Duron Motherboards

[jtshaw]

My girlfriend is looking to get her father a computer for Christmas. She is very capible at building her own computer but she has asked for my advice on a motherboard to use. We are going to low cost here, but not at the cost of compatibility with components or quality. I was thinking of telling her to just go with the Asus A7V or the ABit KT7...any cheaper suggestions? The CPU we are looking at is a 700Mhz. AMD Duron.

 

[Mem]

Good boards you mention but don`t forget to consider the MSI K7T PRO or MSI K7T PRO2A if you want to overclock.

 

[Noriaki]

MSi K7T Pro is a good motherboard and costs less. (Pro2 is as well and adds overclocking if you care about that)

Another motherboard that is very good quality and low cost is the AOpen SocketA baord...AK33 I think is the model number. Excellent board, no overclocking/tweaking options, but it is very good quality and low cost.

 

[reitz]

The MSI boards are a little cheaper than those from Asus and Abit, and most reviews paint them as the most stable Duron boards around. I purchased the MSI K7T Pro 2 and a Duron 800 a few weeks ago for $250, shipped. The K72 Pro 2 is in somewhat of a shortage right now, so if overclocking is not a concern, then I'd suggest you go for the K7T Pro. MWave has it for $111, and their shipping is very reasonable in my experience.

 

[SirFshAlot]

reitz,
the Pro2-A is available now
you can look them up on Pricewatch
I ordered mine from PCProgress for 118

 

[jtshaw]

I am looking at the MSI K7T Pro and I just had one question... how is the VIA VT686A integrated AC97 audio? The owner of this computer isn't going to be picky about sound, it will probably only have two crappy powered computer speakers on it.

 

[Lombardaga]

Well, If she's not interested in excellent sound or 4.1 sound, just stereo, then the integrated chip will be a great solution for her. It does, however use a bit more processing power than a normal PCI soundcard, but not very much. But the sound cards r cheap anyway and even a dirt cheap SB 128 provide good sound for a 2.1 system. But she dont have to buy a sound card if she's not interested in excellent sound quality, and with 2 crappy speakers theres no need to buy a card.

U have two excellent options for a MB. The MSI K7TPro or the AOpen AK33. Both r non-overclocking boards. Both r excellent choices. They r one of the most stable socket A boards out there. The AOpen has a bit better performance, but the MSI has one more PCI slot (but the AOpen's 5 PCI slots should probably be plenty, though). I think they r about exactly the same price. Its your choice.

 

[RoboTECH]

SirFsh, are you sure that was the Pro2?

I checked yesterday after seeing the ad on pricewatch, and it seemed like the stock was ONLY the original Pro, not the Pro2

 

[SirFshAlot]

I sure hope so; here's part of the e-mail order confirmation from PCProgress.com

Items Purchased
Qty Part # Description
Price Total
--- ------------- ----------------------------
------- -------
1 AMDDUR800 AMD DURON 800 - 100MHZ $112.00 $112.00
0 FANGCTDUFR01 GOLDEN ORB COOLER SOCKET A $22.00 $0.00
1 MS-K7TPRO2A MICROSTAR K7T PRO2A SOCKET A $118.00 $118.00

Sub Total: $230.00
Tax : $0.00
UPS 2 Day: $22.00
Order Total: $252.00

 

[LXi]

As for now, PC Progress, Atacom, United Micro, and Outsideloop all have the MSI K7T Pro2A.

 

[smukkel]

Used a couple of chaintech 7 AJA mobo's on systems I built. Should do you 80 - 90 $. All work fine. Sound onboard is desent, but don't expect to much of it.

My 2 bits

 

[Kingofcomputer]

another cheap and good mb for duron is Epox 8KTA2, embedded sound, ata100, additional usb ports back panel, norton antivirus 2000 and ghost bundled, also can change multipler and voltage.

 

[SirFshAlot]

United Micro said they won't have the Pro2-a in for a few days, maybe Friday

They had a very attractive price on a bundled mobo, Duron 800 and Global Win cooler($226); but I want to play with the system over the weekend.

 

[buildingacomputer]

I just built a system. Goal was the cheapest since it was kind of backup:

1) Epox 8KTA+: supports overclocking Duron.
2) Duron 600: overclockable to 800 (my goal).
3) Generic 7ns memory PC133 128 mb: had no plan to overclock FSB. By the way, I could raise to 107 for testing purpose and memory worked fine.

I bought everything from bunta.com for the purpose of being able to RMA the whole thing if something does not work. All worked well. I would recommend this setup to anybody who is budget minded.

One bad experience: The AGP interface was tricky. Had to reseat the card several times. Generic problem with AGP interface or faulty motherboard AGP slot or faulty AGP card?

 

[fow99]

I am using Epox 8KTA+ myself and it is really a descent board. It is quite speedy reported by several sites on the net. But what you will really concern is the stability when you starting living with it. It is stable. I am running Win98 se and Linux dual boot and everything was fine. Quite a nice price as well. On board sound is bad. It consume the CPU resource hence will cause you trouble when you try running a lit bit heavy duty. So I'd suggest you spend a little bit more and get a descent pci hardware sound.