Mobo recommendation(s)? I'm completely out of the loop.

[Hossenfeffer]

Just got down to Ashland. Was in the process of getting things set up when I smelled me some smoke and deduced that my trusty Slot-1 Pentium III-700 bit the dust. Looking to upgrade the mobo rather than perpetuate the inevitable.

MSI BX Master
PIII 700
512 MB PC133 (buh bye)
couple hard drives, cd drives, blah blah.

Trying to do some research into what I should pick up. I've got a $200-250 price range, $300 if I simply -have- to....

I'm fine with getting something a year or two off of "new", but really clueless right now on what's the best bang for my buck.

Mostly do web design in dreamweaver and frontpage, remote administration and such, some graphics.

I do a little gaming but not really worried about top-notch performance. So long as the things aren't choppy, I'm good.

 

[o1die]

I recommend an asus k8n board (about $85 at newegg) with a retail boxed athlon 64 2800 ($120). Add some pc3200 crucial ram (maybe $70 for 512 megs) and a 9600se video card ($60 for my celistica). Finally, a sparkle 300w power supply. I use the 12cm version with a large side fan (about $37 at newegg). You can get closer to your budget by using a motherboard with onboard graphics or a 256 meg stick of ram. You can skip the power supply if yours is at least 300 watts and a name brand, such as sparkle fortron, enermax, hippro, antec, or enlight.

 

[Hossenfeffer]

I've got a Geforce 4 video card and (assuming it's still workin' and would do fine for my needs) that would still be okay and I believe it's a 400W Enermax power supply.

Thanks for the recommendation. I do like the asus boards for their stability. Will also see if I can't skimp a little by grabbing some used memory.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

I agree the K8n + A64 2800+ would be real hard to beat in the $200 price range. And the performance will WOW you compared to what youv'e got.

 

[akugami]

I'd agree with what o1die suggested. Seems some nice bang for the buck. You won't need a new psu because that 400W Enermax seems ok. Certainly better than a generic one.

Seeing as how you got a P3 in your recently deceased system your hard drive might be very slow. Depending on how old the hard drives are you might want to upgrade that as well later on when you can afford it and move the older drives as secondary storage drives for your work.

 

[Hossenfeffer]

The drives I've got are ATA100 and ATA66 I believe, which I can't imagine would be terrible. Will upgrade to SATA later on.

Ordered the k8n and a 2800+ and they're scheduled for delivery tomorrow. Hopefully they'll be able to deliver to the theatre... Doubt I'll sleep tonight... dreaming of the Fedex delivery man. Guess I should tell my wife


Thanks for all the suggestions!

 

[Viol8tor]

Hey bro,
you should have replied to my PM & email I sent you days ago. I could have gave you all of these things you just bought (AMD cpu, mobo & RAM) at a really nice discount and saved you a bunch of money. You would have also already had them in hand as well.
I was trying to help you out, but I guess you didn't want it, eh?

Good luck with the project anyways.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

I strongly advise that you backup all your data, and reformat the hard drive and do a fresh install of the OS.

Your chances of getting it running on the old hard drive without reformatting are not good.

 

[Hossenfeffer]

Originally posted by: GuitarDaddy
I strongly advise that you backup all your data, and reformat the hard drive and do a fresh install of the OS.

Your chances of getting it running on the old hard drive without reformatting are not good.

Didn't really have the option (or equipment) do backup the data so I took the brute force method. Took me a couple hours, but I'm now posting from the system.

Already wanting to pick up some other stuff like a DVD burner so I can make some decent backups.

Thanks again for the help!