Athlon64 SLI-ready Sytem in a P180

[teddy3501]

newegg still has that eVGA 7800GT with free eVGA motherboard deal. just check it. $449.

 

[Bona Fide]

Looks like you had good luck with Monarch. You're one of the few 😀

 

[hydrobr]

What do you mean by I'm one of the few that had good luck with Monarch? Are they usually sub-par as far as customer service goes? They were awesome and very accomodating.

I actually ordered the wrong the the first time (7800GT w/o BF2 for like... $30 more AFTER rebate than the same 7800GT WITH BF2) and I told them that "there was some sort of mistake" and they changed it, but then I learned about the combo and asked them to cancel it and I re-ordered it with the GTX/mobo combo and my memory (which was now cheaper and had a bigger rebate). I got credited the money back after just a day or two so no problems there.

There was a slight delay with shipping on that last order but it's slated to be here on Monday... 11 days after I ordered.. but better late than never, especially considering that it's not even on their website anymore. Oh and the P180 that I ordered from them was shipped quite quickly.

So.. are there lots of Monarch horror stories or something?

 

[milleron]

I'm not sure why Monarch is getting such a bad rap on the Anandtech forums. Monarch does very, very well at ResellerRatings.com.

Ron

 

[hydrobr]

Monarch has F'ed me in the A with its F. I got the NF43 instead of the NF41 mobo. This may have been my fault for not paying attention and may have been the deal all along. This board doesn't come with the SLI bridge and has SATA I not SATA II. Everywhere else had the 7800/SLI mobo combo so I may have just assumed and made an ass out of myself.

I'm gonna see if Monarch will send me the NF41 in exchange for the NF43 but I have my doubts. Sending the Jetway back was a waste of money, cancelling my previous Monarch order was a waste of time and now I'm more or less stuck with a sh!tty (by comparison to anything I would've actually gotten) board with sh!tty plastic backplate holders that I'll have to tear apart to get the XP-90 (and maybe even stock HS/F?) on there. So, little to no overclocking, wasted money on the SATA II hard drive, way overpaid for a 7800GTX and no SLI unless I buy another motherboard.

I should've just gotten the DFI LanParty UT SLI DR.. quieter fan, better positioned 4-pin ATX connector for my PSU/case combination, more OC-able, SATA II, le sigh.. I guess I'm stuck unless I want to spend even more money and wait even longer to get my parts. I was actually considering cancelling the newegg RMA and getting the Jetway back but I just realized that it doesn't have SATA II, either! And to think.. I'd done so much research. I'm vaguely annoyed at AT for the review, which states 4x SATA 2, but mostly at myself for not reading more closely and researching more thoroughly.

For now I will just hope that an awesome, OCable, easy to SLI, quiet mobo will come out soon and get cheap by the time the GTX gets affordable enough to SLI. Sorry to be a whiney little b!tch but I just need to vent a little. Thanks.

 

[hydrobr]

I got my fans and backplate today, time to install the XP-90 and do a little overclocking.