need help picking a mobo

[halvey]

hey... im building a new computer.. and really need some help selecting a mobo...right now i am thinking about going with a abit, but not really sure which one i want to go with...the computer im building will have about 4-5 drives..and im thinking about putting two hard drives in the unit... to switch from linux and windows.. yeah i know i can do this by partiotioning my hard drive.. but figured maybe it would be better to keep the linux on a seperate hard drive cause i dont really know that much about what im doing with the linux program....n e way if u could help me out with picking a mobo that would be great... also what kind of processer would u suggest to go with this?

 

[Boonesmi]

if your going to use 5 drives you probably want to get a board with raid, and just use it as 2 extra ide channels (support for 8 ide devices total)

some really good boards are the
epox 8k7a+ (the + means the raid version of the board) (about $150)
gigabyte dx7r (about $190)

both of the above boards are very similar, both are very fast/stable. the gigabyte board has 3 dimm slots for ram, but.... to use all 3 slots you need to use registered ram

the epox board only has 2 dimm slots

they both have the amd 760 chipset(which is probably the best current chipset for ddr boards)

they both support any of the current AMD duron and athlon cpu's and they also will have support for the future duron/athlons


1.2ghz athlons are priced very nicely right now, (about $100)
and ddr ram only costs about $70 for 256mb at www.crucial.com



the prices above are from newegg.com, except of course the ram

 

[Mark0999]

Check out my buyers guide....

I have links, prices, and recommendations.

I agree... you need to look at a RAID board.

DDR... look at the Epox EP-8K7A+
non-DDR... look at the Abit KT7A-RAID