Re: Another "What Motherboard Should I Buy" question

General Schvantzkoph wrote:
On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 23:51:34 -0600, Mark Adams wrote:

General Schvantzkoph wrote:
On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 20:01:44 -0600, Mark Adams wrote:

Greetings.

I'm looking for advice/recommendations on a new mobo and other parts.
My current desktop is an Intel WN845D, 2.6 GHz P4, 1 GB of RAM, AGP4
slot. I'm running Mandriva 2007 and I just don't have enough
horsepower to run the Beryl desktop.

As is when I open a new Firefox window, the CPU load jumps to 100% and
cruises there for several seconds while the window opens. If I've got
two or three torrents downloading and some other process running in
the background, I may wait 20 or 30 seconds for the window to open. I
initially thought this might be because my ATI Radeon 9250 was bogging
down, but that wouldn't account for the high CPU load.

At any rate, time to upgrade. I am shooting for something like this:

Intel Core 2 Duo at about 2.3 GHz
2 GB RAM
Nvidia PCI express graphics
Gigabyte ethernet
Two SATA hard drives
A DVD writer (SATA?)
The usual handful of USB, serial, parallel ports, Firewire ports for
my video camera (PCI card is okay here) And a powersupply that will
put up a reliable, honest 500 Watts. Oh and a snazzy black, half-tower
case that isn't made of some exotic material like aluminum and doesn't
have windows and lights in it.

I think that's about it. Proposed budget is around $700, but I am
somewhat flexible.

I know I want the Core 2 Duo, but I have no idea what mobo to build
this around. Anybody have any suggestions about any of this?

Thanks.

--
Mark E. Adams, 2004 -- drop the "dot" to email me.
http://adamslan.shyper.com -*- Mandriva User# 263042

CONSIDER: ===========---------,,,,,,,,,............. . . . . .
There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
A piece of general advice, make all of your drives SATA including the
DVD. The Jmicron controller that is used to give the 965 boards a PATA
port is a piece of junk. It's supported in kernels 2.6.19 and above but
it has weird behavior unrelated to the driver, I'm talking about thing
you see in the BIOS. If you use the SATA ports on the Intel ICH8R
you'll be fine.

As for motherboards, I have the Abit AB9 Pro, I don't recommend it. Lm
sensors doesn't work because Abit has their damn uGuru stuff which they
support in Windows only. I've been happy with MSI, I've built three
machines using various MSI boards and they've been reliable and I
haven't had any Linux issues with them. However all of those machines
were AMD A64s of various flavors, I don't know how well their Core2
boards work.


So:

1 - SATA all around
2 - Stay away from Abit
3 - MSI may be the way to go, or maybe not.

Got it. Thanks for the input General. I will bear these things in mind
and hopefully others will have more to say on the subject.

BTW, had any experience with Asus mobos?

Thanks.

--
Mark E. Adams, 2004 -- drop the "dot" to email me.
http://adamslan.shyper.com -*- Mandriva User# 263042

CONSIDER: ===========---------,,,,,,,,,............. . . . . . I
think we are in Rats' Alley where the dead men lost their bones.
-- T.S. Eliot

I've never used Asus, just MSI, ABit, SuperMicro and Intel. SuperMicro boards are solid and reliable plus SuperMicro is a Linux friendly company. However they specialize in server boards which I don't need anymore because dual core chips are good enough for what I do. Also SuperMicros don't allow overclocking. The Core2 has a lot of headroom so an overclockable board is something you want.

A great place check out boards is the Newegg website. They have lot's of customer reviews which I've found to be very helpful.

I'm familiar with NewEgg and have done business with them before. The customer reviews seem to be a mixed bag, but carefully read, they can be informative.

Thanks Gen.

--
Mark E. Adams, 2004 -- drop the "dot" to email me.
http://adamslan.shyper.com -*- Mandriva User# 263042

CONSIDER: ===========---------,,,,,,,,,............. . . . . .
<rcw> dark: caldera?
<Knghtbrd> rcw - that's not a distribution, it's a curse
<rcw> Knghtbrd: it's a cursed distribution

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

.

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