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Fubbared my k7s5a, need older mobo recommendations

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OulOat

Diamond Member
Yesterday morning I decided to give my case the cleaning it deserves. The dust has gotten so bad that I had to turn off my cold cathodes to hide my shame. Four hours later, with the inside of the case shiny once more, I powered on my comp. Powers on, no beep. HD powering on, but there is nothing on the screen. Then came the pissing, the wtfs, mad ranting, quiet pondering, mad ranting again, whatever. Read the forums, browsed through ocworkbench, and did everything recommended (Arctic Silvered the SIS HS, cheapomaned the BIOS, etc) short of replacing the PSU. Now it works, except it will not post if I set it to 133/133 with only my mobo plugged in (so no external drain of PSU). Works fine on 100/100, but that would be wasteful of XP 1700+.

So now I implore you, recommend me an older/cheap mobo to home my XP 1700+. I liked the k7s5a (up to about 20 hours ago), but I had some trouble with mine before. So I would like something stable. Not planning on OCing. Looking for one with onboard LAN and 2+ USB (more is better). Price range would be around $50. Can go higher, but I'm not really looking towards paying a lot of money for an old system.

Hardware that will be migrating:
Midtower case with bling bling (CCs, modded fans & grills, etc... all the stuff from my younger days 🙂)
Athlon XP 1700+ with Panflo modded Thermaltake Volcano 9
Crucial 768 (2 sticks) 2100 DDR
Geforce TI200 custom modded with 2 big hs and no fan (so capacitors around the AGP slot might be a problem)
TurtleBeach Santa Cruz Soundcard
3 HDs - 120 Seagate, 80 Seagate, 60 Maxtor
1 DVD RW - Liteon 411s

AND, I know you guys will kill me on this.
300 W Liteon PSU (Hot Deal from Directron an year ago)

I know about k7s5a pickiness about PSUs. Normally, I would agree, but this is a psu ripped from Compaq servers, so voltage is not an issue. It ran the aformentioned hardware without a glitch for the past 6 months under a heavy, consistent load. I checked the voltage readings regularly, always been under the +-5% range.

Some issues for the new mobo. It can't have any big capacitors near the AGP slot (mentioned above), can't require a P4 connector (PSU doesn't have one), and shouldn't have a fan on the South Bridge (I modded my entire case to be a quiet as possible). The SB fan is not really a big deal, I can always remove it later. Damnit, I used to be the one with the recommendations, but now I'm just old and tired. So tired, I just want a quiet computer that works, like a Dell. But no money 🙁.

Anyways, if you are still reading, I give you mad props for not having ADD and its hyperactive cousin ADHD. Suggestions on more stuff I can attempt to resuscitate my k7s5a will be appreciated. Recommendations on new mobo or links to reviews will be greeted with :beer: <--- Jack Daniels. Flames with be retorted with the standard STFU repost police or Kiss my Shiny Metal Ass spelling/grammar nazi 🙂 (sorry, too much time at ATOT). Thanks for your help.
 
Oh yeah, I'm looking at the Iwill K7S3-N for $36 at compgeeks based on Zepper's recommendation on an earlier thread, but I don't know how it stacks up against Shuttle or ASUS
 
best to get a frys combo. you get a newer m/b then the one you have, and a cpu. for about 59... 2400+ i think last week, who knows what this week.


you arent using pc133 right? those boards are weird on having two old sticks of ram at 133mhz. eh, i'm still using a k7s5a pro with a mobile barton 2400+ @ 2400mhz🙂
 
Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
best to get a frys combo. you get a newer m/b then the one you have, and a cpu. for about 59... 2400+ i think last week, who knows what this week.


you arent using pc133 right? those boards are weird on having two old sticks of ram at 133mhz. eh, i'm still using a k7s5a pro with a mobile barton 2400+ @ 2400mhz🙂
Click to expand...

My bad, forgot the RAM. It's Crucial 768 (256 + 512) 2100 DDR.

I would go for a Fry's deal, but alas, I live in the cornfields of the Midwest. No Fry's anywhere close.

I am posting from my comp right now, but at 1600+ speeds. I had to lower it to 124/124 (cheapoman's BIOS) for it to boot. Even though it seemingly runs fine, posting and booting takes anywhere from 1 min to 10 mins (just a black screen for the entire time before I hear that wonderful beeeeeeeep).
 
K7S5A...old. Seriously, no real point in trying to get it back alive like it was (133/133). Since it's DDR memory, just about any new mobo will do just fine. Go to Newegg, look at pics to be about that capacitor business, and be on your way.
I'd suggest either the Gigabyte SiS 748 board, Abit NF7 (uses NB fan, though), or the Shuttle AN35N-Ultra. The Shuttle especially, given the PC I'm on now is using one 🙂.
 
Never heard of that Iwill board before (Iwill, of course, just not the mobo), but performance-wise, it will be equal to a NForce2 board with RAM in single channel mode. So as fast as it gets for most apps, maybe 2-7% slower than dual-channel NF2 in games.
 
get the ASrock K7S8XE+ with the sis 748 chipset, onboard lan, 6 usb in the rear 2 more for front usb, usb 2.0 and a host of other features, overclocks nicely with my barton 2500 running at 3200....runs about 50 bucks at cyberbear computers here are the specs: ASrock K7S8XE+ 8X AGP/Audio/Lan/SATA RAID
ASRock U-COP
FSB 400MHz
DDR 400/333/266/200
1 x AGP 8X/4X 1.5Volt
Hybrid Booster - a safe overclocking feature
5 PCI slots, ASROCK I/O - default 4 ready-to-use USB2.0 ports on rear panel, default Game/MIDI port.
Serial ATA 1.5Gb/s, RAID 0,1,JBOD, SATA HDD HotPlug, and ATA 133 supported.
5.1 Channel audio.
ASRock I/O Plus - supports up to 8 USB2.0 ports
Multi-languages Quick Installation Guide.
Bundle CD includes PC-cillin 2002, ASRock PC DIY Live Demo, Audio Player, etc


Price : $ 49.00
here is the link: http://www.cbear.net/store2/
i run these exclusivley now for home and customers, i am running 4 of these now and they are terrific!
 
Originally posted by: Macro2
Did you try remounting the mobo, cards...? You might have shorted it out.
Click to expand...

Yes, I tried that. Reseated everything. Still the same.

Thanks to all that replied, I'm checking out those boards. But I'm wondering are those boards going a tad overboard? Like the 400 FSB, would my (I guess early revision) 1700+ even need that. Does it even support 133? Will my memory work (2100 DDR) All I see is 200/266/333/400. And also, doesn't the nforce boards have built in video? If so, which Geforce is it? Thanks.

BTW, it seems 1600+ speeds are too unstable, rebooting constantly. I'm now at 112/112 (1250), and running Knoppix since Windows refused to boot.
 
You might as well go with something better and newer since you are using DDR memory. The Shuttle AN35N is based on the nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset and only costs $55 with free shipping at Newegg.. You may want to check it out.
 
Originally posted by: Bovinicus
You might as well go with something better and newer since you are using DDR memory. The Shuttle AN35N is based on the nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset and only costs $55 with free shipping at Newegg.. You may want to check it out.
Click to expand...

Is the nForce2 or Santa Cruz better at sound? I play a little bit of games (Tribes 2 since it's free), but listen to a lot of music.
 
Also, all those mobo have a P4 power plug. Does that mean they require the psu to have that plug too?
 
NF2 sound: For music listening, no way. For gaming, yes.
Some do require that power plug, yes.
As far as the FSB, their FSBs and ours are different.
133MHz is what they call 266, since it's a DDR bus.
 
Originally posted by: OulOat
Originally posted by: Bovinicus
You might as well go with something better and newer since you are using DDR memory. The Shuttle AN35N is based on the nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset and only costs $55 with free shipping at Newegg.. You may want to check it out.
Click to expand...

Is the nForce2 or Santa Cruz better at sound? I play a little bit of games (Tribes 2 since it's free), but listen to a lot of music.
Click to expand...

Most any PCI sound solution is going to be better than even the nForce2 onboard sound. The quality of the nForce2 onboard sound still varies widely depending on the codec implemented by the motherboard manufacturer. The positional audio on the Santa Cruz is pretty decent too from what I hear.
 
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