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Give me pointers toward a rock solid and problem free cpu/mobo combo

OS

OS

Lifer
I am coming from a BP6 and this is one flakey ass rig. Sick and tired of weird and random program hangs and stuff. Point me towards a solid, problem free rig. I don't want little nagging issues or incompatibilities coming back to bite me. I have these criteria

-Must be able to reuse my old parts (Older 300W PS/case, 384 mb of PC100 sdram, SB Live, Fasttrak 66, Voodoo 3)
-Must work FLAWLESSLY in Win2k
-Must be able to use GeForce 2 GTS/MX w/o a problem (future upgrade path)
-NO built in highpoint controllers
-Slightly prefer having 4 IDE channels, but not required
-Heavily prefer a dual rig, but not required
-Stability and trouble free operation given first consideration over use of cutting edge technology
-I don't give a crap about overclocking
-Must not cost an arm, a leg and a testicle

Dammit, every computer I have built by myself has always had some kind of little annoying nagging issue or another. Help me put an end to this waste of time 😛

Right now, I am thinking about going for either a 1 ghz Tbird/whatever mobo, P3 whatever/CUSL2-C or dual P3 whatever/100 and some good dual BX mobo. Pointers for either are greatly appreciated.


 
I've read here and there that the MSI K7T series is a contender for a solid rig, is that not the case?
 
That may be the case, but I still uphold the fact that Intel's motherboards will give you years of stability. They're not tweaked for performance and then reliability - they're tweaked for stability/reliability and then optimized for performance.
 
Get yourself a BX board, definitely.

Tried and tested, all the bugs have been long ironed out and its easily as fast and stable as anything else out there, if not THE most fast and stable platform, IMHO.
 
Yeah sure, Intel boards are sometimes great... But there are some stable competitors out there...

This is my recommendation for a stable PRICEWORTHY system...

AMD Athlon 1Ghz
MSI K7T PRO2

The rest of your setup will work with these components, and there is no problem running the memory at 100Mhz if necessary...

For IDE disks i recommend a Maxtor or Quantum drive... (sure just scream IBM, but i won't, there is a reason for that)



<< THE most fast and stable platform, IMHO. >>



The BX is the most fast and stable platform.... Have you ever used anything BUT the BX and Intel CPU combo??? If you had, then you surely wouldn't say anything about that combo...

Just my recommendation... And it's a good one... ;-)

Patrick Palm

Am speaking for PC Resources
 
My old asus p2b with the BX chipset is the most stable {now after 12 bios revisions} I have used. it overclocks nicely 333/416 On 83mhz bus.
BX is my vote
 


<< My old asus p2b with the BX chipset is the most stable {now after 12 bios revisions} I have used. it overclocks nicely 333/416 On 83mhz bus. >>



So what you recommend is a very old board and a very old CPU?? If you haven't tried a newer BX board with a newer CPU, faster memory, newer videocard and a faster HDD, then you really cannot say much about what would be stable today, now can you?

The BX chipset has gone through lots of revisions since the P2B, the bus speed has been raised, new designs has been made by different mobo makers, so ALL the BX motherboards are not equal...

Sure, i can recommend the BX chipset, but i do not think that the Intel solution is very priceworthy, and if you build a solid Athlon system, it will be just as stable...

Patrick Palm

Am speaking for PC Resources
 
I gotta give my vote to the Asus CUSL-2 motherboard. I've been through quite a few motherboards (including the BP6), and thus far the CUSL-2 is my favorite.
 
I would recommend getting an MSI board for the most stable and troublefree setup and operation. The MSI K7T Turbo is the best KT133A motherboard, and the MSI 815EP Pro-R will dethrone Asus CUSL2 for sure, both possess Promise RAID controllers, with excellent stability and quality. Regardless of which route you go, you cant go wrong with these two MSI boards.
 
problem free? didn't know there was such a thing exist. 😉

shoot man, anything can be problem free if you work all the kinks out of it! My A7V has been the most stable system I've owned now that I've worked all the kinks out.

I had a P2B for like 18 months.. and Yes, I got blue screens and crashes a lot. but that was mostly Win98...

I think most people in that past that suffered pain from crashes and such blame there problems on the &quot;system&quot; and not so much the OS.

People should worry less about the system and focus on getting Windows2000 running...

I laugh my ass off when I hear people yelling about trying to get their WIn9x system to run stable! Just FORMAT it already and load win2k.
 
and where exactly are you going to buy this K7T Turbo LXi - I havent seen a single review on it, so how can you prove it is the best? Pricewatch shows no search hits also.
 
Get an asus p3b-f and a slot one 850. 🙂 worked like a charm for me. Never had a more stable system. 🙂
 
Absolute stability and compatibility? With the limitation of reusing your PC100 ram, a good BX mobo such as an ASUS P3B-F (slot 1) or CUBX (S370). A better one would be an ASUS CUSL2 or -C and a 100 MHz FSB Intel CPU like a PIII 800-1000. This should be stable as a rock. Another would be an Intel brand 815e motherboard.
 
Thanks for the replies guys.



<< I think most people in that past that suffered pain from crashes and such blame there problems on the &quot;system&quot; and not so much the OS. >>



Yes, except that I run NT4 exclusively. I've reformatted God knows how many times. Strange and weird problems consistently occur no matter how I fiddle with drivers and configurations. I've run NT4 on a laptop for half a year, and in those six months, the computer crashed a total of two times, both caused by a specific hardware problem. I wish I could say the same about my BP6 system.

I mean if I could keep that laptop running that long with that kind of stability, I'd imagine that I'd atleast have some idea of what I was doing. For my BP6 rig, I've tried everything, virus scans, all kinds of disk checks, different hardware, drivers and BIOSes. And yes, I've tried Win2k also, which is worse (driver related, damn you highpoint). The system is only minimally overclocked (400s at 433) and even w/o overclocking, the problems do not go away. Symptoms include strange program hangs, my modem disappearing sometimes, no video at boot, strange BSODs. Lots of problems, many of which are very irratic. Some of the problems I've only very recently ironed out, some of which took weeks or months to pinpoint. Many I still haven't. So I think it's time to call it quits on this mobo/cpu. I might try reformatting one last time since a bunch of new drivers came out. We'll see.
 
I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but could you possibly have a flaky power supply? Or not a big enough one?
 
NT4 is known for &quot;marriage problems&quot;. In other words, there are just some systems it doesn't work well on. 🙁

I hope you make the move to 2000. 🙂
 


<< could you possibly have a flaky power supply? Or not a big enough one? >>



I have a 300W power supply, it seems ok.





<< NT4 is known for &quot;marriage problems&quot;. In other words, there are just some systems it doesn't work well on. >>



Yeah, I think that's part of the problem. To make NT4 an up to date desktop OS, you have to apply service packs, addons and the IE browser. I suspect some of various files and DLLs don't play nice with each other, but that's just a guess.

I know for sure many of my problems are from straight crappy drivers. I've had ALOT of trouble trying to figure out which highpoint drivers were stable and which ones weren't. In the end, I found out all of them suck 😛 I don't use the onboard highpoint thing anymore, I use my FT66. That got rid of alot of random BSODs. By now, I've managed to squash a good number of my problems, but I still have residual ones like my modem disappearing. This quickly becomes tiring as you can imagine 😛




<< I'm not trying to be funny. Buy a Dell server. >>



Expensive though 😛
 


<< I'm not trying to be funny. Buy a Dell server. >>



Hehe, but you were funny there... Dell huh??

Well, if you do not care much about performance/price, then maybe that is what you should buy..

Anyone who has anything to say about the performance of Dell servers will be welcome to respond to me...

I replaced 12 Dell servers the other day, less than a year old ones, VERY out of date ones, VERY expensive ones, and NOT very reliable either (Dells servers usually are reliable though, but also very overpriced and low performing)...

Patrick Palm

Am speaking for PC Resources
 
PCResources

Whether I have used other platforms is not the issue here. I was merely pointing out what I personally believe to be the most stable, compatible platform available.
 


<< (sure just scream IBM, but i won't, there is a reason for that) >>



You're posting here, presumedly to help, yet you won't offer a reason???
 


<< Whether I have used other platforms is not the issue here. I was merely pointing out what I personally believe to be the most stable, compatible platform available. >>



Ok, sorry about my bad attitude...

BUT, you said that your personal experience was that it was &quot;easily as fast and stable&quot; as anything else, how would you know that if you haven't tried the alternatives? If you have read it somewhere you should provide a link.





<< You're posting here, presumedly to help, yet you won't offer a reason??? >>



You are right, i should have offered a reason, i think i will include links to earlier threads in the future... I have written about it sooo many times, do a search and you will see.

Patrick Palm

Am speaking for PC Resources
 
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