Antec Aria Athlon XP system

[Danime]

I'm looking to build a micro ATX system based on an Antec Aria case and an Athlon XP 2600. I'm trying to decide between a DFI KM400-MLV (KM400 northbridge, 8237 southbridge w/SATA) and a Chaintech 7NIL1 (NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 + MCP) motherboard. I don'tcare about theintegrated video, but SATA on the 8237 southbridge and 8 USB ports is a bonus, but there's no FSB400 support. The southbridge on the Chaintech 7NIL1 does not have SoundStorm audio and I have heard concerns over the stability of the drivers for the nForce2 chipsets.

Has anyone had any experience with either of those motherboards? I've also seen the Biostar M7VIZ (only PCB v5.1 supports SATA though...), ECS KM400A-M2, and the MSI KM4AM-L mentioned, but I really can't find much info on them. The ECS and MSI boards seem to be based on the little-known KM400A chipset, which addsFSB 400 support.

Any thoughts or comments would be greatly appreciated!

 

[RyanM]

DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT get the DFI. I made the mistake of using that board.

It's great. All the features are there, but - NO HARDWARE TEMP MONITORING.

And you don't want an Easy-bake oven like the Aria housing a system you can't even have shutdown failsafes on.

I'm eyeing the MSI KM400 board right now - Every spec is identital to the DFI, except their sales staff confirmed it HAS hardware monitoring.

Haven't bought it yet, but next system I build's gonna have that. Only $10 more than the DFI from newegg.

Haven't checked out the Chaintech yet, but now that you mention it, I may have to.

 

[RyanM]

Ewwww. No SATA on the Chaintech. Let's see, TV Tuner, Audio card, Graphics, and Cyclone blow - No slots left for SATA PCI adapter. Not an option since my Raptor needs its SATA.