Need advice choosing a new, 939 motherboard

wolfram

wolfram

Posts: 1,833   +9
Hi everyone,

My father will upgrade his current Celery D machine, and I will give him (sell actually ;)) my current mobo and CPU (see profile). I like my current mobo a lot, but I want to have more PCI slots (will buy soon an audio card), and my Silencer 5 took up almost two PCI slots hehe.
I originally thought about an AM2 mobo & CPU, but they're far too expensive for me. Also, I didn't see a good performing, CHEAP Athlon 64 CPU for AM2, also, I'd have to change my RAM, and that is completely out of my budget.

So I had a look around Newegg's site, and saw some good Abit, & Gigabyte mobos:

Abit NF4 mobo

Abit NF4 Ultra mobo

Gigabyte NF4 mobo

As you can see, I need the chipset fan to be above or far from the PCI-E slot. I don't want my huge ATI silencer fan to block the chipset's fan airflow.

Are these good boards? Or can someone suggest another, better 939 mobo (no more than $85 please ;))?

BTW, what's the difference between NF4 and NF4 Ultra chipsets? Is it worth the price difference between both boards?

Thanks :wave:
 
Hehe, not yet. If someday I decide to use it, it would be with a Core 2 Duo or a better (only intel knows) CPU.

BTW, that's a great mobo. Too bad its Crossfire...

Thanks :wave:
 
I like the MSI board, but it looks like the northbridge fan may get in the way of the gpu cooler. The layout of the Abit boards looks pretty good, though.
 
Thanks mate, I was looking at that mobo too, but look at the chipset's fan, it's too close the PCI-E slot. My HUGE silencer 5 fan would block it's airflow.
I guess I'll have to stick to another one :(

I really liked that one...
 
Dont worry about it. Intel chipsets tend to be the hottest, and your going AMD :). A fan only moves 6.5Cfm. So its like a joke kinda.
 
Yeah, my current 6100 chipset runs damn hot without my modded 40mm fan...

Does anyone know the difference between Nforce 4 & Nforce4 Ultra?
 
Wolfram, you might reconsidering to the AMD Athlon X2 or FX for dual/quad core processor instead Intel.

Intel is still running very hot this year and AMD starting to taking the train ahead Intel. (Again ^^)
 
Yeah, I will stay with AMD. Intel Core 2 Duo's are too expensive for me. I plan to get an Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego, and overclock it to 4000+ speeds hehe :)
 
The nForce 4 vanilla version has a limited HyperTransport speed of 800MHz vs the Ultra's 1000MHz. Also, the latter supports hardware processing for the ActiveArmor firewall solution to reduce CPU load and 300MB/sec transfer speed for SATA II drives. In addition, by modifying a resistor on the chipset, an Ultra chipset can be converted into an SLI one quite easily.
Hope that helped wolfram :).
 
Thanks a lot Rage. Do you know about the HyperTransport speed on my Geforce 6100 chipset? I saw somewhere in my BIOS a 800MHZ speed. Is that my current speed?

BTW, I think I'll get that Abit mobo with the nForce 4 Ultra chipset :)
 
Good to hear :). BTW, I think that IS the current HT speed on ur board, but ur board supports OCing, so u can up the HT speed by upto 200 MHz in 1MHz increments, but reviews I've read suggest there's not much headroom, so I recommend against it. Ur board also supports 2000MHz HT for Athlon FX series processors so it's a nice one.
And it's nice to see someone who's been banned to come in for another potential banning ;). As for ur advice, AM2 is too expensive ATM, and 939 is getting really cheap, so it's not a bad way to go.
 
I've never herd of a nforce4 mobo that would not run 1000MHz HT(5x200.) Some of the first nforce3's where slower. The 6100 does 5x200 too. You must lower the HT multiplier to overclock the HTT. The new CPUz shows the actural HT speed.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/nforce4_family.html

The differences I see are SATA2 and RAID5.
 
hi Wolfram,

about the chipsets, here is nvidia's comparison chart there isn't much difference according to the chart. if you google around you will find some who say that the Ultras perform better, but most say performance is the same or only slightly better. The NF4-Ultra has all the features of the NF4-SLI (minus the SLI function). The NF4-Ultra is a NF4-SLI with the SLI function disabled (which as rage already mentioned can be re-enabled quite easily). the NF4 is from the same family, but unlike the ultra it's not a crippled version of the higher model so it lacks a few features like SATA3.0 and active-armor.

as for the 3 motherboards you chose, I would recommend the Abit KN8 Ultra. I personally use it and I have no complaints about it. it's a very nice board for the low price (which is why I bought it ;))

you'll have no problem overclocking on it. I overclocked my 3000+ to 3800+ speeds with it. that was the limit of my CPU, the motherboard settings would have allowed me to go much higher if the CPU could have handled it.

the only thing I don't like about it is the whiny little chipset fan. if you have loud fans already then it won't bother you, but in my case it's the loudest component in my system. when I get around to it I'll put a passive heatsink on it (and eventually water-cool it just for fun ;))

good luck :wave:
 
Thanks guys for the replies. I'll definitely get the Abit KN8 Ultra. Cheap, Nforce 4 Ultra chipset, etc.

Regarding the Abit chipset's fan, is it incredibly loud?
If so, I might get another chipset heatsink. I like those Zalman ones :)

And it good to see that the Abit board is good for overclocking. I'll try to get the 3700+ Sandy to 4000+ or more speeds. The fastest single core CPU I think :)

BTW johnmayo, why do you keep ******* around here?
 
wolfram said:
Thanks guys for the replies. I'll definitely get the Abit KN8 Ultra. Cheap, Nforce 4 Ultra chipset, etc.

Regarding the Abit chipset's fan, is it incredibly loud?
If so, I might get another chipset heatsink. I like those Zalman ones :)

And it good to see that the Abit board is good for overclocking. I'll try to get the 3700+ Sandy to 4000+ or more speeds. The fastest single core CPU I think :)

BTW johnmayo, why do you keep ******* around here?
Click to expand...

I don't think johnmayo will be around here much anymore...
 
wolfram said:
Who knows, he can create another account, just like his johnmayo256...
Click to expand...

Couldn't techspot ban his email account too from registering (although, he could have more than one)?
 
Ok guys, enough speculation lol.

Suffice to say, we have ways of dealing with people who keep signing up under different names.

That being said, can we get this thread back on topic please? :p

Regards Howard :)
 
howard_hopkinso said:
Ok guys, enough speculation lol.

Suffice to say, we have ways of dealing with people who keep signing up under different names.

That being said, can we get this thread back on topic please? :p

Regards Howard :)
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info Howard....

And we shall continue talking about the Abit's chipset fan noise.... :)
 
howard_hopkinso said:
Ok guys, enough speculation lol.

Suffice to say, we have ways of dealing with people who keep signing up under different names.

That being said, can we get this thread back on topic please? :p

Regards Howard :)
Click to expand...

Sorry there, I tend to go off topic alot, not what were we talking about ;) ?
 

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