Recommend a cheap motherboard?

[Paddy]

My Dad's wallet has been forced open by all the moths inside.

He has an Asus A7V with a 1GHz Athlon, 256MB SDRAM @100MHz and my old G400. He was looking to get more RAM but has just realised that the FSB on that mobo is only 100Hz.

He is *entertaining* the idea of splashing out and upgrading, but he certainly wont want to spend much.

Can someone recommend a good combo that will breath life into his rig, but allow most of the moths to remain inside his wallet ??

Paddy

[Fat Tone]

What strengths does the upgraded system need to have?

[Paddy]

none.

If he can see a reasonable boost for little money he will upgrade.

At the moment he has a HUGE server tower with millions of old SCSI and IDE hard drives. The combined heat output seems to have nuked most of them...

[Paddy]

I was thinking of this: (MSI 746F Ultra-L)

http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/k.asp?ck=1&r=1&action=info&p=33023

*edit* link changed

[Tempest]

Can't think of an office app that won't run great @ 1000 MHz, even at 100 MHz bus speeds, so what does he actually DO with the computer?

If he's going for a DDR board then he'll have to upgrade his memory as well. On the other hand, if he is just searching for a SDR board with a 133 MHz bus then it's DEFINITELY not worth the money.

So, IMHO to see any significant speed gains he needs a new DDR mobo, with new DDR memory. He won't see much increase in speed with his current processor, but the new MoBo does provide an upgrade path to faster (Athlon XP) processors. The Athlon XP's from 1900+ to 2200+ seem to have the best price/performance ratios ATM. Don't forget that he'll prolly need a new heatsink, too. I might be pushing it here, but it WOULD help if we knew what he actually uses his computer for and how much he'd be willing to spend...

Shameless ad: I like my Epox board, it's very stable and they're generally quite cheap.

[rugger]

Meh,

Get a ECS K57SA board.

Add 512meg DDR ram, XP 2200+ CPU and a seagate barracuda 4 hard drive. Use the old SDRAM if money has run out, but upgrade it to 512meg. Contiune to use G400 unless he plays 3d games, in which case buy a gf4 ti 4200. Throw the old SCSI drives away. They are probably old, noisy, hot and slow, and he would probably appreciate the quietness of a modern IDE hard drive.

Not sure if its worth him upgrading though, because unless he really pushes his current system hard, he won't notice any difference at all.

But replace those old SCSI drives. They would drive a desktop user nuts.

[Paddy]

He likes to dabble. Like myself, he does very little, but likes to be able to do anything.

Gaming is not an issue. He is considering increasing the RAM and buying another 512MB. This is what started off the whole upgrading conversation.

Basically, he will want to know what is best, cheap, upgrade that will take him into the next catagory. e.g. Athlon XP + DDR. If it costs too much, then he will simply wait another 6-12months untill it doesn't.

I figured that he could replace the mobo, cpu and RAM for ~£150.

[Paddy]

Yeah, I have finally talked him into getting a cuda IV/V drive. That should end the SCSI madness

[DJ]

The ECS board works well when it works, but I would not recommend it. Too many incompatibilty problems.

DJ

[Nuno]

I do recommend the ECS K7S5A (for the 100th time )
But as everything, sis735 did have its time and it´s getting old and will limit the upgrade potential in the future. It´ll take only DDR266 memory and 266 fsb, XP2600+ being the end of the line. Enabling SSE on T-bred B cpu´s needs a little hack, too, you have to flash a modded beta bios (not sure if your dad is into this kind of stuff ). The advantage is being amazingly cheap.

For $30 more, get a Epox 8RDA (the + is only worth it if you don´t have a decent sound card or need firewire), one of the cheapest nforce2 boards around and some good DDR333 memory.

Later he can add a barton/T-bred 333 fsb cpu, having a lot of headroom for the future, maybe even 400fsb cpu´s.

[Taz]

What about :-

ASRock K7S8X SiS 746FX mobo - £50.00
512Mb Crucial PC2700 RAM - £ 59.93
Athlon XP2000+ - £66.50

Total £176.43 inc VAT

Prices from Dabs so you should be able to get them a few quid cheaper elsewhere

[DJ]

So Nuno, my ram problems could be because I am using DDR 333?

DJ

[rugger]

Originally posted by Nuno
I do recommend the ECS K7S5A (for the 100th time )
But as everything, sis735 did have its time and it´s getting old and will limit the upgrade potential in the future. It´ll take only DDR266 memory and 266 fsb, XP2600+ being the end of the line. Enabling SSE on T-bred B cpu´s needs a little hack, too, you have to flash a modded beta bios (not sure if your dad is into this kind of stuff ). The advantage is being amazingly cheap.

For $30 more, get a Epox 8RDA (the + is only worth it if you don´t have a decent sound card or need firewire), one of the cheapest nforce2 boards around and some good DDR333 memory.

Later he can add a barton/T-bred 333 fsb cpu, having a lot of headroom for the future, maybe even 400fsb cpu´s.

I agree, if you have the money to spare, get a nforce2 board.

Stay away from VIA boards, it may limit your ability to do things like video capture well.

[Gurm]

nforce2 is a huge heap o' nvidia.

Get SiS 746FX for now, if you can wait a month get SiS 748.

I have spoken.

- Gurm

[Fat Tone]

Whats wrong with nForce2 Gurm? Better memory bandwidth, good southbridges...good reviews...lots of recommendations.
Isn't buying a 746FX like buying a limited production car?

/me ducks, waiting for Gurm to SPEAK.

T.