Recommend a motherboard for me

[EdibleAutopsy]

I'm upgrading my current system , I'm buying a P4 2.53GHZ , 512 MB of DDR400 ram and MAXTOR 80 gig HD (7200rpm) ATA133

Can anyone recommend a really good mobo to support these, any help appreciated as I dont have much of a clue about mobo's

Also , when fitting the heatsink and fan to the CPU , do you recommend using ARCTIC SILVER or one of those THERMAL PADS that mould themselves ?

thanks

 

[Elcs]

Im an AMD guy myself so I cant recommend a board but I can say this.

Use Arctic Silver and dont use a Pad.

 

[Slammy1]

Well, I'm planning on waiting out the Springdale line, but when I was looking at the 533 FSB machines I liked the P4SDX. It looks like you can only run certain memory timings, but it's pretty much the fastest board out there with DDR 400 MHz memory. Price is <130 USD. Just make sure to get 2X256 meg RAM since it's a DCM board.

 

[ROJAS]

I have had great success using thermal pad. I have very little decrease (1 degree) using Artic Silver 3 on several different systems. I feel AS3 highly over rated for the money, but thermal heat will kill a cpu. You must use something to keep cpu cooler.

I guess if you like AS3, then it's a choice. I add fans to all my cases, remove front of the case, drill out the front case bezel with larger vent holes. I also remove most of the metal in the front case where you mount a fan. The only metal I leave is for mounting the 4 corner screws. I run Panaflo 120mm metal fan in front of all my cases except on Antec cases, I usually default to 80mm or 92 mm in front of Antec Cases.

CPU ide: 28-29 degrees celsius, 1 hour Unreal : cpu warms up to 32-33 degrees celsius.

P4 1.6a Northwood o/c 2.4Ghz using stock voltage,thermal pad,stock HSF.

ROJAS