Best MoBo / CPU combo for a beginner any suggestions ?

[SpeedRacerOne]

Any suggestions on which Motherboard / Processor combination a newbie builder should buy? Mainly for gaming and storing audio. I was thinking of going raid / any help will be appreciated. Thanks and happy holidays.......




my home

 

[Supradude]

wow, very broad question, if money isn't a huge concern , go with an 815e chipset intel board (i'm only going to list intel solutions cause i don't know much about AMD), my personal favorite is my current board the Abit SA6R but the Asus CUSL2 is also a very respectable Motherboard. As for the CPU, there are many options but once again if your not on a tight budget, get a P3 700 or if thats too much a 550e will suit your needs pretty good... i believe these two would be the better "clocking" chips, except maybe for the 800 which is a bit more pricey... if money is a concern, there are a plethora of tried and trued BX boards that will run p3's and celeron II's that can be had for ~$100... hope this helps you get started in the right direction... for info on boards, check out the forums here and search for specific motherboards your looking at, theres been many posts and i'm sure you'll find some good info

 

[Gamerz]

First of all, if you are new, why would you consider a raid? That is a high end thing that only real tech heads get a woody over.

If you are looking for a good first machine, get an duron 700 and the MSI KT7 Pro2-A. This is a very stable solution that should give you a glimpse of what a real overclocker would do. Make this a test bed. Also, get at least 128 megs of ram (very cheap right now).
For a Video card, get an Geforce MX, anything past that and you are blowing your money.

 

[gmccall]

I agree with Gamerz. I'm an overclocking newbie and have the same setup he recommends (see my sig). Very solid system so far, with lots of upgrade potential and not to mention support from all of the MSI owners who frequent Anandtech forums

 

[jazziz]

What's the difference between T-Bird 700 and Duron 700 if they both run at 700MHz?

 

[Mem]

The T-bird has 256k L1 cache while the Duron as only 64k L1,the Thunderbird is faster,but the Duron seems to be the better overclocker.

 

[gittyup]

I just built a new system and decided to go with the MSI K7T Pro2A / Duron 800 combo from
MonarchComputer. If you are interesed in OC later, I think the Duron 800 is a good choice.

Currently, monarchcomputer has many combos avaialable at decent prices. They combos are put
together and tested, shipped to you ready to go. The board comes with a 1 yr warranty and the
cpu comes with a 3 year warranty. I just received my combo from them 2 days ago. Very pleased..

Package I chose: MSI K7T Pro2A , Duron 800, Heatsink, Fan for $219 plus shipping.

Look here

 

[CraigRT]

It's always good to start with a BX board.. no installing drivers like Via etc, just plug and play basically!!
I slightly disagree about the MX statement.. if you have the money and want mad FPS of course you'll want more than just an MX... my GTS looks completely sweet and is of course silky smooth at 1024x768 in Quake III with full textures on, etc.
can't do that too successfully with an MX.. but hey it's upto you..
the BX's are easiest to setup. the PIII's are easiest to overclock.. quite a simple effective setup if you ask me, I love mine!!!

 

[paulip88]

Yield,
I would have to disagree with you. From my experience the Durons are a lot easier to OC than the PIIIs since you do not have to worry about the other components running out of spec. They also OC very well.

However, in terms of ease of setup, definitely the Intel baords like the BX.

 

[cockeyed]

I would suggest something that has been well de-bugged, easy to setup and has excellent stability. My suggestion: Soyo 6BA+100 (440-BX) motherboard (has integrated ATA-100 RAID controller), 2 - IBM 15GB 75GXP HDDs, PIII-700, 128mb Micron or Corsair memory, Voodoo5 or ATI Radeon video card. Buy a quality case with a high quality power supply; the case/cooling forum has many suggestions.

This would be a fast and stable system. Just be sure to DL the latest RAID controller driver and motherboard BIOS if you were to build this system. Good luck!

 

[Impact55]

Is the coolermaster a decent heatsink/fan for the duron?

 

[paulip88]

The coolermaster is ok, but it doesn't seem like a good value. The GlobalWins, Taisols, and the Alpha PAL6035 are the way to go.

Also, about the difference between a Duron 700 and a TBird 700 in terms of speed is about 5%. The Duron at that speed runs about 5% slower than the TBird. At higher speeds it lags behind a little bit more because of its smaller cache.