which mobo for under 50 quid?

[revol68]

rite need some advice chaps and chapettes,
Im goin to give my mate my nforce 2 motherboard for his machine ( he just wants a basic set up for surfing and word processing) cos i just got a new graphics card (9600xt) and a new sound card (some generic piece o crap). So basically he gets my motherboard w Geforce 4 MX and onboard sound and i buy a new mother board. Now which board should i get my cpu is a 2400+ AMD athlon 133fsb and ive 512 ddr ram (think its 333). I would like onboard sound 5.1 as i don't like this generic piece of crap and heard that sound storm is very good. Ive bascially got 50 quid to spend on the mobo itself.

[malfunction]

IMO you'll be lucky to find an nForce 2 / Ultra 400 mobo with the MCP-T for £50 - most are more like £70. Recommendations would be the abit NF7-S (v2.0) or the asus A7N8X deluxe (also v2.0) (or the abit AN7 or Asus A7N8X-E deluxe which are both minor re-spins of the first two boards... The AN7 basically adds more friendly windows based overclocking and monitoring and the A7N8X-E adds wireless LAN)

[revol68]

nah i dont want an nforce 2 as i dont need the graphics so just a basic mobo nd maybe onbard 5.1 sound.

[malfunction]

You don't have to have onboard GFX - the SPP versions have no onboard GFX and (the v2.0's / ultra 400's) are guaranteed to do 400MHz FSB... And the onboard sound (soundstorm) is thought to be the best onboard sound solution and one of the best 5.1 sound solutions full stop. And you can't get soundstorm anywhere other than an nForce2 mobo (you can get 5.1 audio but not soundstorm - that's nVidia's trademark for their onboard 5.1 audio solution - soundstorm = MCP-T)

And even if you did (do!) have one with onboard GFX you still don't have to use it... I've never seen or heard of an nForce 2 mobo that doesn't have an AGP slot. Overclocking on an IGP based board will be likely to be limited to less than a 400MHz FSB.

[revol68]

yeah but what board for under 50 quid with 5.1, oh yeah has soundstorm got an optical out???

basically the best one for under 50 quid

[malfunction]

All you can get for around £50 notes is an non MCP-T based nForce2 mobo (probably single channel DDR too - though that isn't exactly important) or a VIA (KT400/600) based mobo which I personally wouldn't touch with a 10' pole. Or there's the latest SiS chipsets though I don't know jack about them (from my experience with older SiS chipsets they are stable - much more stable than VIA - but not the best performers)... But if you can't afford more than £50 for the mobo why not put that £50 towards a GFX card for your current system so that you can stop using the onboard GFX? What is you current mobo anyway?

[malfunction]

Oh and AFAIK all the MCP-T / soundstorm nForce2 mobos have optical out (in fact I don't think they can be soundstorm certified without it). AFAIK only the AN7 has an optical in (should you need it)

[Howard]

Nforce2 is the only solution if you want onboard 5.1 sound.
And yes, all Soundstorm mobos have digital coax/optical outputs.

[Alex]

Stretch to £54? If so what about the EPoX 8RDA+ from here:

http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?a...rpID=5&cks=PRL

Worth the extra £4 methinks.

[Alex]

Oh and AFAIK all the MCP-T / soundstorm nForce2 mobos have optical out (in fact I don't think they can be soundstorm certified without it). AFAIK only the AN7 has an optical in (should you need it)

The NF7 has optical out but not soundstorm, my brother got one for christmas

[malfunction]

Just checked around and you can get an nForce2 Ultra 400 with MCP-T (soundstorm) for ~ £55 (EPOX 8RDA+ V2.1 for £54.05 from www.komplett.co.uk). I have no idea how good or bad a board this is though. Presumably it's good but not quite as good as the more popular abit and asus boards I quoted above... Probably good enough though and as long as it's stable I doubt you'd really notice the difference


Edit: beaten to it!

[Howard]

The NF7 has optical out but not soundstorm, my brother got one for christmas

Are you sure? I was under the impression the NF7 had standard AC97 or whatever the crappy onboard audio is.

[Pita^Norf]

The NF7 has optical out but not soundstorm, my brother got one for christmas

I'm sure you're mistaken - IIRC the Abit's are the only ones to be Soundstorm certified.

[Howard]

Erm?

All Nforce2 mobos with the MCP-T2 or whatver it is chipset and have the decent 5.1 audio chip (with the Dolby Digital interactive content encoder, etc) are classed as Soundstorm enabled boards.

[Alex]

As I said, its not soundstorm. I just said it has an optical out. Which I am sure about, yes.

[Alex]

Not the best picture but you can make out that its there.