recommendations for a cheap all-in-one board?

[pamf]

I'm planning on building a few systems (family, friends, etc) .. I'm looking for a cheap socket A board to base them on.. Something which includes decent video and sound, pc133, and isn't a total piece of garbage. the cheapest price would be good, but im willing to pay a bit extra for it if its noticably better.. this would be for a low end system which would probably be turned off most of the time and wouldn't have much to do even when on..

one board im looking at is the elitegroup K7SEM.. it seems to fit the bill and is only $99 (canadian) .. does anyone have any experience with this board?

the gigabyte ga-7zzm is another one, ive built one system with this with good results but it seems gigabyte stopped making them (or at least every place i know of stopped stocking them..)

anyone got any other suggestions ?

 

[tenoc]

At ncix.com in B.C.-

ECS K7SEM @ 100
Gig GA-7ZMM-C @ 135
Soltek SK-75LIV @ 115
Shuttle MK20N @ 100

Also Asus NForce @ 318!

Would go for the ECS myself based on my successfull builds with K7S5A.

 

[Iron Woode]

PCChips m810lmr or similar board by PCChips.

I have built a few systems with this board and it works great. Video isn't bad either, not the greatest but not bad. It will run XP cpus too, version 7 or higher, but version 5 seems to run the morgan core Durons with no problems.

 

[Boonesmi]

all 3 are very very similar (ecs k7sem, pcchips 810lmr, amptron 810lm) the newer version of any of them support all of the newest athlonxp cpu's also

but the pcchips and the amptron also both come bundled with a 56k modem... the k7sem doesnt


by the way ive done multiple builds using the pcchips and amptron boards, ive been very happy with them.

 

[mamisano]

I personally have experience with the ECS K7SEM. It is a great board that serves its purpose very well. I have one in my mother's PC running an 800 Duron and 256MB PC-133. No problems what so ever.

Go with ECS over PcChips or Amptron because they have much better support.

 

[pamf]

ecs it is then i cant find the pcchips one at any of the places i go to .. onboard modem would be a plus, but they're only $20 anyhow .. (*no carrier*.. heh)

btw tenoc, i was pricing the ecs one at www.a-power.com .. theyve got stores in burnaby and richmond if you're near there, and great prices on almost everything.. (you mentioned ncix..) dunno if you live there or just found it..

thanks for the replies

 

[Quixfire]

I understand the need for an all-in-one board, but I use the ECS K7S5A motherboard with a low end agp video card (like the Radeon 32MB DDR). You can get both of these for less than 100.00 (On NewEgg.com) and will out perform any intergated video chipset, including nForce.

 

[mamisano]

<< I understand the need for an all-in-one board, but I use the ECS K7S5A motherboard with a low end agp video card (like the Radeon 32MB DDR). You can get both of these for less than 100.00 (On NewEgg.com) and will out perform any intergated video chipset, including nForce. >>



They were quoting Canadian $, I am not sure if NewEgg ships to Canada.

 

[Evadman]

<<
They were quoting Canadian $, I am not sure if NewEgg ships to Canada. >>



They do not.

 

[Athlon4all]

K7SEM's a great board, but see if you can get PC Chips M841LR. It is SiS 740, and has a faster Graphics card than K7SEM when you use DDR (It does have both DDR and PC133 slots). Also if you want faster video, consider nForce (although prolly out of your league). Good luck!

 

[tenoc]

Thanks pamf.

I live in Ontario but order a lot of stuff from ncix. I like the choices, pricing (have to dig
a bit sometimes) and reasonable shipping. The bonus is I don't have to pay PST (8%)
on out-of-province but in-Canada purchases! Anything I can do to keep money out
of the hands of the incompetent arses running Queen's Park!

The tax saved more than covers shipping, even from B.C. Last week, on a processor
and two sticks of DDR, CDN 13 to ship, 40 saved in PST.