Need a cheap but reliable motherboard & CPU

[i]

Any recommendations for something I can find at Newegg and/or ZZF (ZipZoomFly)? I'm hoping to find something that will work well for under $125. Performance doesn't matter too much, and upgradability doesn't matter at all. Basically I'm looking for something that's as cheap as I can get, while not being a complete piece of trash.

And if someone can make a suggestion for a good video card that...
1) has a DVI output
2) will work with minimal fuss in Linux (I'm guessing this means ATI)
3) will handle desktop apps and DVD playing and really nothing else

I have an ATI-based card of some sort right now, but it doesn't have DVI output. DVD playback is also poor, but I don't really know if the video card is to blame for that.

 

[blakerwry]

I've had good luck with Asrock motherboards, specifically SiS based units. They are solidly contructed and use decent heatsinks instead of dinky chipset fans. Most of their boards are in the $40-$50 range and are carried at newegg.

For a video card a radeon 9200se DVI+VGA would work well for anything 2D. I'd probably stick with a saphire brand and go with a passive model... $50


If you need real cheap slap in a duron or cheapest AthlonXP and a stick of Kingston PC2700/3200, put it in an enlight case with built in PSU and add HDD and peripherals to taste.

If you want something faster get a P4 or Athlon64 based mobo from Asrock and some more RAM.

 

[ddrueding]

To quote Mercutio from another thread:

Sempron 2500
512MB PC3200 Rosewill RAM
LiteOn 52x CD Burner
Samsung 40GB hard disk
MSI KM4AM-V (KM400 chipset)
Nice, well constructed Foxconn case with a real 350W PSU
Floppy, Keyboard, Mouse, Cheapie Speakers

My total is $301, including the shipping and taxes.
If I went with PC2700 RAM, it'd be $297. If I went with an 80GB drive, I'd be at $311.

 

[Tannin]

It will be a long, long time before I touch another Asrock motherboard. Very bad reliability record, and terrible warranty service. Real PC-Chips stuff.

We sold maybe 30 or 50 Asrock boards a while back when the Australian Gigabyte distributors dropped the Gigabyte VIA-based UMA board in favour of a SiS-based one. (I don't much like SiS chipsets.) We couldn't get any more of the Biostar model (which worked fine) and were not really happy with the reliability of the Epox UMA board (we were getting the odd failure).

So we tried Asrock. Big mistake! They worked fine to begin with, though they have a weird and horrible BIOS - F2 to run setup; you can't have a stand-alone IDE slave, stupid stuff like that. But at first all seemed well.

Then they started coming back, one after another. A whole slew of different faults:

* Blank screen on start-up. Remove the CPU, put it back again, and it will usually go OK, for a week or two, then the problem comes back. Sometimes pulling the CPU out doesn't work, but you can get the board going with another, different CPU. The first CPU always works perfectly in (e.g.) a Biostar board. Sometimes it doesn't matter what you do, the board is dead.
* Random hangs. System works perfectly for days, weeks, or months. then it starts hanging at random. Nothing to do with software, a reinstall makes no difference, only replacing the motherboard can cure it.
* Random shutdowns and random startups. System powers on or powers off for no reason. The least common Asrock fault, but we have seen at least a couple of these.

Naturally, we tried every trick we knew: different RAM, many different power supplies, all the usual stuff. Nothing makes any difference.

But you send the boards off to Asrock and the same thing happens every single time: they come back marked "no fault found". Except for the time I called them and read the riot act: they replaced our next three or four Asocks with new ones, which (of course) do all the same things that the old ones did.

At last count, I had about 6 or 8 Asrock motherboards sitting here, useless. I've had to replace every single one of them with a motherboard that actually works most of the time (Gigabyte or Biostar), and pay for the new boards out of my own pocket. I can't sell them, they are just useless crap.

I'd just as soon buy PC-Chips as Asrock.

 

[i]

Funny you should mention PC-Chips, Tannin. I've got one of their motherboards on a shelf here somewhere.

It came free with an AMD Duron processor I bought last year (and it really was free -- the price was almost the same as at any other place) . I actually gave it a try to see if it could possibly be as bad as you and others here have mentioned at one point or another.

There are just two things I'll mention about the experience:

1) Yes, some retailers are having to resort to giving PC-Chips motherboards away, just to clear their stock and - presumably - never try to sell them again.
2) There were a few words in the English language I'd never put together into one sentence before, until owning this PC-Chips motherboard. For example, "IDE controller" and "haywire".

So, sorry blake, but if there's even one person here who can manage to draw parallels between Asrock and PC-Chips, I think I'll pass on them for now. I will look at the Radeon though. I am more out of date with what's available in video cards than probably anything else.

And thanks for finding that ddrueding. As luck would have it I'm going to need a microATX board in the next couple of months, but any suggestions for a full-size ATX board? Or am I correct in assuming I could pick any Gigabyte or Biostar motherboard and have a good chance at being happy?

 

[Fushigi]

OK, so it's the now-dead Socket A. And you'd have to wait on a rebate, but I purchased this recently and it's humming away quietly as my AV server. The rebates came in about 3 weeks. It will need a HSF, but I think it's a pretty decent deal for mobo/CPU/512MB RAM.

With Socket A 'dead', the only concern would be upgradability.

For video, look to a Radeon 7000/9200 series or GeForce MX4000 series. You should be able to find a card with VGA & DVI that's passively cooled for $30-40 shipped. Maybe this.

 

[Tannin]

Actually, i, there are just three brands of motherboard that everybody recommends: Gigabyte, Gigabyte, and Gigabyte. They can be quite reasonably priced too.

Here on SF, where we all have a pretty fair idea about what is what, there is a lot we can't agree on just the same. Merc thinks Nvidia video boards are pox and only uses ATI. I won't touch ATI with a bargepole and only use Nvidia. Who's right? One of us must be wrong. There are people here who still like ASUS mainboards (I have no idea why!) and people here who like MSI motherboards (life is interesting with MSI: could be a great product, could be a dud: are you feeling lucky today?), people here who have had good experiences with Asrock (Blake), people who have had total disaster with them (me and Kristi).

But there are a few things everyone here agrees with: for example, you can trust Gigabyte boards; Samsung make the most reliable drives; anything PC Chips make is bound to be pox-ridden; and George W Bush is .. er .. fairly closely related to George H W Bush.

----------------------------------------------------

Now, to Blake, who is probably wondering where that complete bucketing of a brand he's had good luck with came from.

We only ever sold one model of Asrock mainboard, Blake: the KM400-based one (I could find out the model number easily enough if I was at work — it's not like I couldn't find 4 or 6 of them in the workshop junk box to look for the number on). Yup, it was pox.

But then a lot of KM400 boards were on the poxy side. The only two I ever found that went OK were the Biostar and the Gigabyte — and the Gigabyte one took quite a while to come out, maybe because they had trouble getting it to work properly.

The Asrock boards looked OK. Decent packaging, solid look and feel, all the right signs. So it wouldn't surprise me to find that this was just a very bad model for them, and the others are OK. But then, PC Chips sometimes made half-decent boards too — only by mistake, I'm sure, but we sold 120 TX Pro boards (without realising who made them, of course) without a single actual failure. The first 110 boards worked first time, and even the last ten (new "updated" model) worked eventually.

But there is no excuse for selling a dud board and then refusing to replace it with something that works. That sticks in my craw. Asrock owe me something well over $2000, which they will never pay, of course. I won't be touching an Asrock product anytime soon.

Hell, it's getting to the point where we never see anything interesting anymore, always the same old brands. I'm afraid to sell any motherboard except Gigabyte or Biostar; I won't sell any hard drive not made by Samsung (though I'd consider Hitachi if I absolutely had to); we only ever see AMD CPUs these days, only stock Geil RAM; always use the same cases and power supplies; only use Nvidia video cards (nearly always Leadtek, sometimes Albatron); haven't sold a non-Panasonic floppy drive since Epson stopped making them back around 1995 .....

Either the world is different now or I am getting old and set in my ways.

 

[Tannin]

Looks good to me, Fushigi. I'd go with that one, if I was prepared to pay for a stand-alone video card. I don't think even PC Chips could f* up a KT-600 board, the technology has been around for long enough to be very stable. Abit should have no trouble at all getting it right.

Upgrade smuckgrade. Who ever does chip upgrades anyway? That's a geek-only trick.

 

[i]

Oooh ... thanks guys!

Fushigi, I will go with both of those. I appreciate passively-cooled video cards, and you're right, that does seem like a good motherboard/CPU/RAM deal.

 

[Fushigi]

Upgrade smuckgrade. Who ever does chip upgrades anyway? That's a geek-only trick.

I used to buy boards based on ungradeabliity, but I don't any more. Modern CPUs last long enough that an upgrade will likely be to a whole new environment/socket.

I also used to buy the 3rd fastest CPU that was available as it typically offered near-leading-edge performance at a much better price point. But nowadays just about anything will run any modern workload (sans games) fast enough to not matter that much. Dual core, hyperthreading, etc. are all nice, but hardly necessary for what I do. The only benefit would be to Folding.

I run an Athlon XP 1700 @ 2800 on a 'budget' FIC AU13 for my workstation. My wife has a Barton 2600; I don't recall the mobo at the moment. My AV server is using the above Abit/XP2900 combo. All are solid & stable. If I have any knock against them, it would be the onboard LANs are only 100Mb; not gigabit. As I am just now starting to toy with Gb Ethernet, I can spring for the adapters as necessary.

The Abit does have SATA & PATA so it makes a nice upgrade/transition board. I haven't taken the SATA plunge just yet, so I'm happy to have a board that'll support me when I finally need it.

For video, I have an ATI-branded AIW9600Pro, my wide has a generic (PNY?) GeForce MX400 or something like that and the AV box has a generic Radeon 7xxx. Only the AIW has a fan (I think it does; I haven't looked at it lately). All are DVI/VGA capable and have TV out; all can play DVDs with sufficient clarity. I don't see a need for $100+ video cards unless, again, you're a gamer. In fact I prefer the passively cooled solutions and you find those most often on the entry cards.

My machine has 1GB RAM; 512MB in the others. I use an X15 (original) for a boot drive on a Tekram DC390U2W, the wife uses a Quantum Atlas 10K II on a generic LSI Logic U160 card, and the AV box has a Samsung 160GB PATA drive. I'm 2KPro; XPPro on the others.

Everything works. It's a bit of a hodge-podge, but I've no nVidia vs. ATI battles, nForce vs. VIA vs. SIS, etc.

 

[Mercutio]

Would it surprise anyone to know that Asrock is the "budget" arm of Asus?

Me neither.

For the record, Gigabyte, Soltek and Biostar are pretty much tops in my book right now. I've bought MSIs recently (VM400s) and they were just fine, and I've bought Soyo boards (KT600s) that sucked like Jenna Haze going for a money shot.

Biostar has been GREAT for my budget board needs. Their stuff is usually around $15 cheaper than Gigabyte's, and doesn't do anything weird when I'm working on it. That's really the point of this thread. Among the low-cost vendors I know of, I have by far had the best luck with Biostar.

A word about SiS chipsets: I support a LOT of Gigabyte boards (7s48s I think) with SiS chipsets in my classrooms. They are marvelous, but Gigabyte only made them for about 6 months. My more recent experiences with some emachines-branded desktops that had SiS chipsets, however, lead me to conclude that the south bridge chip seems to be the deciding factor in whether or not a board with a SiS chipset is any good.

 

[Buck]

Decent choices Fushigi, especially the video card. (Although I personally don't like to use Abit.)

 

[Tannin]

Gigabyte, Soltek and Biostar are pretty much tops in my book right now.

With the exception of Soltek, that goes for me too. I haven't used much in the way of Soltek boards since KT-266A days. Soltek did three things at that time that pushed me away from them: (a) put their prices up, (b) brought out two or three not-so-great models that were pretty purple but not as reliable as their older products, (c) changed their local distribution arrangements.

(a) and (b) were the immediate cause of us wandering off towards Gigabyte again, via a brief affair with Albatron and a short-lived reprise of the old Epox thing, but it was (c) that has kept us away from Soltek. I'd have to hunt around and find out who the current distributor is. Seeing as Gigabyte and Biostar are working well for us at present (plus the odd Albatron once in a while), I'll stay with them until further notice. But thanks for the heads-up, Mercutio: I'll keep Soltek in the back of my mind in case I need another brand of board.

 

[blakerwry]

I've had technically 4 Asrock boards, but they have all been of the same family, based on SiS chipsets. The Asrock k78xe R3.0 and k78xe+ models.

One went to a friend, one was returned after testing because I was sent the wrong model and decided I couldn't live without the extra features of the k78xe+ model (S-ATA and 2 extra USB ports).



The boards are stable and run smoothly, the one fuss I did have was with adding a PCI IDE controller, I either had to disable or enable the USB emulation option in the BIOS to get the IDE controller to work right... weird... Otherwise fuss free.


I was also impressed with the SiS based Shuttle SS51G, don't remember which SiS chipset it used, but it had more features and was faster than the equivalent intel chipset when running intel processors... Has also been a stable fuss free box.


My only chipset woes have been with VIA stuff... kt266 and older units. The kt266 was stable enough, but ran choppy on a number of setups. Previous chipsets just weren't stable enough in my experience.

 

[Bozo]

Isn't 'cheap' and 'reliable' in the same sentence an oxymoron? :-?


Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Mercutio]

No, but cheap, reliable and fast, taken together, are.

 

[Mercutio]

Also, I endorse Albatron motherboards with Via Envy sound chips. AFAIK they are the ONLY Athlon boards out at the moment that use something besides crappy AC97-spec audio.
Albatron boards, however, don't work with Raden 9600s. Makes me wonder if they have any other weird defects, so I tend to look past them for anything but the upgraded sound.

 

[LiamC]

...that sucked like Jenna Haze going for a money shot.

Merc, if I'd being drinking coffee or cola when I read that, you'd owe me a new keyboard!

P.S. how do you get "PersonX wrote:" instead of "quote:"?

 

[ddrueding]

...that sucked like Jenna Haze going for a money shot.

Merc, if I'd being drinking coffee or cola when I read that, you'd owe me a new keyboard!

P.S. how do you get "PersonX wrote:" instead of "quote:"?

Very funny indeed.

[quote="LiamC"]

Quoted text here

[/quote]

 

[Mercutio]

Thanks LiamC.
Mostly I was just trying to refute Tannin's statement that it's impossible to befunge the KT600. It was, er, the most vivid description I could think of.

 

[LiamC]

Thanks ddrueding.

 

[Santilli]

Well, I've got a Gigabyte 939 KN8s board with a bad ATA channel. $70.00. Took a month through www.ewiz.com to get the board replaced, and, I replaced it with a much more expensive Ultra model of that board, thanks to my local guys reeming me a new one, $140.00(should have been market price around 120.00).

So, I hope the replacement works, since it's likely to sit in a box, until this P2 400mhz, 7 year old Dell dies, which thanks to a wonderful Intel 440BX chipset based motherboard, and passive cooling, seems will never happen.

And you all wonder why I think sometimes value is in Supermicro :wink:

Gigabyte certainly seems like a wonderful motherboard, and the above, with a 939 Athlon 3000+ is PLENTY fast for anyone, and, the processor is around for 120.00 from some people.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is I tried to buy the cheapest Gigabyte board that would do what I wanted, and, it came out being more expensive, since I had to send it back, buy another board to build on, and now I'm stuck with the extra board...

You might figure your cheapest motherboard might be a Gigabyte 75 bucks and up model, and find a cheap processor to work with it.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128286

77.00

Best suggestion:

Go to

www.pricewatch.com

punch in motherboard/cpu combo and IIRC 109.00 range. Many companies are offering combos, with even Intel motherboards, and fast enough cpus for your uses, for excellent prices. Given a choice between any motherboard, and your criteria, I would certainly be looking at an INTEL motherboard, and celeron processor combo, and, they can be had, cheap.

Pick a combo, and then ask the guys who has used that combo, or if they have, if you excuse a pun, Intel on the motherboard/cpu combo :?: :mrgrn:

I'd also look at who the vendor is...

s
Tannin: are you sure those motherboard weren't made in the Soyo plant, and relabeled



:?: :mrgrn: :?:

 

[Buck]

Greg, you are amazing, nay, not just amazing, but also special. Someday I hope to . . . well no, I really don't want to shake your hand just in case your ATA curse rubs off on me. Motherboards fail once in a great while, and with Gigabyte, it's very rare. Yet, you not only get a failed Gigabyte board, but it just so happens that it's the ATA channel. You must have some alter-ego or sock puppet hanging around that's sabatoging your plans to use anything else but Supermicro and SCSI. It would be great if they'd post here; we could talk about their problem and perhaps help them out. Drinks on the house for Greg's sock-puppet, whatever their name may be.

 

[time]

Anyone considering the Tiger Direct bundle should probably read this thread (third post onwards) or similar.

The incredibly exotic XP2900 CPU has a 200MHz FSB, which may be contributing to some of the problems.

Personally, I'd rather scrape up the extra cash and go for a socket 754 solution, even if it means a slower CPU.

Asus K8N $69
Sempron 2600 $71
Corsair 512MB $45

AMD underrate the socket 754 Semprons (and overrate the faster Athlon XPs - the 2900 should be 2750). They come with a far better cooling solution than socket A, run drastically cooler anyway, and they're seriously overclockable.

The K8N is a complete nForce 3 250 solution so you only need a single unified driver for chipset, ATA, SATA, sound and network - which I think is an advantage. It's a solid board - I have one overclocked by 33% without even a hint of instability.

 

[time]

Surely Greg's sock puppet goes by the name "Rambo"?

So, I hope the replacement works, since it's likely to sit in a box, until this P2 400mhz, 7 year old Dell dies, which thanks to a wonderful Intel 440BX chipset based motherboard, and passive cooling, seems will never happen.

I have a 7 year old P450/440BX - not a Dell or Supermicro - which ran 24x7 up until about a year ago (now I just turn it on occasionally).

Yes, I do wonder why you think sometimes value is in Supermicro :wink:

 

[Santilli]

Surely Greg's sock puppet goes by the name "Rambo"?

So, I hope the replacement works, since it's likely to sit in a box, until this P2 400mhz, 7 year old Dell dies, which thanks to a wonderful Intel 440BX chipset based motherboard, and passive cooling, seems will never happen.

I have a 7 year old P450/440BX - not a Dell or Supermicro - which ran 24x7 up until about a year ago (now I just turn it on occasionally).

Yes, I do wonder why you think sometimes value is in Supermicro :wink:

Time and labor are why I value Supermicro, and Intel stuff, if you'll excuse the pun :mrgrn:

By the way, that Dell XPS 400 was a little over 3000 dollars, and looking back, I could have put together a far better computer for a lot less money, if I'd known then what I know now. Or, I could have bought a Soyo motherboard, and had intermitent freezes and hangs, that I could never figure out.

By the way, I also have a P3 450, 440BX motherboard machine, put together out of parts from a failed startup in this area. I've put a Kyro II
in it, with an ATA drive, I think it's a Quantum LM, IIRC, and I use that as a gaming rig for my kids, and, it's worked out fine with games like Diablo II, etc. 512 mb of ram, and it was about 300 dollars. Great machine for a teacher, in a bad school...

Buck: I do seem to be cursed with ATA. Reminds me of the movie The Mummy Returns, where the guy is saying everything is cursed, but, my experience with ATA has been pretty close to that. I figure I've lost about 4000 dollars in labor, and parts, trying to do what I could have done for half that cost, using scsi.

It seems Gigabyte also was concerned, since when I checked, ewiz said Gigabyte wanted to test the board to find out why the ATA channel had failed. I thought it might have been a Windows XP 64 driver problem, and I told them that.

My SO is very hard to work with on computers. It seems everytime I try something on her machine, I either end up reinstalling windows, or get some sort of weird conflict, and this can extend to software as well. I try and keep it minimal, since the machine doesn't have a lot of ram, 384, or
processor speed.

She thinks the Antec P 160 case is REALLY cool, and that's the machine I'm typing on right now. Down the road, I'll have to go for the bling bling Antec case, use the Gigabyte motherboard, and probably XP Pro, but, the more I think about it, I might just stay with 2000 on her machine.
Anyway, all I need is a LSI 320 scsi card, avaliable around 100 bucks, and I have the cable, terminator, and 4 Cheetah 15.2 18 gig drives, actually maybe 5, and one more 36 gig refurb 15.3 Cheetah.

Probably put the 18 gigs in her machine, since she doesn't use more then around 9-10 gigs of software.

That should be a bump that lasts her a long while...

s

 

[Fushigi]

Anyone considering the Tiger Direct bundle should probably read this thread (third post onwards) or similar.

And also consider I installed mine and have had no problems whatsoever. It has been running full-tilt (Folding @ Home at 100% CPU utilization) since I built the machine. I'm not dismissing the problems that others have had, but I would have to don't think the combo itself is to blame.

 

[i]

No, I don't think the combo is necessarily to blame either. That discussion time posted a link to seemed to be between a large number of people who couldn't read instructions and/or had no ability to troubleshoot in a thoughtful manner.

All the same I'm holding off on the motherboard/CPU/RAM combo. (I did order that ATI card yesterday however.) Even at a final price of $129.99 for that combo I'm still debating costs. I may just start hunting around for something used. Dunno yet.

 

[Buck]

Has anyone ever used the: AMA3700BEX5AR ? My disti describes it as: AMD Athlon 64 Mobile Desktop Replacement 3700+(2.4GHz) (81.5 W) L1=128KB L2=1MB