Which Asus board is best to pair with an A64 2800+?

[Ken90630]

Hi, All,

A friend of the family has decided to build his first computer (for his wife), and he's asking me for a little advice.

He's decided he wants to build her an A64 2800+ system and he asked me about motherboards. I haven't kept up with the A64 systems of late, so I'm not sure how to advise him here.

I'm somewhat partial to Asus boards (I particularly like the 3-year warranties), so I'd like to recommend a particular Asus model. Is there a particular model that's thought highly of here on Anandtech.com? He's mostly concerned with reliability rather than bells & whistles.

Needs, off the top of my head:

Serial HD = no, but if the board comes with the capability, fine
Fanless northbridge = preferable
Gaming "considerations" = none
RAID = no
Built-in ethernet = preferable
Gigabit LAN = no
Onboard sound = no, unless Soundstorm is available
Onboard video = irrelevant, as he'll have a separate ATI vid card (a basic one)
USB 2.0 ports = 4 in back would be nice
Firewire = preferable, but not required
CPU cooler = stock AMD (retail w/chip)

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. I'm actually gonna be building an A64-based system for myself one of these days, so I'm kinda interested in some of this for myself as well.

Any feedback would be much appreciated.

 

[Ken90630]

Bumpity bump

 

[akugami]

Socket 754 Sempron based system sounds perfect since this doesn't sound like a gaming machine but rather one for work and light recreation (web browsing, movie watching, tetris type gaming).

Sempron 64 2800+ ASUS K8V-X Socket 754

Serial HD = no, but if the board comes with the capability, fine - check, has both PATA and SATA so you're covered on both ends
RAID = no - check, raid 0/1, even though you won't need it
Gigabit LAN = no - check, gigabit ethernet is good but useless if you don't use a gigabit router
Onboard sound = no, unless Soundstorm is available - 6 channel onboard sound, sadly no Soundstorm unless you're getting a NF2 mobo
Onboard video = irrelevant, as he'll have a separate ATI vid card (a basic one) - none, I'm assuming he wanted an AGP based system here
USB 2.0 ports = 4 in back would be nice - check
Firewire = preferable, but not required - none, but you can get a cheap $15 firewire card if you really need it

The AMD Sempron 64 2800+ should run you roughly $70 and the ASUS K8V-X should also run you ruoghly $70. Couple it with 512MB of RAM, a cheap video card, cheap hard drive, DVD burner (no reason not to get one as they are below $50 at this point), keyboard mouse and you're good to go with a decent system for less than $400 total. I'm assuming he already has a monitor.

 

[Ken90630]

Thanks, Akugami.

I should have been more specific earlier and mentioned that he definitely wants to build an Athlon A64 2800+ system rather than a Sempron based system. Your thinking was on the mark re an appropriate chip for his current usage, but he wants the extra capability/speed of an Athlon A64. While they may not use it right away, he said his wife might get more into digital photography one of these days (she just bought a digicam, I think). If she does, we don't want her saddled with a Sempron trying to use Photoshop.

And money's not much of an issue with him [must be nice ], so he's looking more for quality (within reason) than he is for a budget system. And yeah, he already has a monitor picked out for the system (20" LCD). And yes, he'll have an AGP graphic card.

I'm gonna check out Asus's site tonite, but just thought I'd post this question earlier & see what some of you guys have to say about their current boards. Thanks for the feedback.

 

[superfly27]

I can tell you on paper I love the K8N4-E Deluxe but I haven't seen any reviews yet apart from a few comments on newegg.

 

[13Gigatons]

The Asus K8N4-E Deluxe is a mobo I recommend for the socket 754.

 

[Aenslead]

I conccur. K8N4-E; you get PCIe, and the nForce 4 chipset.

 

[CraigRT]

I'd go with the vanilla Asus K8N.... I use about a dozen of these at work, and for random customers (more a few months ago than anything) and they are awesome boards. never a problem. They are very cheap too.

 

[Ken90630]

Thanks, guys. My friend has decided to go with either a vanilla K8N (thanks, Craig) if he goes Socket 754 or an A8V board if he goes Socket 939. He was originally gonna go Socket 754, but then I mentioned that upgrading won't be an option with that platform. So now he's thinking the A8V might be worth the few extra $$ in order to have some upgrade flexibility (particularly if more chip-based anti-virus features get developed by AMD & Microsoft, like the "Enhanced Virus Protection" that the A64 chips offer). I'm guessing that future chips like this will only be Socket 939 and up. Anywho, that's our thinking.

Thanks again, all.