Recommendations for new build

[Jaimie Vandenbergh]

Thanks! I think I will go with th Dell.

You won't regret it - excellent devices.

I can't believe how cheap they are in the US compared to over here in
the UK.

Cheers - Jaimie
--

So, what do *you* do for a living?

I sit in a chair pressing small plastic rectangles with my fingers
while peering at many tiny, colored dots. -- Peter Manders

 

[William J. Lunsford]

I'm not sure what all this adds up to, but another option is to
just get the stripped down Dell Studio XPS Core i7 computer
for $750. HDHomeRun and Monitor not included.
http://www.dell.com/us/en/home/desk...=desktop-studioxps-435mt&s=dhs&cs=19&ref=dthp

*Mostly* favorable reviews...

This will be my third build. I was very happy with the previous two and
enjoyed doing it. I was reminded how much I enjoy building my own desktop
systems when I bought an HP laptop that came loaded down with all sorts of
crap.

Bill

 

[William J. Lunsford]

I have a question regarding the Foxconn A7DA-S 3.0 AM3 AMD 790GX
motherboard. The specifications show DDR3 1333 memory, but according to the
Crucial Website, the board can only use DDR2. What is going on?

Bill

 

[Paul]

I have a question regarding the Foxconn A7DA-S 3.0 AM3 AMD 790GX
motherboard. The specifications show DDR3 1333 memory, but according to the
Crucial Website, the board can only use DDR2. What is going on?

Bill

I think this came up recently. Foxconn chose some very similar names
for these motherboards.

I don't think Crucial and Kingston have noticed this yet. I see three
boards that can be mixed up, so you'd better be careful.

*******

A7DA-S (in the Socket AM2+/AM2 section)
http://www.foxconnchannel.com/product/Motherboards/detail_spec.aspx?ID=en-us0000402

Note that the upper and lower section of the web page, say different things.
My guess is this is DDR2, based on comparing the slot keying to the other pictures.
The key position, is different than the next two motherboards.

http://www.foxconnchannel.com/Uploa...030080_200901161120410501_A7DA-S_overhead.jpg

A7DA-S 3.0
http://www.foxconnchannel.com/product/Motherboards/detail_overview.aspx?ID=en-us0000444

Web page is consistently mentioning DDR3.

http://www.foxconnchannel.com/Upload/Mainboard/200903110837140490_A7DA-S 3.0_overhead.jpg

A7DA 3.0
http://www.foxconnchannel.com/product/Motherboards/detail_overview.aspx?ID=en-us0000447

Web page is consistently mentioning DDR3.

http://www.foxconnchannel.com/Upload/Mainboard/200903160140290580_A7DA 3.0.overhead.jpg

One difference I see, is the boards with "-S" on the end, appear to have
a VIA Firewire chip soldered to them. The non "-S" board has no chip
soldered in that spot.

I would have made a slight change to the names, as in

A72DA-S, A73DA-S, A73DA

Foxconn should hire someone, to help them pick names for the boards.

You could always wait until the motherboard arrives, and then place
an order for RAM

Paul

 

[Fishface]

Foxconn should hire someone, to help them pick names for the boards.

You could always wait until the motherboard arrives, and then place
an order for RAM

I'll bet it's the translator, and in Chinese, there is that one extra chicken
scratch that went unnoticed. Transcription error! Cane him!

 

[Paul]

I'll bet it's the translator, and in Chinese, there is that one extra chicken
scratch that went unnoticed. Transcription error! Cane him!

If you read the entry here, they sound like a great employer to
work for.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn

Paul

 

[Rob Morley]

If you read the entry here, they sound like a great employer to
work for.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn

Oh dear, do we really want to give this company our money?

 

[William J. Lunsford]

Thanks for all of this information!

My guess is this is DDR2, based on comparing the slot keying to the
other pictures.
The key position, is different than the next two motherboards.

I think I'll order the memory directly from Crucial. They guarantee
compatibility and have a very good reputation.

Bill

 

[William J. Lunsford]

The confusion here is that board has 128MB of sideport DDR3, which is RAM
soldered directly onto the board for use by the onboard graphics. However,
the main RAM slots are DDR2.

Thanks! Just to be on the safe side, I'm going to order the DDR2 directly
from Crucial because they guarantee compatibility.
Bill

 

[William J. Lunsford]

Oh dear, do we really want to give this company our money?

Do you know of any nice old ladies who make motherboards?
Bill

 

[Paul]

Thanks for all of this information!


I think I'll order the memory directly from Crucial. They guarantee
compatibility and have a very good reputation.

Bill

You might talk to their pre-sales staff, and warn them about
the three different boards. I think they have a "chat" feature.
They guarantee compatibility, but given a heads-up, that
increases the odds of a trouble free transaction. It won't take
their technical people that long, to realize their list is
not up to date.

Paul

 

[Fishface]

I think I'll order the memory directly from Crucial. They guarantee compatibility and have a very good reputation.

I didn't see that Crucial listed the Foxconn A7DA-S 3.0, only the A7DA-S,
which is AM2 / AM2+ and *does* use DDR2. Newegg lists both boards:
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186150
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186168

So don't get DDR2 for the 3.0 board!

One of the reasons this board was appealing is because Newegg
previously listed the A7DA-S 3.0 as having the Realtek ALC889 audio
chip, but now has corrected their specifications to match those on the
Foxconn website. Unfortunately, it seems that the chip is actually the
Realtek ALC888 instead, which is not as good, according to this:
http://forums.pcper.com/showpost.php?p=4367566&postcount=5

The Asus AM3 790GX board uses the VIA chip reported to have worse
still. www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131366

The MSI board does use the ALC889, but would seems to have
serious QC problems:
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130224

The DFI board has the ALC885, which is also listed in the "better"
category, but it was quite a bit more at $140 and had not stellar
reviews. Asrock has the ALC890, also listed as better, but had not
such good reviews, also.

Well, there's 785g boards coming out next month...?
www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3599
www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=625

....or discrete graphics solutions. BTW, the $79 Gigabyte board
uses the ALC888, too. At this point, maybe CPU + motherboard
cost and performance should be weighed against the comparable
Intel options, as well.

 

[William J. Lunsford]

Well, there's 785g boards coming out next month...?
www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3599
www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=625

...or discrete graphics solutions. BTW, the $79 Gigabyte board
uses the ALC888, too. At this point, maybe CPU + motherboard
cost and performance should be weighed against the comparable
Intel options, as well.

What Intel option would you recommend?
Bill

 

[Fishface]

What about this combination?
GIGABYTE GA-E7AUM-DS2H LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 9400 HDMI Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128363&Tpk=Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2h $129.99

I must admit to using mostly Gigabyte boards lately. This one does use the better audio chip.
This Tech Report review compares audio of four boards using different audio chips:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/16702

Page1 list which chip belongs to which board, and Page 10 shows the test results. The
ALC889A came out on top of the ALC889 ALC888 and the VIA VT1708S. Interesting.
Now *this* article compares the ALC889A to the Asus Xonar cards and a Creative X-FI
and suddenly it's not so great anymore!

I do have the ALC888 in my current Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L and I gave it a good listen with headphones, playing a DVD and
listening to MP3s sampled at 192KHz, and it really doesn't
really sound too bad to me.

There seems to be good and bad designs from all the manufacturers, so that's why I like to
read reviews. I realize that some people have absolutely no clue as to what they're doing,
but you can usually tell which ones do. I also realize that people are more likely to review
a product that they are not happy with. I've pretty much given-up on anything being absolutely perfect, and settle for
"mostly good for what I want to do with it."

I noticed that EVGA has a similar full ATX board with 9300 series graphics, and I read
that it uses the Realtek ALC882, also listed as better:
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188035

Intel Pentium E5200 Wolfdale 2.5GHz 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116072 65.99

Great, but get the E6300 2.8 GHz part if you'd like support for virtualization,
which sounds interesting. Windows 7 Professional an ultimate support
Virtual XP mode: www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_virtualization
http://www.vmware.com/

I built a system for my friend with the E5200 and a Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128357
My wife also has one of these boards, but both have video cards and don't use
the onboard graphics. These boards have been superceeded by the G41M-ES2L,
which, I presume, is a step up. There is also a G41M-ES2H with HDMI video
output. www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128396

The newer Gigabyte GA-EG45M-UD2H features Intel GMA X4500HD
video for better acceleration of HD playback. But that's also MicroATX.
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128390

This is certainly up to the task of playing Blu-ray disks. What I'm not quite clear
on is that if better integrated graphics still aren't really up to the task of playing
games, why are they worth a $50 premium? Do the lesser integrated graphics
solutions not run Aero Desktop adequately? I realize that some of these boards
also include firewire, if you need it, so wouldn't use a precious expansion slot.

I really wanted an ATX board, but they're hard to find with HDMI.

Which naturally brings us to a cheap ATX board with a separate HD4670 video
card and a Xonar DX sound card!
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128392

....or not quite so cheap with firewire and the slightly better onboard audio:
www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16813128378

Or Intel:
www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128372

....or not quite so cheap with firewire and the slightly better onboard audio:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128358
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128390

Choices, choices!

 

[William J. Lunsford]

Thanks to you and all of the others for all the help and information I've
received in the past two weeks. I plan to take some time to study and digest
all of this information and make some decisions. I appreciate your help!
Bill