Motherboard

[SneakyStuff]

Narrowed it down to 2 possible motherboards, tell me which one you think is a better dealio. I will be using my PC for gaming almost exclusively, and music. The MOBO will be paired with an Athlon 64 3000+, and 512MB of pc3200. And of coruse if you dont think either are a good deal, just tell me which one you'd reccomend, thanks a lot! 🙂 O and if you could tell me about RAM that would be creat too, I found this 512MB stick.

MOBO #1

MOBO #2

RAM

Thanks all 🙂 I'm gettin really excited over here!

 

[SgtZulu]

It only there was a motherboard forum

 

[cjsketchy]

I'd go with the AOpen unless you really need firewire or 4x SATA ports (probably not likely for gaming & music). I've heard good things about it. As far as the RAM goes, you might want some CAS2 stuff, but if you're trying to keep it cheap, that ram will do you fine.

 

[SneakyStuff]

Originally posted by: cjsketchy
I'd go with the AOpen unless you really need firewire or 4x SATA ports (probably not likely for gaming & music). I've heard good things about it. As far as the RAM goes, you might want some CAS2 stuff, but if you're trying to keep it cheap, that ram will do you fine.

What about the SATA connectors? I didn't see any in the photos for the AOPEN board, I'm going to be getting a Samsung SATA hard drive. If I was sure that it included SATA connectors, i'd be sold, I'm not gonna argue over saving $30 bucks! 😛

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: SneakyStuff

Originally posted by: cjsketchy
I'd go with the AOpen unless you really need firewire or 4x SATA ports (probably not likely for gaming & music). I've heard good things about it. As far as the RAM goes, you might want some CAS2 stuff, but if you're trying to keep it cheap, that ram will do you fine.

What about the SATA connectors? I didn't see any in the photos for the AOPEN board, I'm going to be getting a Samsung SATA hard drive. If I was sure that it included SATA connectors, i'd be sold, I'm not gonna argue over saving $30 bucks! 😛

Here is something from the description:

Onboard SATA/RAID: 2x Serial ATA 150, RAID 0/1

And thats the one I would pick od the two, and better ram. Check my sig.....

 

[SneakyStuff]

well, I know it has the SATA connector on the board, but I was referring to the cables for the HD, because all HD's on newegg.com are OEM, so they dont come with cables of their own. I just wanted to be sure so when all the parts come I wont be 🙁 And I should look for CAS2 RAM even if i'm not overclocking? I'm confused about anything over pc3200, does the mobo support that?

 

[SneakyStuff]

And a new question for you if you don't mind. I was reading somewhere that the socket 754 Athlon 64 processors, and the socket 939 Athlon 64 FX processors have PCI-E support. Is this true? And if it is, could it be reasonable to say that someone such as VIA would release PCI-E motherboards for these socket configurations early on? Because I would be ordering this system a whole heck of a lot faster if I knew I could just swap mobos later on 🙂

 

[Markfw]

CAS2 has nothing to do with overclocking, it just works better with the Athlon64. PC3500 is the same, it is just more compatable, but if crunched for money PC3200 will do. Somebody else had to crank up the voltage to get it to work though (in pairs, single was fine).

As for the motherboards, there are too many unknowns now, so I can;t say, but they are going to make a 3700. I just get the motherboard/cpu pair, and lately, I don;t even bother to upgrade unless I do the pair.

 

[SneakyStuff]

Well you're right, I'm having to upgrade EVERYTHING now, in the future it would just be a CPU/mobo swap. Because i'd have a standard case, a SATA HD, and RAM. Well, I guess that i'll go with the AOPEN board, and look for some nicer RAM, I don't wanna go cheap when the RAM can be re-used later on. Thank you so much for the advice 🙂