Quick question: Abit AN8 Ultra or MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum?

[hellfire88]

Hi,
Just looking to get some opinions, I'll be putting these parts into my desktop PC:

-Antec Lanboy Aluminum ATX case
- 2x 80mm Panaflo L1A case fans (one in rear for outtake, one in front for intake)
- Enermax 470W Noisetaker PSU
- AMD Athlon64 3000+ Venice OEM CPU
- Thermalright XP-90 w/Nexus 92mm quiet fan
- 2x1GB Crucial Value DDR400 RAM
- XFX 6800GT PCI-E with Zalman VF-700CU HSF
- Seagate 7200.8 250GB 7200RPM, 8mb cache SATA HDD
- NEC ND-3540A 16x DVDRW drive
- 1.44 Floppy drive

I won't be overclocking much, if at all (max I'd probably do is 2.4GHz, if I can even do that lol). I'm mainly looking to make my PC as quiet as possible, since it'll be on 24/7 4feet from my bed. Taking this into account, the Abit AN8 Ultra should win with its passive heatpipe northbridge chipset cooler. However, doesn't the MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum have more features? Both use the Nvidia Nforce4 Ultra chipset, so should perform roughly the same? Anyways, please offer any opinions, thanks! 🙂

 

[sixth]

I wouldnt get the neo4...if you read the reviews on here (forum) and head over to forums.msi.com.tw and read the posts, that board has alot of issues. i know that for a fact becuase i have one, MSI just cant get the bios release down for the board, they all suck.

The abit is a good board, but others on here have told me to stay away, i jsut ordered a Epox A9nPA ultra board, all i wanted was stable, relaible and good mobo. But see what others say, the review done here on anandtech wasnt very good for the abit.

good luck.

 

[hellfire88]

thanks for your advice sixth, I'll check out those MSI forums. Any other opinions? 🙂