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Recommendations for a new motherboard

Chuck(G)

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Jan 11, 2007
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Pacific Northwest, USA
My Abit IS7 motherboard is starting to get twitchy--random freezes, that sort of thing. Cleaning out the DDR and AGP slots with De-ox-it helps a bit, but I think the basic problem is that the thing is 10 years old. I've been quite happy with it--and I think the performance is still pretty respectable for this old thing. (BTW, my display card is a GeForce FX5200 driving two monitors and I have 2GB of DDR400 memory installed.

Now I'm beginning to think that I'd better replace this thing if I ever want to see my data again. Since my net connection is only 1.5Mbps on a good day, I'm clearly not going to be watching TV with this thing. Mostly email and browsing and the occasional EDA tool run. I'd like to find a mobo on a budget that will turn in comparable or better performance.


So, does anyone have any suggestions? I've been looking at AM3+ boards, but they're apparently not created equal.
 
You may want to look into a Socket FM1 system, with something like an AMD A4-3400 if a dual core would suffice, or an A6-3650 if you think you might want a quad-core. That platform is designed exactly for the sort of use you're talking about... low-cost, decent CPU performance, and capable integrated graphics, with (comparatively) low power consumption. Plus, unlike the higher-end 'enthusiast' platforms, a lot of the FM1 motherboards still come equipped with a fair selection of legacy ports.

The only catch is that FM1 will be reaching EOL before too long, to be replaced by FM2. That's not necessarily a problem, though, since the lack of a future upgrade path doesn't matter so much if you're going to be using the same system for several years... and the fact that it's nearing the end of its product cycle means it's easier to find good deals on the parts.

As far as good 'budget' class motherboards, I've had the best luck with Asrock and MSI. Biostar's high-end boards are usually nice, but their lower-end stuff is pretty hit-or-miss. ECS has also gained a decent reputation in the past few years, but I don't have any personal experience with their latest stuff to say for sure. I've been quite unimpressed with Asus and Gigabyte... they seem to focus too much on extending the laundry list of bells-and-whistles, while neglecting the part about making the boards actually work right.
 
First:
If you use some air dryer in your faulty board, there's a good success chance (a sort of BGA re-flux)

Second:

Are you thinking in any specific processor? AMD? Intel?
 
As far as good 'budget' class motherboards, I've had the best luck with Asrock and MSI. Biostar's high-end boards are usually nice, but their lower-end stuff is pretty hit-or-miss. ECS has also gained a decent reputation in the past few years, but I don't have any personal experience with their latest stuff to say for sure. I've been quite unimpressed with Asus and Gigabyte... they seem to focus too much on extending the laundry list of bells-and-whistles, while neglecting the part about making the boards actually work right.

Same here in Brazil!
 
First:
If you use some air dryer in your faulty board, there's a good success chance (a sort of BGA re-flux)

If I was sure that was the problem, then I'd use a hot-air gun that I have. Of course, that runs the risk of ruing the board as well. So, I'm not sanguine about doing that just yet.


Are you thinking in any specific processor? AMD? Intel?

Nope, no preference at all, though sufficient processing power is a need. (i.e. I'm not going install an Intel Atom board)
 
Honestly what I would do is head over to newegg.com and check out the latest CPU+ motherboard combo deals (most likely something AMD with built in video). You will need a new PS and RAM as well, just reuse the old case. Should be some decent deals for under $300 for parts that will last you a decade.

Personally I am so far behind the times that my next machine is just somebody elses junk they want gone. Unless you are into new games, Blueray video, or heavy HD video editing anything made in the last 5-7 years will do fine depending on the OS you want (still using XP here). Mostly you just need to have something decent for video card (PCIE), 3GB+ RAM, and a decent sized HD.
 
You will need a new PS and RAM as well, just reuse the old case.

There's no need for a new PSU unless the old one is failing. It was a P4 system, meaning it's already got a newer style PSU with a decently strong 12V rail, and a modern system with integrated graphics will draw less power than the old P4 anyway... the only thing it'd be missing is probably the SATA power connectors, and adapters are cheap.
 
Got all of that--a very nice Seasonic PSU that's been trouble-free and has a couple of SATA power plugs. As a matter of fact, the DVD burner on this thing is SATA, as is a 2TB drive that I use for backup (the IS7 has SATA ports on it). Funny thing is that I'm still using the same monitor after 10 years--a NEC Multisync LDC2010--beastly expensive ($4K) when it was new and still very good in terms of color rendition.
 
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I was using an old 19" Sony CRT until a few years ago when it broke, its in the garage incase I get the urge to fix it someday. Anyway the FX5200 you are used to is very low end even when it was new, anything that is integrated into a new MB will be much faster (not that it probably matters to you outside of supporting a newer OS).

If you decide to just get a used DELL I have a huge box of OEM OS CDs for XP and Vista for DELL plus driver CDs. No idea if you were going to buy Win 7.
 
2003 was the middle of the bad cap era. Have you looked to see if any are leaking or bulging? i865PE boards are usually pretty stable otherwise.
 
If you're looking for another older board that will be dirt cheap now, I can recommend the Intel D915GEVLK. I put one of those in a box in march of 2006 and it's been running reliably 24/7 since then. I stuck an Intel Pentium 4 511 2.8GHZ LGA775 (1MB cache) on it and it's still a very workable machine with its 3GB ram. One thing to note too, is that I still haven't gotten around to putting a case fan in that box. One of these days ... :) Anyway, it's a solid choice for a now cheap and readily available older board.

I like conservative and reliable. So my August 2010 build for my wife was an Intel DH55TC mATX with Pentium Dual Core G9615 Clarkdale LGA1156 2.8GHz which has 3MB Cache. It's got 4 ram slots so easy to upgrade when the time comes, but with 8GB (2x4) to start, it might not need the other 8GB to stay functional. The only problem was with the (then) new video chip and I had to add a cheap video card (Radeon 5350) to get compatibility with FreeBSD. Anyway, that's been running 24/7 for two years now so it's not state of the art either, but should be relatively cheap by now.
 
(i.e. I'm not going install an Intel Atom board)

You say that but they are REALLY good performers for what they are. I had a net-book with the first -gen one and the only thing it could NOT do was full-screen you-tube video @ high def. It was close, but just didn't quite have the ponies under the hood. That said, the new dual core ones are more than capable. I wish I hadn't sold mine, but I wanted a screen capable of 1024x768.

Just to put some numbers on this, the new D2700 atom chip benchmarks at 836. To put that into context, a 3.4ghz pentium 4 (the fastest 478 p4) manages only 549.

on newegg, I put a list of parts needed to make an ITX size computer that would be capable of playing hd video. If you went CRAZY and bought top of the line everything: $780. The laptop sized blu-ray BURNER cost $150 of it. I am planning on doing something similar. But the nice thing about the new d2700 is that it uses ddr3 ram which is CHEAP AS SIN. 2x 8gb laptop sticks costs a whopping $75. seriously.

A more conservative build would run ~$400. depending on what parts you already have.
 
If you're looking for another older board that will be dirt cheap now, I can recommend the Intel D915GEVLK. I put one of those in a box in march of 2006 and it's been running reliably 24/7 since then. I stuck an Intel Pentium 4 511 2.8GHZ LGA775 (1MB cache) on it and it's still a very workable machine with its 3GB ram. One thing to note too, is that I still haven't gotten around to putting a case fan in that box. One of these days ... :) Anyway, it's a solid choice for a now cheap and readily available older board.

I like conservative and reliable. So my August 2010 build for my wife was an Intel DH55TC mATX with Pentium Dual Core G9615 Clarkdale LGA1156 2.8GHz which has 3MB Cache. It's got 4 ram slots so will be easy to upgrade when the time comes, but with 8GB (2x4) to start, it might not need the other 8GB to stay functional. The only problem was with the (then) new video chip and I had to add a cheap video card (Radeon 5350) to get compatibility with FreeBSD. Anyway, that's been running 24/7 for two years now so it's not state of the art either, but should be relatively cheap by now.
 
2003 was the middle of the bad cap era. Have you looked to see if any are leaking or bulging? i865PE boards are usually pretty stable otherwise.

Went over the board with an ESR cap meter. Things look fine. The board will run for week after week just fine, then suddenly get temperamental for a day or so, then be fine.

As far as the FX5200 video board goes, I have other faster AGP boards--the 5200 doesn't run hot as a two-dollar pistol and has generally been very reliable. it's perfectly adequate for the connection speed that I have--and it supports two monitors, which is fairly important to me.

As far as OS stuff goes, I'm seriously considering Linux instead of Win7. I set up an ASUS K8V-X-SE (socket 754) system here a few years ago with Ubuntu. It's been very stable and drivers have been no big issue for it--mostly, it just works. EDA apps are generally easier to set up on it and the Windows apps that have no corresponding Linux versions generally work well under WINE. It's using a 320GB SATA drive. The only serious limitation is the 2GB max memory capacity.

I appreciate everyone's suggestions!
 
You may want to look into a Socket FM1 system [..] Asrock and MSI
A month ago, I bought an Asrock A75M-HVS motherboard. It was the only board in my price range that is small enough for my custom build, has both onboard SATA3 and USB3.0 and at the same time headers for COM and LPT. Of course I don't get floppy or IDE, but those I don't require as my secondary PC has that.
 
Chuck(G)

You don't have a Micro Center in your area but they are on line. You can usually find a combo deal that will give you a free motherboard for the price of a CPU - we're talking $100 or less. I go this route all the time for relatives and close friends. Tiger Direct is another good source for combos - Newegg is okay but good deals don't pop-up quite as often.
 
Right now I can recommend the AMD APU processors (A-Series) as they actually aren't bad at all. Something like this might be helpful. One thing I don't know if you need or not are serial ports, and it doesn't seem like anyone still has those but I have seen PCI and PCI-e serial port adapters, as well as the more common USB to Serial adapters.
 
Well, I still haven't made up my mind on this one, but I've started moving everything over to Linux (Xubuntu)--and other than a few bumps, it's going pretty well. I have a bunch of Windows applications (including my email client) and Wine makes those go pretty well. I can even run Microsoft 16- and 32-bit C compilers, as well as the ML assembler. Pure 16-bit real-mode applications seem to do okay with DOSEMU (Hint: if youŕe trying to get floppy access, be sure to "sudo chmod a+rw /dev/fd0" for real floppy access--the docs don't talk about this.) But so far, so good.

I'm running on an ASUS K8V-X-SE mobo with an AMD64 (Socket 754) CPU and ony 1GB of memory--I'll up that a bit. but performance right now is just fine.
 
Well, I still haven't made up my mind on this one, but I've started moving everything over to Linux (Xubuntu)--and other than a few bumps, it's going pretty well. I have a bunch of Windows applications (including my email client) and Wine makes those go pretty well. I can even run Microsoft 16- and 32-bit C compilers, as well as the ML assembler. Pure 16-bit real-mode applications seem to do okay with DOSEMU (Hint: if youŕe trying to get floppy access, be sure to "sudo chmod a+rw /dev/fd0" for real floppy access--the docs don't talk about this.) But so far, so good.

I'm running on an ASUS K8V-X-SE mobo with an AMD64 (Socket 754) CPU and ony 1GB of memory--I'll up that a bit. but performance right now is just fine.

Recently bought a New system because my old one died on me out of the blue.(Grumble Grumble)
I've build a octocore system with plenty of RAM.

In recent years RAM has became dirt cheap, where you used to buy a house worth of RAM Is now a few cents.

Like most of them Here are saying I have to agree with them.
A APU system is the most attractive to what you wish to do with them.
One thing though and that is wait till november then AMD releases some new CPU's
At that point well i suppose you know what happens with the old models then. ;)

As for Motherboards don't go cheap, go for quality it is a investment and hopefully one for the next decade.
Chose a Motherboard which supports the biggers ammount of RAM you don't need to fill it right away but in the future it is handy.(Especially in linux)
Test your PSU if the supplied voltage rating is constant underload, it should be untill it hits 80% Load, if it can hold that it's qualified for a next system.
RAM is one of the most important things, but keep in mind that the speed requirements depend on your choice of CPU these days.
So there is no need to buy higher rated RAM then your CPU supports, And best would be equal to the Supported speed.
Latency In a AMD system is more critical then in a Intel system and should thus be carefully considered.

My own rule of thumb is this, Motherboard PSU and RAM are critical components, and should be searched for quality.
CPU, HDD, SDD and other components are less critical, although due to recent developments the CPU has gained importance to the Northbridge intergation.

On a linux system with enough RAM place /tmp inside tmpfs which reduces minor writes on the system and reduces time required to shutdown because it doesn't need to clean the volitile space.(Other systems can be placed in RAM too)
 
Not that this helps Chuck(G) pick a board or anything, but I haven't gotten a new mobo in a while. I've gotten lucky and found out where our county govt. recycles it's PC's, and periodically manage to salvage stuff 3~5 years out of date, and that works for me. I might slap a better video card in, or a bigger hard drive, but that's kinda it.
I'm hoping Chuck(G) will post his mobo selection, though.
patscc
 
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