Best Motherboard All-Around?

[RedHouse18]

I'm not a hardcore gamer and I don't have plans to overclock.
I'm just looking for the sweet spot in regards to MOBO and CPU.
I was thinking about an Athlon 64 3000 and I think I want SATA.

Also do you think my trusty 300W psu can handle this?
Do you think a retail cpu is obnoxiously noisy?

Thanks for your advice.

I just picked up 512mb of PC3200 so I hope that I can use that with the system.


I guess I should mention other components
two 120 gig hd, dvd, dvd-r
all-in-wonder 9000 pro

 

[RedHouse18]

thanks

 

[ts3433]

Most of the boards for A64s should have SATA. The 300W may be pushing it unless it's of very high quality. I can't comment about retail noise, given that I don't own an A64 or a retail CPU of any kind.

To recommend a specific board, we need to know what socket you're looking at. For S754 (probably the best choice since you don't seem overly concerned with the PCIe bandwagon), you would want something like the Chaintech VNF3-250, which is in the $75 range. There are also some comparable Epox boards for a bit less. On S939, the cheapest boards will be about $100. The best for that price is probably the Epox EP-9NDA3+. Remember that you aren't going to see much performance difference between motherboards (or chipsets, for that matter, since they don't house the memory controller on the A64).

 

[uOpt]

I like my Intel board, its is pretty close to perfect.

Noise on stock fans is not bad. My Intel is very good and the AMD64 almost as good. AMD really did their homework, the XP fan I had was horrible.