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Think one of these threads come up before, but anyways, my friend wants to upgrade his system and has asked me to find out what would be the best mobo setup for him.
He's thinking of getting a 3000+ venice and overclocking it marginally to about 2.4ghz or so. (Thats of course if the chip will do that), however he wants 2gb ram so probably won't be running the chip 1:1.
so I see the consensus is between these three motherboards.
asus a8n premium ?
abit an8-ultra ?
dfi ultra-d ?
assuming that he has/is going PCI-E gfx.
You can also throw the EPoX EP-9NPA+ Ultra in there & possibly the MSI
For light overclocking the Asus A8N-E is awesome. Most stable board ive owned.
do these nf4s require a new psu? He's using a vantec ion 400w atm.
Oh and he will probably go to about 250-260htt on the board with the cpu.
Yeah hes going pci-e.
Yep you'll need a good 450w+ really for A64 rigs esepcially if overclocking.
The Abit is supposed to be a very good board as tthe MSI is spposed to be a bit pap.
DFIs a good board but can be a bit fiddly to correctly setup
I'm in a similar situation, im going to go with the Asus A8N-SLi Deluxe, it's supposed to be reliable and coupled with the A64 3500+it should do well at overclocking slightly.
A good recomendation. Tho get the Plat Virsion witht he passive chipset if you can. Wish i did.Quote:
Originally Posted by bindo
I've decided that my next motherboard will be a DFI NF4-DAGF, the least expensive 939 board they make. It's got all I need on it (clean layout, 3.2vidmm, good timing options) and I am confident I will have it run 100% stable. Honeslty, out of about 50 motherbaords I've owned I've only had two that where innately unstable/defective (both epox). Some have needed considerable changes from stock settings, or BIOS flashes, but this has never really bothered me.
As for PSUs, go quality over quantity. My current PSU, an enermax 425w (29A +12v) powers every system I've used it in flawlessly. Several other, higher wattage PSUs, including an antec true control 550w, have not.
Chances are the vantec will be fine, your friend is going to use a really power hundry video card. Venice CPUs don't use all that much power.
The Asus boards kick arse! The A8N-SLI Premium or the A8N-E are my recommendations, especially if you plan on a dual core X2 upgrade in the future.
Asus all the way mate!!! Solid as a rock!