Mobo Recommendations

[CraziestFool]

It's the good old advice and recommendation question again.
My system is currently getting dated again, and I wouldn't mind a few mobo/processor/memory recommendations from people. My current specs follow :

*Asus A7V
*1GHz TBird
*2x256Mb Crucial CAS2 PC133 SDRAM
Chaintech 64 Mb GF Ultra
IBM Ericson 60GXP
Creative CDRW
Generic CDROM
Intel 21041 based ethernet
SBLive
Win 2k pro

The starred items are the ones that I'll be upgrading (for obvoius reasons), and wouldn't mind knowing any compatibility issues that anyone may have had with any of the other components with any mobos. I'll be staying in the AMD camp (never had any problems going back to the K6 days !!) and will probably be looking at the 1800 or 1900. Memory I will probably choose Crucial due to past good performance and lack of problems. I may well get a board with RAID onboard and get matching IBM drive - but I won't select a mobo *because* it has RAID. I tend to play with OCing for a bit when I get new kit (purely to see what I can make it do), so I would like a fully featured BIOS.

That's about it really, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated. If I've missed anything out - let me know.
Thanks,

Mike.

 

[MistaTastyCakes]

I like the IWill XP333-R. Onboard Raid, very tweakable BIOS, just try and make sure you can get a hold of the newest version of the mobo ya can. It's a fast, stable board...trouble free setup. As for processor, any XP processor is nice, and Crucial memory is known for the best bang for the buck. You could look into some Kingmax PC2700 memory with this mobo though, and it definately wouldn't hurt.

Just my $.02

 

[oldfoof]

Just got my Epox 8kha+ a couple days ago.... Stable & Fast. Its crashed onb my once... But i think its my cpu cooling... But oh well....

 

[KouklatheCat]

Another vote for the EPox 8KHA+. Cheap price and good board. I dont think (knocking on wood) I have had one system crash since ive installed the board. I have a SB Live and I also went with the Crucial DDR. I easily overclocked from 1.2 (200 Mhz FSB CPU) to 1.3 Ghz, not a tremendous OC but very easy. Other system specs listed on my rigs page.

 

[oldfoof]

KouklatheCat, you have had no crashes with your ep 8kha+ at all... Mine just restarted once.
BTW maybe you can help

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=32&threadid=680011&STARTPAGE=1

 

[Wind]

XP1600+ on Epox 8KHA+ w/ Crucial/Kingmax DDR. Fast & stable combination.

 

[KouklatheCat]

My DVD drive hangs a bit, but it was doing that before the Epox board. I think that is related to the fact im still running an RC of XP. Other then that, the only times I have shut down or restarted my PC it was intentional.

 

[oldfoof]

Yeah , thats sweet , but do you think theres a problem becuase my comp crashed once... during a sandra soft cpu bentch , (the bench mark was complete then I quickly closed the program , and it rebooted!

think I shoud worrie , becuase Been using rc5(distributed.net) for some while now... and stable...

In my bios I have it @ the normal setting should I set it to turbo.....

Oh I should add It has not crashed since I changed to NTFS file system.

What are you using KouklatheCat?

 

[Strawberrymom]

i hear the Kr7A is a good board

 

[KouklatheCat]

I would not worry, Sandra is pretty tough on computers. I have my bios set to turbo. I use Prime 95 to stress my system and heat up my CPU. I am using FAT32.

 

[Mem]

Another vote for the Epox 8KHA+ yet again,mine is one sweet board with WinXP, no problems with stability.

 

[Garra]

I have heard that Soltek´s kt266a is the best option.
Look at this

 

[BILLYBOY999]

I would go for the Soyo Dragon plus. I have a KG7 ... I love it but the soyo is better .. I have a KR7A-R and I hate it. It's been nothing but problems and I have good luck with almost everything I build.

The cool thing about the soyo is that you can run it with NO pci cards if you use all the onboard stuff. I got a stick of 512 crucial DDR so I only fill one ram socket and run no pci cards.. It's 100% stabile and fast as heck.

 

[CraziestFool]

Thanks a lot for the feedback.

The benchmarks do look impressive. Shame about th lack of RAID, but that's what RAID cards R for I suppose.

Mike.

 

[oldfoof]

Glad we could help.

 

[RichardInLA]

I've had very good results with the Shuttle AK31a. I had wanted a RAID board, but was concerned about RAID on-board BIOS conflicting with my Adaptec 29160 SCSI board BIOS. I've tried adding an ACARD ATA/133 RAID adapter and two ATA/133 drives. No problems - all three BIOS (m/b, SCSI, RAID) co-exist fine. The ACARD is much cheaper than Promise cards and supports ATA/133. The IDE RAID outperforms the IBM LVD SCSI drive. M/B has nice feature to shut down system when cpu reaches specified temp. Have not tried any o'clocking - system is pretty fast as is.

Rest of system: Win2K, 2 x Kingston512MB unbuffered non-ecc mem, Soundblaster Live, Sanyo CD SCSI burner, Plextor SCSI CD reader, Matrox G400tv video, e-net adapter, modem, AMD 1800+.