questions on Athlon system components

[SpacemanSpiffVT]

i am lookin for your opinions on:

the best motherboard for a Athlon 1800+ xp , or better, I dont need RAID or any onboard sound or any crap like that, what is the most stable, least expenisve, and OCing isnt my main focus, but I may mess with it later, once my system works ok

a good inexpenisve PS for that cpu, im thinking at least 300w for my multitude of other components

and what kinda RAM to get depending on your mobo preference.


thanks alot!

btw: I am getting from newegg

this is the case:
link

 

[Gyrene]

the best motherboard for a Athlon 1800+ xp , or better

I really like my Epox Board
For my RAM, I like to use Cruicial PC2100 512MB sticks...just because, it's nice and stable.
A nice PS in the Antec 300W...$40 at newegg, but I still like it.

 

[bravesfan258]

the best motherboard for a Athlon 1800+ xp , or better, I dont need RAID or any onboard sound or any crap like that, what is the most stable, least expenisve, and OCing isnt my main focus, but I may mess with it later, once my system works ok

For stable and inexpensive, I sure love my ECS K7S5A - although it does have 'onboard sound and crap'. You can always disable the sound if you like, and the onboard LAN rocks.

This has been a really stable board for me, and most review sites (Tom's Hardware, etc) confirm that. You'll see a lot of message board postings crapping on this board for reliability, but I think that's mainly an offshoot of the fact that no one believes a $54 (@newegg) board could be this good.

For OCing - there are some bios upgrades floating around that will let you OC with this board (I haven't tried), but it's not the most amenable to overclocking.

With 512 meg sticks of DDR going for just over $100 at Crucial.com, I don't see how you'd save much money going with a cheapie brand. Crucial vs. Generic will be a few bucks at most, so go with crucial or another good brand.

My $.02

 

[SpacemanSpiffVT]

thanks guys
any other mobo recommendations?

im thinkin of going with the epox EP-8K3A

 

[RossGr]

The best? That depends on who you talk to. A major factor is what you need to do and how much you have to spend. The ECS board is ok if you like to gamble. There are many other choies though. After my ECS died I got a Shuttle AK31 it has proven to be very good. If lyou can afford it anything by ASUS is nice, I am also running the ASUS nForce board, (A7N266-e) , the Tyan boards are good, as are Soyo and ABIT, lots of good boards out there. So what you can find at a price you can afford are the main questions.

Don't cheap out on the power supply, especially if you get the ECS board, every dollar you save on the ECS needs to go to the power supply. Fact is the power supply may be arround for several mobos go ahead spend some money on it. Save you a lot of head aches in the long run. Enermax or Antec are good starting places, There are others as good, there are also many that are not good the less you spend the more likely you are to get one out of the not so good groupe.

 

[Tbirdkid]

Abit Abit Abit Abit Abit Abit!!! I cant say it enough. It can come with raid or not. You can get a KR7A that is awesome. I have one and I love this board. It runs ddr and it will do buffered or unbuffered and is rock solid. You also get the options to overclock quite a bit if you want later on down the road. It is also very well designed and works well with just about any hardware. My ram i use is Samsung 2100 256 cl2.5. I highly recommend the mushkin stuff though. The lower the latency the faster and better performing your pc will be. Good luck man

 

[CedarTeeth135]

Go for the Epox. I got one and love it.

 

[metaxasm]

I have the abit kr7a and 1gig of mushkin basic. The board will only recognise 768. I thought the ram was bad but mushkin says it is the board. And he also said he was suprised that the ram worked at all. I guess the mushkin basic is pretty low quality.

 

[SpacemanSpiffVT]

i think im gonna go with KT333 mobo, do you guys think paying more for the better DDR is worth it or just stick with kT266?
i dont know what to think

and im thinkin of going with the MSI KT3 Ultra, its like 80 bucks on pricewatch,
how bout that mobo?