Some advice needed

[RupertPupkin2]

I am putting together a new system and have gathered the following so far: XP2000+, Maxtor 80Gig, LiteOn 48x24x48 and an Antec 1080 case with 430 True Power. Need MB, ram and vid card.

I had purchased a MSI KT3 Ultra, but returned it because I thought I would prefer to have integrated LAN, firewire and RAID (not that I will be using RAID initially). From reading this board it seems like the Epox, MSI, Gigabyte and Asus boards are generally well regarded. My question is, does it make sense to get a more integrated board from any vendor then to go with less integrated and add in cards in the future? Last time I put a PC together (MSI-6309 with P3-600@733 to give you an idea of how long ago), it was never as easy as it should be to add cards (IRQ and driver conflict). Is this still the case? If it is easier now, I may just go back and get the KT3 Ultra or KT3 Ultra with Raid, since I have had decent experience with MSI in the past.

I'm not real interested in overclocking and would prefer to go with a proven chipset/board (so nforce2 is out, even though it looks great on paper). Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Some additional info that may be helpful in figuring out what would be the best solution for me.
I am currently running Win98SE, but may upgrade to XP Home on the new machine if that will make a difference. Will probably go with a single 512 stick of DDR (maybe 256 if money is tight). Is the speed increase from faster memory worth the extra cost (costs 15% more, is if 15% faster?). The video card will be the best one I can get in the $100 to $150 range.

 

[Bullhonkie]

does it make sense to get a more integrated board from any vendor then to go with less integrated and add in cards in the future?

I'd say that largely depends on what you have now, what you can spend, and your outlook for upgrading in the future. If you already have things like a network and sound card that you can use, then you could save some money by going with a plain-vanilla type of motherboard. On the other hand the boards that carry more integrated functions generally don't command that big of a premium over their plain-vanilla counterparts these days, so it may be worth it to you to shell out a few more bucks to get a more integrated solution.

Last time I put a PC together (MSI-6309 with P3-600@733 to give you an idea of how long ago), it was never as easy as it should be to add cards (IRQ and driver conflict). Is this still the case?

IRQ conflicts are pretty rare these days, from what I know they're usually caused by old non-p&p devices or devices that aren't quite up to snuff with PCI specifications. Win2k and WinXP do a pretty good job though of making everything work together without requiring any configuration from the user.

Will probably go with a single 512 stick of DDR (maybe 256 if money is tight). Is the speed increase from faster memory worth the extra cost (costs 15% more, is if 15% faster?).

Faster memory only gives you the potential for more speed. If you don't plan on overclocking, getting higher speed RAM than needed will do nothing for your performance. The only reason you may want to consider faster memory (pc2700 instead of pc2100 for instance) is if you plan on upgrading to the 333mhz Athlons sometime in the future and want RAM that can keep up. Even then though, I would imagine most motherboards would allow you to run the 333mhz fsb Athlons with slower memory.

 

[RupertPupkin2]

Bullhonkie,
Thanks for the info.

I am considering the higher end EPOX (e.g. 8K5A2+) and MSI (KT3 Ultra R) boards. Not sure which model. Most don't offer firewire and the MSI's don't have LAN except for the very top end boards. Both companies seem to put out good stable products, so I probably couldn't go wrong with either. Now I just have to decide which one company and which board. Any suggestions would be helpful.

One other question, I saw some memory marked PC2100, that had some Nanya 7ns chips. Most of the other PC2100 had 7.5 chips. Will the 7ns chips run as fast as PC2700 or will they just be able to run at CL2 at PC2100.

Thanks

 

[Bullhonkie]

I don't have experience with either board so I can't offer any personal recommendation unfortunately. I do agree though that you probably can't go wrong with either one of those, or any decent to high-end boards from those manufacturers.

pc2100 with 7ns chips may give you a tiny bit more headroom if you decide to run it faster than the standard 133mhz. 7ns translates into an approximate 143mhz effective speed, not quite fast enough to run at 166mhz like pc2700 does (which needs 6ns chips). As for giving you a bit more headroom as far as memory timing/latency is concerned, I'm tempted to say yes but I honestly don't know enough about it to say absolutely.