need advice on stable integrated AMD mobo for cheap system

[preCRT]

this will be used strictly for office apps & occasional surfing- no gaming.

It has been over a year since I last built a system, so I'm lost as to what is currently available.
Would prefer if board supported sdram & AMD Athlon/Duron around 1.2Ghz [no need for speed]
Already have extra hdd, 256mb sdram, cdrw, & v.92 modem laying around.

Any suggestions? Think cheap but reliable.


Thanks

 

[DAPUNISHER]

ECS K7SEM for 58$. It has built in Lan, video, audio, uses SDRAM, and is plenty fast for a work station. EDIT: it's a super stable board, I built one and gave it to my brother and it ran a distributed computing program 24/7 for a couple of months without a single crash.

 

[Jhhnn]

I'd spend slightly more for a gigabyte ga7zmmh or a 6340 MSI. Recently used the gigabyte in a build for a friend- the only problem was that it's very old school, lots of jumpers, you'll need to actually read the manual. MSI boards have a decent reputation, I've used several but not the 6340. Very low jumper count.

Some people have good luck with ecs/pcchips boards- I'm not one of them. Seems to be a QC issue. If you get a good one, it works fine, but therein lies the catch.....

Pricewatch> motherboards> search for "KM133"

 

[lsman]

same chipset as ECS one,
pcchips 810lmr, wiredzone.com (cheap shipping) or other in pricewatch.com -> motherboard -> sis730.
ver 7 ($55 + 6-7shipping) come with 4ch sound and support XP. include AMR 56K modem.

 

[klein297]

What DAPUNISHER said.
Built one for my daughter and am very pleased with its stability. No problems using a Duron 750 and onboard sound.
Even some of the old BluesClues games that brought some fine Motherboards (BX 133, CUSL2) to their knees run without problems.
Got mine new at Compgeeks for Thirty something, Nice surprise.

 

[Peter]

Note that K7SEM has its limitations. AFAIR it has never been upgraded to run Duron-1000 and above or Athlon-XP properly. PC-Chips M810 (rev. 7.1 or newer) is the better choice, managing that as well as having 4-channel sound and a modem card included.

Even better, get M841LR which uses the more recent DDR RAM capable SiS 740 chipset. Choose SDRAM or DDR, enjoy the much faster 3D graphics. There's an upgraded version M841AULR in the pipeline, bringing USB 2.0.

regards, Peter

 

[Athlon4all]

K7SEM/M810LMR are tried and proven solutions, but I think that there is no reason not to go with the next generation chipsets (KM266 and SiS 740). I agree with Peter, go with a M841LR