New motherboard - advice welcome

[RobUK]

Hey everyone.

I'm currently looking at getting a new CPU/motherboard/RAM combo to replace my broken/aging KT7A/TBird 1.4Ghz setup.

I thinking of going for an AMD Barton 2500+, some kind of motherboard and 512Mb PC3200 (dual channel) setup. Primarily, I want to be able to run this quiet and will probably underclock and undervold it a bit. Hence, my criteria are:

- Passively cooled Northbridge (fans = noise).

- Full multiplier select (at least low multilplier ranges - e.g under 12x). Ideally I'd want to be able to take a 333Mhz Barton and run it with a lower multiplier but on a 400Mhz FSB.

- Voltage adjustment, so I can undervolt the CPU.

- Cheap. My budget for this whole upgrade is about £200 ($300 USD). I can get 512Mb Corsair PC3200 for around £75 and the CPU for around £65, which leaves me with a budget of about £50-60 for a motherboard.

- Quality. I don't want a board that needs half a dozen BIOS flashes and 3 weeks wading through FAQs and support manuals before I eventually find out I need to RMA it... that isn't my idea of fun.

I also need at least 2 USB 2.0 ports but aside from that, I'm not really fussed about other features. Ideally, I don't want to pay extra for a load of stuff I'm not going to use like onboard sound, firewire, SATA , RAID etc. but I know it's hard to get a truly "clean" board these days.

My overall aim is to take a 2500+/333 Barton (1.8Ghz) and run it somewhere around the 2000+/400 range (e.g. 1.4Ghz). So, my questions really are:

- What board(s) should I be looking at?

- Is what I want to do even possible?

Also, can I re-use my old Thermalright AX-7 heatsink with a newer chip? This heatsink cools my current Thunderbird 1.4Ghz fine, so I presume probably 'yes' but I want to check.

In case it's any interest, my current specs are:

Abit KT7A (non-RAID - Northbridge fan removed), TBird 1.4 running at 1Ghz/133@1.5v cooled by AX-7 with YS-Tech "Silent" 80mm@7v, 512Mb (2x256) Crucial PC133 SDRAM, Thermistor modded Enermax 330W PSU, PNY GF4 Ti4600 (stock), Creative Audigy, 60Gb Seagate Barracuda IV (PATA) suspended via Zalman mount/cooler, Cheapo 56k PCI software modem. 2x 80mm YS-Tech "silent" 80mm case fans@7v exhausting.

I'm actually very happy with this setup (even though I know it's a bit old) but a couple of days ago, I started getting lockups and graphical corruption, and to cut a long story short, I've worked out that the AGP slot is broken on the KT7A, hence why I'm now looking for a new motherboard.

Thanks if you've read all this and thanks in advance for any help or advice - any replies most welcome!

Best wishes and regards to all.

Rob

 

[Mem]

I can get 512Mb Corsair PC3200 for around £75

I would go with Crucial 512mb PC3200 ram for £62.26 inc VAT and free delivery link .

Ebuyer UK have the retail Barton XP 2500+ (includes heatsink etc) for £59.94 .

Btw welcome to AT forums.

 

[RobUK]

Thanks for the welcome

Yeah, I usually find E-Buyer are good for prices and that is where I've currently been looking for upgrades. I've currently got Crucial RAM so I know they are a good manufacturer.

Any advice on motherboards I should be looking at?

I found a Gigabyte single-channel nForce2 board on E-Buyer for around £50. I think the board is the GA-7N400E-L which has sound and LAN (which may possibly be useful to me in future), but not any other features. This looks good and seems to be what I've after but I've not found a review on it and there doesn't seem to be much other info around on its voltage/multiplier features, so I'm a bit hesistant.

Thanks again for your reply - any more advice most welcome.

Best regards,

Rob

 

[gistech1978]

if i were going to buy a board today
it would probabaly be the epox 8RDA3+

ive been extremely happy with my 8RDA.

you might look into it.
it meets alot of your criteria.

edit: well on further inspection, it looks like a newer revision of this board includes active cooling on the NB
*shrug*

 

[RobUK]

Hey thanks.

I may consider a good board with active cooling as I am willing to remove the active cooler and put on a larger heatsink (e.g. Zalman northbridge cooler or something) if the board is decent. Really, I'd like not to have to mess with it though and would like it to just work out of the box. I'm just trying to get a feel for what kind of decent boards are around at the moment.

I'll take a look at it though.

Thanks for your help,

Rob

Edit: Interesting - doing some digging on AMD-MB forums I found a guy who had a very similar problem with a KT7A and a Ti4200 that he was getting intermittant video dropout and corruption. Seems that in his case, the PSU was the cause of the problem. I may try switching in my cheapo backup E-Buyer 300W PSU and see if that makes any difference in getting the Ti4600 to play nice... (I'm also wondering here as I thermistor modded the PSU a couple of months back - perhaps this has ended up damaging it after all? I've been toying with the idea of getting a super-quiet PSU for a while so this may be the excuse I'm after, and is cheaper than buying new guts, if it turns out to be the problem).

 

[The_Lurker]

Personally i have a MSI K7N2-L. If i were to get amotherboard at this point I'd get myself the MSI K7N2-Delta-ISLR. Price is right (like $150 CDN), all the bells and whistles (minus the onboard Video, but I dun need that) and the board overclocks well and is stable. Full Multiplier and FSB adjustments with Voltage up to 1.85 and ram from 2.5-2.7.

 

[Mem]

Choosing the right board is not easy since there are lot of good nForce2 ands even VIA KT600 boards,however for your purpose I would lean towards a nForce 2 board like the Epox 8RDA3+ here in this review or nforce 2 models from Asus A7N8X deluxe,Abit NF7 and MSI K7N2-L ,do some research with reviews etc and see which ones offer you the best value for money for features and performance.

 

[DahDee]

Albatron KX18D Pro II thread

 

[RobUK]

Hey thanks for all the replies. There's a lot of useful info for me to look through.

I've been browsing through some but still aren't much the wiser. All the boards listed seem to have some issue or other than doesn't make the suitable for building a quiet rig.

The Asus boards don't seem to be able to go under 1.6v CPU core - I was hoping to be able to get down to 1.4v-1.3v with a Barton. They do have passive cooling though, which is a plus. I'm a little bit worried though by all the FAQ/problem threads - are there issues with these boards? I thought Asus have a good reputation as being quality.

I'm not too keen on getting another Abit board - my KT7A has always been awkward and I've had a lot of odd problems with it over the years (allthough nothing major, until now), like failing boots, problems with memory configurations, PCI problems, BIOS flashes etc. It's worked in the end but has been a PITA getting there, which is what I want to avoid this time. I guess this has put me off Abit overall.

I was also looking at Gigabyte boards, which look good apart from the fact again that you can't seem to undervolt them at all - the BIOS supports over-volting but not under-volting! No go. This is a shame as the single-channel Gigabyte 7N-400E seemed to suit my needs down to the ground otherwise

All other boards seem to have active coolers, which isn't ideal as it means some modding for me plus another £10 or so for a new Zalman Northbridge cooler = £ + PITA. Many reviews and manufacturers are also cagey about the minimum core voltage range too (I know I'm a bit odd in wanting to undervolt rather than overvolt, like nearly everyone else). E.g. what is the minimum voltage range of boards like the Albatron/Epox? I take it all boards have BIOS overriding for voltage adjustments these days?

There also doesn't seem to be much in the way of recent nForce2 reviews. Most of the links seem to be older reviews of NF2 Ultra (dual channel) chipsets. I've seen that in the past few months, the budget single-channel NF2 chipsets have been making some headway but all the major hardware sites are steering clear of these less glamourous boards I'd really like to see a round-up of these latest boards, that would be great. They seem very cheap and not much slower but I am worried that the multipler/voltage options will be non-existant or very limited on these budget boards.

Would it be worth me looking at KT600 boards? VIA makes me nervous a bit (again, going back to my not-so-great 686b experiences) but they seem to be much better these days. If so, any advice/links/recommendations?

Thanks again for all the help and words of advice here.

Cheers,

Rob

Edit: Just as an aside, I tried swapping the PSU out last night to see if I could get my Ti4600 going but it makes no difference. The cheapo E-Buyer 300W PSU runs just the same as my Enermax and I get corruption/lockups within a minute or so of getting into Windows. I guess it really is the AGP slot that has gone. I'm going to try a friend's FX5600 in it tomorrow night (busy tonight) and I have a sneaking suspicion that will also start corrupting and confirm that the AGP has gone on my KT7A. Oh well...

 

[Mem]

I forgot to meantion the Soltek SL-75FRN2-L nForce 2 board ,review here and you can buy it for £58.69 from OcUK .


VIA KT600 Roundup review ,that`ll keep you busy .

 

[RobUK]

Great - thanks

 

[zogg]

what is the reason for wanting to undervolt the pc?