which one would you choose?

[nfixit2004]

Hell to all I have a system, that the motherboard has to be replaced and Iam trying to spend $50(shipping inculded) and under. its for a xp2000 cpu, ddr2100 memory. the board thats being replaced is a ecs k7s5a pro

I do not want to see this system again so want to get a reliable mB for it, these are what Iam looking at now.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProdu...-135-149&catalog=22&manufactory=BROWSE&depa=1

&

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?description=13-185-010&refer=pr1c3watch

anyone used these boards? and are they good?

thanks in advance

 

[Bonesdad]

Consider Shuttle AN35N This is a refurb board, but it will give a better path for future upgrades of CPU and memory. Only $38 for this board, you really cannot go wrong. Read the reviews on Newegg. Later you (or whomever) can upgrade the CPU to an AMD Barton CPU (2500+ or 2800+) and some PC3200 DDR and get a hell of an upgrade.

Stay away from PCChips...don't know about the ECS, but again, you are limiting their upgrade path. Good luck.

EDIT: You best hurry, this AN35N won't last long on the refurb price. New price is only $62 tho.

 

[Xemus]

If you want to make sure you get a reliable board, I would stay away from those two brands. I wouldn't personally recommend them, and for about $57 you can get a mid range MSI, Asus, or Abit board that will give you the reliability that you (or your customer?) want.
If forced to choose tho, I would go with the ECS board, as I've heard of less issues with them than PC Chips.

 

[Peter]

Hail to the experts!

ECS and PC-Chips are the same company, using the same manufacturing plant, many of their products even being all identical. Abit have most of their stuff manufactured at ECS.

M811 uses the older chipset, thus has less of an upgrade path.

If you're replacing a K7S5A, I recommend you go with an SiS chipset again, this might save you an OS reinstall. Look for an L7S7A2 - I'm surprised that newegg lists them as $50, since I can buy them here for 29 euros (about $35). Anyhow, there's a free internal card reader with those, and the sound is actually six-channel not four, at least on the German retail model.

M811 and L7S7A2 are that cheap because they are minimalistic, using not-so-new chipsets, and stripped bare of any fancy features. K7VTA3 v5 is somewhat newer, and hasn't been designed to be quite so cost effective - notice how much bigger the board is.

I've been using plenty of L7S7A2 recently, with CPUs up to 2400+, without any problems. Careful: With this board, you can only use AGP 4x or 8x cards, 1x/2x no longer supported. The VIA chipset boards still can.