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EXPERTS! Need help picking a Motherboard and Case!

T

TheJackal

Member
Ok i have the following components i am taking from my Dell system to build my new system.

256MB PC133
Radeon 64MB DDR
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
ATA100 Hard Drive (generic)
Klipsch speakers
KDS AV-195TF 19"

Basically i need a good motherboard and case to put all this stuff in. Would like an AMD Athlon, NOT P4. What is the best out there at the moment motherboard and case wise? Thanks in advance.
 
Go check out the Motherboard and Cases and Cooling Forums. There have been many things on this (do a search).

I know that isn't the answer you were looking for, but there is a lot of info there.
 
For the motherboard: Either the ASUS A7V133, or the ABIT KT7A. The ABIT KT7A has fully-jumperless overclocking, as does the ASUS (I believe). This bypasses the problem Anand reveals in this article.

As for the case, I'd like to know if you'd like a midtower or a fulltower, and if you're going to be upgrading/fooling around with the case often.

If you need a midtower, I'd suggest an Enlight 7237 or an Inwin A500. Make sure you get an AMD-approved power supply unit, else buy it bare and toss in an Enermax unit (300/450W) from this place, here.

If you want a fulltower, I'd suggest going with the Antec 1030B. It might not be so big as to consider as a full-fledged fulltower, but the spaciousness and overall features balance that out, IMO. It almost always comes with an Antec PP303X power supply, which is AMD-approved.
 
yiwonder: Thanks, posted on the Motherboards forum.

mrhelpful: Thanks for the info. I'm looking to put in a 1.2 or 1.3 Thunderbird processor and NOT interested in OCing. Also, looking for a mid-tower case. What do you think of the ASUS A7A266 or A7M266?
 
If you want to use the pc-133 ram, then the a7m266 is out... it is ddr. The a7a-266 is both ddr and pc133, but the highest performer with pc133 ram out now is the kt133a chipset. I recommend the asus a7v133 or abit kt7a or iwill kk266. any of these boards would be good, and the iwill would most likely be the most stable.
 
Well, i plan to get DDR in the future so i definately want a motherboard that can handle it. Do the ASUS A7V133, ABIT KT7A, and IWILL KK266 all support DDR memory? If not, is the A7A266 the best choice?
 
Wait a few months for the MSI K7T266 to be fixed (read anandands update). They found the problem with the board and the scores go way up.. Thats what ill be doing
 
if you wanna really great case, go for the antec sx1030

used to be able to pick these up for around $80-90 with free shipping from onvia.com, but theyre in the process of going tits up 🙁
 
NO, the Abit KT7a and the Asus A7v133 do NOT support ddr. The problem with ddr right now is that the boards really can't take advantage of the technology yet I had the same decision and decided to go with the proven SDRAM. If you want ddr Asus A7A266 has both. Not that much of a performance upgrade if any and from my friends that own it not as stable either no matter what the reviewers say.
 
go for Abit KT7A. I use the A7V133 but while using win2k CPU throttling HLT is not automatically enabled... meaning ur cpu is going to run hotter than usual when idling... Unless u are willing to manually fix it... but not everyone is successful changing the registers as I have. Just a word of caution if ya thinking of overclocking.
 
Ok lots of great info, thanks. However, since i'm getting (or was planning to get) a 1.33 Thuderbird, i'd want a Motherboard that can handle a 266 FSB. So with that in mind, would the IWILL KK266 or the ASUS A7A266 be better? Or how about the MSI? ARGH!!
 
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