stiscooby

I am building a new PC, probably going to be a Intel P4 and looking at some motherboards, 915 chipset? Would like one under £100.

Can anyone recommend any good ones? I would like it to have SATA, PCI-E (seems to be the graphics cards to go for now a days), on board LAN/Sound and any other nice little goodies that might come on it.

Oh and what speed memory is it best to get now a days?

Many thanks

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

for under 100 quid you can get a 925chipset pci-e board, 775 skt.
I have an ABIT m/b which is pretty good, the lower versions of these are also good, you can also look at ASUS, MSI and Intel boards, or browse the shelves of wh smiths Gigahertz mag is pretty good, normally has good comparisons.
Abit 3rd eye is one to look at though, pretty much in your price bracket and has overclocking features ;-)

Tony

Granicus

I find this http://www.tomshardware.com/ a really useful site mate.

stiscooby

Yea thanks, I have been looking on tomshardware. Seems to do more of the expensive boards though.

I am not really fussed about over clocking just want it to run reliably.

I have noticed that ABIT 3rd eye board, whats the difference between the "Abit AG8 Grantsdale i915P" and the "Abit AG8-3rd Eye Grantsdale i915P"?

I can't seem to find any 925 chipset boards for under £100 though? whats the difference between the chipsets, does any one know?

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

look here at aria.co.uk

these 2 motherboards are both 925 chipset and just over 100 quid

MB7-ABIT-AA8DM ABit AA8 DuraMax [DDR2 & PCI-E] £89.95 ex, £105.69 inc.

MB7-ABIT-AA83E ABit AA8 Third Eye [DDR2 & PCI-E] £89.95 ex, £105.69 inc.

http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductsList.a...Page=4&SortBy=

Both have onboard sound (7.1) and are ddr2 and pci-e (so dont buy ddr memory, you need pc4200 and above also check aria for that as they had some elixir ddr2 512mb sims for just over 45 quid each).
These also support duel channel for memory

Tony

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

For the chipsets you may have to check out www.intel.com

Tony

stiscooby

ah great thanks for that.

I take it as long as the board takes DDR2 thats the better stuff to go for? so I need stuff PC4200 or more anything less and its not DDR2? Whats dual channel then? God so many things that you have to consider these days when getting new bits

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

Duel channel (let me get this right ) is where you can access both banks of memory at the same time rather than one after the other, as you can imagine, being able to do 2 at once is quicker than 1 at a time so theoretically twice as quick
DDR2 starts at PC4200, you can also get the 5400 (i think thats it, its in my pc anyway) but you need to look at the rating, 400mhz is 4200, 533? and above is the 5400, higher the better really, but see what the board can take max, i run the 667mhz stuff on the Abit board and its very good but i dont really need that rating as the 533 is enough.
Have another look on www.aria.co.uk and look under memory, find the DDR2 stuff, its gives a brief explenation of what it is

Tony

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

You will need the non-registered DDR2 memory for this, the Elixir for 45 quid per 512mb sim falls into this bracket for this type of m/b

Abit main board features (they are both very similar)
Oh and ensure you buy Serial ATA stuff like hard drive, you can get away with a DVD writer and player as you have 1 IDE socket.
(have a look at their 17 inch TFT Digimate 1718 12ms screens, very good vfm and good quality, have the aria one which is made by digimate).


Manufacturer ABIT
AGP Slot No
Audio On board Theater-class 7.1 ChannelsProfessional digital audio interface supports auto jack sensing and optical S/PDIF In/Out Intel® High Definition Audio,
Chipset Intel 925X / Intel ICH6R Express Chipset
Dimensions 305 x 245 mm
Features ABIT ìGuru™ Technology(ABIT OC Guru/ABIT EQ/ABIT Flash Menu/ABIT Black Box), ABIT CPU ThermalGuard™ Technology, Instant Overclocking & H/W Monitoring & PC On/Off, MSN/E-mail Notification, Large LCD Screen & Room Temperature Display
Firewire 3 ports IEEE1394 Supports 400 Mb/s data transfer rate
Form Factor ATX
Hardware Monitoring Yes
IDE ports 1 x Ultra ATA 100/66/33 Connector
LAN On board GbE Gigabit LAN controller supports 10/100/1000 BASE-T Ethernet
Max Memory 4GB
Memory Four 240-pin DIMM sockets (Un-buffered Non-ECC DIMM)
Memory Type Supports Dual channel DDR2-533/400 (Max. 4GB), Up to 8.5GB/s bandwidth
No of PCI Express x1 Slots 3
No of PCI Express x16 Slots 1
No of SATA ports 4
No. of PCI Slots 2
No. of USB Ports 8
SATA Support SATA Matrix RAID, Four ports SATA 150 RAID 0/1, deliver higher performance and data protection, Supports SATA AHCI, providing native command queuing and native hot plug
USB2 Support Yes

Tony

stiscooby

Ah thats great, thanks for the info!

Well I think I am going to go for one of the Abit Motherboards as they seem quite good from what I can gather, was going to get a P4 3.2 (or above) SATA Hard Disk, 1Gb RAM (DDR2) and a 128Mb 6800GT PCI-E graphics card. That should run the games ok

Just gotta decide on what board now, although I cannot seem to find any difference between the two?? Is it that the "Third Eye" board just comes with the clock/temp thingy, but the boards themselves are the same?

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

I think one is orientated towards overclockers, though either one will be sufficient for your needs, ive got the Fatal1ty board in mine which is similar to these but very overclockable.
The system your going for will run games very nicely i have a 3.4ghz 775 but a different graphics card (asus x600xt extreme 128mb) which is similar in specs to the 6600gt.
The temp readout is pretty good, you can set your pc to alarm on high temp warnings which is good though if you ask the outlet your buying from which they recommend for what your doing they normally give you very good feedback.

Tony

PS i think you also get the cooler for the memory (fits over the top) with these boards also

stiscooby

Ok thanks very much for all your help

vulnax999

iTrader: (7)

Which board is the spec for Tony ?

mynickers

A friend of mine bought DFI Lanparty board, despite the silly name and the glow in the dark materials, he has been really impressed with it, and it gets some rave reviews. Check them out at Tom's hardware..