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Motherboard suggestions

dragonsm

Junior Member
Jul 13, 2007
13
0
0
Yet another mobo thread begging for help.

After a little research and what a friend of mine told me about his experiences with ASUS, my initial choice for a mobo/cpu combo was the ASUS M2N-E Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 (no sli version)

http://www.newegg.com/product/...N82E16813131022



In all honesty, I initially found this board on the "Daily Deals" page and the combo price with the 5200+ made it enticing.

It looked to have just about everything I possibly would need:
3 pci slots (not sure if I need 3...but better to have 1 to many than not enough)
1 ide slot
4+SATA
1 PCI-E x16 (Doubt I will ever use 2 of those)
RJ-45 and enough USB ports....etc
ATX format
and the board wasn't priced way out there.

Well, as I began to read more and more "reviews" and visit different forums, I read more and more negative comments and issues with this board choice which now has me in doubts. The thread that did me in was the "*** Official ASUS M2N-E Thread *** " started in this forum. (Thanks guys!) I am still not up to speed on all the different chipsets on mobo's and what is the older/newer technology. (It's been close to 6 years since I last did motherboard research and a build) I am now in search for a board that is rock solid, easy to use and will be something I will hang onto for a little while and will do me justice. I do enjoy playing games online. (Especially get into the BF194, and hopefully BF2)

Is the ASUS board really that bad?

With some of those specifications listed above, I checked out a few boards on newegg and ran across two bio-star boards and a gigabyte board that seem to get good reviews...

Thoughts on these?

BIOSTAR TFORCE 550 Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce 550 MCP ATX

BIOSTAR TF560 A2+ Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce 560 MCP ATX AMD Motherboard
(takes the new upcoming AMD chip?)

GIGABYTE GA-M61P-S3 Socket AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6100 ATX

In the past I have never overclocked, and I probably don't forsee myself doing it, though....never say never.

Any other recommendations are also welcomed.

I feel if I can get over this hurdle, the rest should be a bit easier to solve!