What mobo for a new rig?

[agissi]

Im building a rig for a friend of mine, and am pondering on which mobo to get him. I thought I'd hear your two cents The rig will be as followed:

AthlonXP 2500+ [FSB awaits]
1GB PC4000 OCZ Performance Series
Sapphire 9800PRO
Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM SATA Hard Drive

As you can see, the board will need to support SATA. An overclocking friendly board would is nessary. Im thinking Abit NFS7, how about you?

 

[snowman]

i would go with the NFS7. very oc friendly.

 

[BrownPaper]

will an nforce2 board even get to pc4000 speeds? i have never gotten it that far.

 

[MattG]

I bought the MSI KT600 Board, and its great so far. OCable as well.

Im a VIA fan anyways

 

[snowman]

if you are going to overclock get one of the 2500+ mobile bartons. those are supposed to overclock like nobody's buisness.

 

[agissi]

You say they OC even better snow man??? Really? Any links maybe?

I defently want a nForce2 chipset.. btw BrownPaper, this board will have a this to cool the northbridge and MOSFET:

http://www.frozencpu.com/cgi-bin/frozencpu/vid-26.html?mv_pc=6603

 

[Didou]

Mobile Athlon XP for your desktop?

 

[agissi]

Thanks Didou

I think im going to get this mobo, it looks very promising... it also has Guru technology, so you can OC from inside windows. Was this board made after the successful NFS7 or before?
Abit AN7 Nforce2 400 Ultra
Sounds like before to me.

 

[agissi]

Btw what do you guys think of refurbs? That mobo is $110, but I can get it for $77 refurb.. I have SATA cables etc already, so going without all that stuff is fine really.

Recon I should stay away from them though? My dads DVDRW was a refurb and it ended up burning courrupted dvds after a week.

 

[Nic]

I wouldn't touch the AN7 (its only at v1.0) with a barge pole (not even yours). Get the NF7-S v2.0 as it doesn't come laden with bugs ...

Abit AN7 mainboard is unstable when CPU multiplier is set to 11.5x

Actually the AN7 just doesn't seem to like some chips (e.g. 2600+ @ certain multiplier settings (e.g. 11.5x). It has many nice features but these just don't seem to work properly. I had two of those boards before swapping for another NF7-S v2.0, which is the daddy.

 

[agissi]

Jeeze, if it gave that many other people that many probs im not going to run my chances. Does the NF7-S 2.0 have uGURU tho? That sounded nice.

 

[BrownPaper]

agissi maybe you could push it farther. well at least memory won't be a limiting factor...hehe.

i don't think the NF7-S 2.0 has uGuru technology. the AN7 is one of Abit's first boards to have uGuru and it came after the NF7-S btw. the NF7-S is a more mature board than the AN7 so you should probably get that instead of the AN7. i hear that the AN7 does not overclock quite as well as the NF7-S.

i usually stay away from refurbished items because it makes me uncertain if the item was returned just because or if someone messed it up.

 

[agissi]

But if it was messed up, they fixed it, right?

And what do you mean by I could push it further? I didnt say how high i was trying to OC it.... I think I'll try to get the FSB as high as possible but still push it up to 2.5GHz. I'd say that would be a great OC.

This is the cpu's cooler btw:
http://www.frozencpu.com/cgi-bin/frozencpu/cpu-zal-11.html

 

[Nic]

Those Zalman's won't fit on most nForce2 mainboards, so you need to go for a via chipset if you want one of those coolers. Check out the Zalman website for mainboard compatability issues (yes I know that the link you provided says it is compatable with ALL socket A CPU's, but it isn't compatable with ALL socket A mainboards). Something to bear in mind.

Also, the NF7-S v2.0 will easily get the max from any Athlon chip (I'm running mine at 2.5GHz). It's my first choice of mainboard if I was buying another. The AN7 has better features than the NF7-S v2.0, but suffers from too many problems for me to recommend. In fact, after my experience I'm surprised it got so many good reviews. It sucks big time.

 

[Vehementi]

I'll probably get the A7N8X-E Deluxe for my new 3rd rig, which will be a Barton 2500+ with 1GB of Kingston DDR400. Gotta love that Soundstorm

 

[Didou]

Originally posted by Nic
Those Zalman's won't fit on most nForce2 mainboards, so you need to go for a via chipset if you want one of those coolers. Check out the Zalman website for mainboard compatability issues (yes I know that the link you provided says it is compatable with ALL socket A CPU's, but it isn't compatable with ALL socket A mainboards). Something to bear in mind.

No problems with the NFS-7 ->

No problems with the a7n8x ->

 

[Nic]

Maybe those pics show modded PCs. Here's Zalman's compatability list and it shows that NF7-S and AN7 mainboards are NOT compatible with the CNPS7000A cooler.

Socket 462 Motherboards' Compatibility with CNPS7000A

That was the cooler I originaly had planned for my rig, but a follow-up email to/from Zalman tech support confirmed that it was NOT compatable.

 

[agissi]

Umm ya, the NF7 in general looks pretty uncompatible

Thx Nic your a handy guy to have around..... saved me some time and money

 

[Liquidlen]

Didou;
Just an aside , but I am very curious about the top picture.What is the rigging that is connected to the Vid crd&Mothrbd and then exits the case at the bottom.
I suspect TV & or Multimedia connectivity I would appreciate it!

 

[Didou]

Sorry to disappoint you but those are only extra USB headers ( & badly placed ones at that ).

 

[Nic]

The 'rigging' isn't connected to the graphics card, it is standard on all NF7-S mainboards and is the firewire/usb connectors.

 

[Liquidlen]

No apology needed Didou. My old eyes . It appearred as though two wires connect at the Vid crd , but I guess they connect to a header on th Mthrbrd.That is what tweaked my curiousity.
Iam going now to slap my Optomitrist
Thanx

 

[agissi]

Thanks a lot will, I'll take that into consideration

Also, what speed FSB does PC4000 run at? 500MHz?

 

[Didou]

PC1600 runs at 100mhz ( 200 DDR ) so we can say that 50mhz would amount to 800 Mbit/s.

PC3200 runs at 200mhz ( 400 DDR ). so 200mhz + 50 mhz would be like doing 3200 Mbit/s + 800 Mbit/s = 4000 Mbit/s.

So yeah, 250mhz ( 500 DDR ) = PC4000.

& now I need rest, my brain hurts...:dead:

 

[Steg]

for overclocking the Athlon XP-M's you dont need insane FSB speeds or PC4000 RAM. You do however need insane volts. The fastest overclock ive seen is a XP-M 2500+ on Abit's NF7-S and nVantiv Mach II phase change cooling and the highest they could get that was 2.91Ghz (17*171Mhz) @ 2.3V - it simply would not go any higher - and by lowering the multiplier and uping the FSB they only got it as high as 2.5Ghz. It would appear athlons take multiplier clocking considerably better than FSB clocking....
The CNPS-7000a will fit on nearly all socket 462 boards with 4 mounting holes and a bit of space around the socket - and nearly all nforce2 boards i think.

Steg

p.s. - notice new culled sig - stormbringer asked if i would moderate it