KT133A Mobo suggestions

[MithShrike]

Howdy people. I'm kind of new at this so please bear with me. I'm wanting to build a relatively cheap system and it's just for some gaming. I want my budget to be under $500 so I'm staying cheap. Now, on Pricewatch I saw a Shuttle AK12A motherboard for rather cheap. Please tell me what you people think of this mobo and if there are others that are similarly priced please tell me.

 

[Yvo]

I would recommend either an ASUS A7V133 ($86) or ABIT KT7A ($72).

I prefer the ASUS board as its my all time fav brand but... both are equal equipped boards.

Yvo

 

[hopeless879]

Second for the KT7A, great board, never had any problems with it.

Since you planned on going cheap, I would also suggest going with the ECS K7S5A you can find it for around $60. And since DDR is cheaper than SDR right now, you will probably be better off with a ddr board.

 

[daveqb]

second the K7S5A board,

cheap, but still performs & gives you the SD/DDR options,

no onboard VGA though, so u will have to spend to get a VGA card,
but for gaming you would prefer your own GPU doing ya graphics for you.

 

[MithShrike]

Thank you very mcuh. I wasn't planning on getting integrated graphix anyways. I appreciate the input.

 

[osage]

Shuttle AK32L, or ECS K7S5A would do you well

 

[birddog]

for KT133a boards, I'd stick with Asus, Abit, or MSI. If you want to go with a KT266a board, the Shuttle AK31a is a real good board (I have read that their KT133a boards are not that good though).

Checkout newegg.com for prices also.

 

[bowie71]

K7S5A all the way, there's no point buying mobo with KT133A that is much slower in performance but also more expensive. Try also Asus S333 or MSI 745 Ultra, those three are so cheap but powerfull enough to compete the mobo with KT266A or even KT333 chipset, -"underline"- not KT133A. Good Luck.

 

[Mist3rMischi3f]

If you aren't overclocking, K7S5A all the way...
Powerful, cheap, and lots of flexibility...

 

[classy]

I built a pc for my brother a little more than year ago using the Asus A7V133 with raid, board version 1.05. Its fast and will handle all the cpus including all Palominos as well Tbred. Just make sure to get board version 1.05.

 

[Booster]

If you want a KT133A board, my vote goes for ASUS A7V133-C. I had this board, and was very happy with it. It was ultra stable, fast and it allowed to OC pretty easily.

If you don't want a VIA chipset, a good board is the ECS K7S5A. Its cheap, performs well and allows to upgrade to DDR, but no OC features.

 

[xroyal]

Absoutely MSI K7T Turbo KT133A to get a quality, stable Mb while the current new flood of chipsets, chips and memory settle down. I got lucky (using some patience), and got a like new K7T Turbo, new cables (including ATA100 and extra USB), manual and CD on Ebay for $36 (qualify your seller carefully). Currently can handle up to XP1800+ chip, runs my Crucial CAS2 PC133@133 (can run memory asynch, unlike K7S5A which can't). Lots of bios o/c options, etc (also unlike K7S5A which has few). I'm not prejudiced (he said). Good luck on your choice!

Edit: I'm currently running a $45 (incl shipping from newegg, now $43 I think) 950 Duron@1102 at a reasonable 40C temp. Great interim step for me.

 

[Garet Jax]

Mith,

Anandtech has a really good review of KT133A boards. You may want to check it out. It looks at a lot of boards and gives pros and cons of all of them.