHD, this is the Mobo I ham going to buy. I think it's a good motherboard for £58.69 inc. VAT

 

This MoBo support up to Quad Core Yorkfield and Dual Core Wolfdale 45nm CPU 's, and also supports 1080p Blu-ray (BD) / HD-DVD playback.

 

Check out the link for the full rundown of the Mobo.

 

http

://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Mode...ore1333-FullHD

http://www.asrock.com/support/Yorkfield.asp

Also check out some of these Hardwear Reviewing Sites.

 

www.bit-tech.net

 

www.hardwarelogic.com

 

www.hardwarezone.com

 

They should help you get the best Mobo for the money.

Edited January 10, 2008 by Fleet Command CC

[BUFF 8]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813130098

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16813127031

[sparkomatic 7]

I am about to do the same...do NOT forget SLI though

[BUFF 8]

nVidia chipsets for Intel suck though - if they didn't have SLI locked to their chipset nobody would buy them.

[speedbump 0]

I would wait for one of the new 750i chip boards to come out. They will be cheap as the 650i boards soon enough. I have a P5N-E SLI that goes for 114 bucks on the egg. I did not buy it for SLI since I have a ATI vid card, but it has firewire, esata and built in support for PATA drives, unlike any of the newer intel chips. All the newer intel chips require an addon chip such as a Jmicron to handle PATA.

Don't know if my board will support wolfdale chips though.

Edited January 11, 2008 by speedbump