Motherboard recomendations?

[kony]

Already did, several different sites. Because we'd been talking about it,
thought maybe you'd have an opinion on one or more of them. Anyway, I'm 99%
certain I'm going with the Asus A7V8X.

A good board, would be what I'd get except that the main reason I didn't
suggest it was that your generic memory might not be able to run stabily
in dual channel mode on an nForce2 board. You "might" be able to adjust
timings in the bios if that's a problem. Then again there's no assurance
that any particular board will be stable with any particular old generic
memory... best to test it for several hours with http://www.memtest86.com
before even installing the OS.

 

[Matt]

Maybe it's great relative to other Biostar boards, but it would be
breaking the long-set trend. Even so, a bunch of people claiming a board
is good, must be offset by the percentage of owners that had
non-resolvable problems, the time spent and number of boards not only DOA
but with short lifespans.

Uh huh. You speak as if you have some such information about the M7NCD
Pro vs. other boards.

 

[kony]

Uh huh. You speak as if you have some such information about the M7NCD
Pro vs. other boards.

Nope, I speak as if I have a stack of dead Biostar motherboards from past
years. I speak as if I've had to provide support for people that bought
Biostar boards and later had some problem with them that was associated
with bugs or board failure. I speak as someone who hasn't seen any change
in Biostar's level of support or quality.

I don't own a M7NCD, and I wouldn't because I want a system that lasts
more than a couple years... even if I don't use or own (any given system)
for that long myself, someone would find use for it. Come back in a
couple years' worth of upgrades and use then tell us if it was
problem-free and still working, then I'll be closer to believing you.

Maybe Biostar is improving their products, but I would not recommend a
board based on their poor track record.

 

[jch]

Although I agree with the choice of Asus, I just got the latest and greatest
model and went through the hassle of installing it and booting and all, and
discovered that two of the Motherboard fan headers were dead as a doornob.
Just hope they are not slipping on quality control. Ended up going to
Intel's latest (I know there not that highly rated, but I'm not an
overclocker), as I've never had a bad one and this sucker is fast!

Me too. I've used Intel boards exclusively for the past couple of years.
Very stable, fast, no compatibility issues.

 

[James R. Lunsford]

First of all I'd like to thank everyone who gave me input and helped me out.

Final Answer: Abit NF7. Got it on Friday, installed it, still didn't boot
up. I had downloaded and printed out the "beep" codes for this board, and
from what I could tell it was either the memory or heat. Went out and got 2
dual channel sticks of PC3200, 256 ea for $99 w/ $30 rebate. I also picked
up another fan for the case and a gigunda heat sink for my XP 2000+. Put
the memory in, no luck, added the heat sink, viola! System booted up, and
is running stable at around 50 cent/123 f degrees. I guess I'm going
against the prevailing logic, but I installed the extra case fan to draw air
*in* and it seems to keep the cpu cooler longer until it reaches it's 123f
degree level. Haven't tried the system under load (i.e. gaming) but it's
been up and running for about 17 hrs with nary a hiccup. Even got the ATI
Radeon 9600 installed w/ drivers and no problems with that. So even if it
does flake out on me, I'll be pretty sure that it's a heat problem and can
do what I need to do to correct that, if I hear that continous two-tone
siren again.

Thanks again for all of the help guys...

 

[kony]

First of all I'd like to thank everyone who gave me input and helped me out.

Final Answer: Abit NF7. Got it on Friday, installed it, still didn't boot
up. I had downloaded and printed out the "beep" codes for this board, and
from what I could tell it was either the memory or heat. Went out and got 2
dual channel sticks of PC3200, 256 ea for $99 w/ $30 rebate. I also picked
up another fan for the case and a gigunda heat sink for my XP 2000+. Put
the memory in, no luck, added the heat sink, viola! System booted up, and
is running stable at around 50 cent/123 f degrees. I guess I'm going
against the prevailing logic, but I installed the extra case fan to draw air
*in* and it seems to keep the cpu cooler longer until it reaches it's 123f
degree level. Haven't tried the system under load (i.e. gaming) but it's
been up and running for about 17 hrs with nary a hiccup. Even got the ATI
Radeon 9600 installed w/ drivers and no problems with that. So even if it
does flake out on me, I'll be pretty sure that it's a heat problem and can
do what I need to do to correct that, if I hear that continous two-tone
siren again.

Thanks again for all of the help guys...

An inadequate heatsink won't allow the CPU to get so hot, so fast, that it
wouldn't even post. Possibly the old heatsink wasn't seated well on the
CPU or the motherboard expected a fan RPM signal which the old 'sink
either didn't have or was below the expected RPM threshold.

About the case fan blowing in - Such a configuration could indeed make
the CPU slightly cooler, but of all the parts in a system the CPU is meant
to be able to tolerate heat, and it's actively cooled. By changing the
airflow of the chassis you're likely allowing other devices to run hotter,
like the video card or hard drive(s). Even so, every case can be
different so whatever works for you...

 

[James R. Lunsford]

An inadequate heatsink won't allow the CPU to get so hot, so fast, that it

wouldn't even post. Possibly the old heatsink wasn't seated well on the
CPU or the motherboard expected a fan RPM signal which the old 'sink
either didn't have or was below the expected RPM threshold.

Yeah this was an older sink, so it probably didn't meet the criteria of
having an RPM signal, and now that I think about it, when I was looking at
the temps in the PC Health section of the Bios out of the 3 fan options only
1 was running. Now there's 2. The new sink is working, got it for $10 so
I'm not going to quibble, but I'm still on the lookout for more cooling
options, especially because I'm planning to upgrade CPU's sometime in the
future.

About the case fan blowing in - Such a configuration could indeed make
the CPU slightly cooler, but of all the parts in a system the CPU is meant
to be able to tolerate heat, and it's actively cooled. By changing the
airflow of the chassis you're likely allowing other devices to run hotter,
like the video card or hard drive(s). Even so, every case can be
different so whatever works for you...

Funny you should say that. After all of my experience (headaches) getting
this box running, I've been reading all of the posts here about cooling.
Someone left this link: http://www.short-media.com/print.php?content.111 an
dLo and Behold, it says that the best configuration is a rear OUTTAKE fan.
Heading for a shutdown and reverse fan operation right now!

Thanks again.