Re: MB recommendations -- budget upgrade?

Whoever wrote:

I would like to upgrade my system, but I need to do it on a tight budget.

Ow :)

I would like to use an Athlon 64 or Sempron 64 processor (around
3000-3200),

Tip One: do not pre-suppose what kind of CPU you "want", as this will lead
you to make bad trade-offs later on.

I would like support for both IDE and SATA drives,

Clear.

and the
system needs to support DDR (PC2700).

....meaning you already have some ?
In that case, also clear.

Graphics: preferably onboard,

Gawd no!
2 reasons: one, they raise the price of the mainboard without adding any
actual value to it, and two, they suck.

fully open-source support (in other words, not nVidia).

Erm.. Why?
No lofty ideals please - you're on a budget here, and I take it as a given
that you want the biggest bang for your buck - else your entire post is
meaningless.
So yes, get a good nvidia card, preferably PCIe, but better a fast AGP one
than a lousy PCIe one.
This will also save money on the mainboard, as an older one (with AGP) will
be quite a bit cheaper.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Many, but the most important one is simply this: spend as much money as you
can get away with on the mainboard, and buy quality, not features.
You can buy any feature seperately, with quality, and have choice later on,
but when you stick it on-board you're, well, stuck with it.
For an AMD64 (forget about the Sempron, it is a Celery and then worse) get a
decent Asus board, one of the older ones with AGP and the DDR333 you
require.

SATA is irrelevant, as is sound (you can buy a soundcard for $10 with twice
the quality of the onboard crap) and networking (see sound)

The quality of the mainboard, however, is relevant - as is the quality and
amount of memory.

Especially when I am on a tight budget, I would buy the most expensive
motherboard I could afford, and the cheapest CPU.
Assuming this averages out, you can then spend the rest on a decent video
card and other paraphernalia.

I suspect the spec would lead me to a socket 754 board,

God no - they are virtually extinct, completely prohibiting you from ever
upgrading the CPU.
It might be a good choice if you decide now that you won't upgrade the
machine in any major way - it just won't be worth the money.

And anyway, as I said before - the mainboard type and CPU are the least of
your worries.
What you are after is a motherboard that has bog-standard and well-supported
chipsets on it, so it will *work* under Linux, and work *well*.
Mark me on this, because many many people go wrong here.

The one thing that should be mandatory for anybody buying hardware for Linux
is to thoroughly check *all* the hardware on the board on the Internet for
Linux support.
That includes weird el cheapo USB2.x chips, worthless Windows-only sound
crap, and - especially - lousy hard drive interfaces that only do 10MB/sec
without the closed source Windows drivers.
SATA chipsets are *notorious* for this.

I'd advise you to avoid VIA and/or SiS as much as possible.

but I would like to get PCI-E for future expansion,

What would be the use of only being able to upgrade the video card, when
you're already on a budget now?
That means the system itself won't ever get faster, just the video card.
It's rather pointless.
Unless you weant to play games with it ?
Surprise - you really, really need the latest, fastest, most expensive
system components for that, and not just a fast video card.
We're talking double the money you're spending now, regardless of how much
that actually is.

and this is more likely to be on a socket 939 board. The machine will
proably be on most of the time so cool and quiet support would be very
useful to reduce power costs!

Cool 'n Quiet is totally unnecessary on Linux, since it will simply do
nothing when not required to.
Even so, CnQ is not an optional feature, it is present on all AMD64 CPUs.

The whole of my comments can be summarised thusly:
- the targets you set (low budget and expansion capability) are actually
mutually exlusive - in a big way.
You could either go for the best you could afford to buy NOW, or buy a
really good foundation for the future (being the mainboard, mainly) and
expect to upgrade all major components later, but not have the zippiest
system for a few months.
You will , however, have an extremely *stable* system - even if it's slower
than you'd like.

If you want to go that route, get a mainboard that supports the latest AMD64
CPU's, has SATA2 and DDR400 or higher, offers dual-channel support and 2
PCIe SLI slots, and has the best chipset money can buy.
We're talking $250+ for just the mainboard here, but it should last you 2 or
3 years into the future with ease.

With the money that's left, buy a bog-standard AMD64 or even a Sempron, the
cheapest nvidia PCIe card available, use an old IDE hard drive and plug in
your old memory.

Components needed: mainboard, CPU, and video card, done for $400 or less.

The CPU can be upgraded to an AMD64 FX 6200+ or whatever they have in the
next 2 years, and the video crap can be swapped with first one GeForce
9000-something, and then a second one in SLI.
Same for memory - when solvent, replace the old stuff with 2x512MB DDR400
dual channel quality memory (OCZ, GEiL, or even Crucial if you're really
rich), which you can double again later on to 2 GB.
Add a WD Raptor SATA drive at your leisure.

If, on the other hand, you want a nice system that's not too upgradeable but
one that has what you want in it *now*, set your sights a good sight lower
and accept whatever sacrifices this requires of you.
But don't, really do not, cut costs on the mainboard.


--
All your bits are belong to us.
.

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