How Do I Choose a M/B for my Upgrade?

nheather · 19 Jun 2006 at 22:42

I plan to upgrade my PC. My budget is £300 although I accept I may have to go a little over.

This is what I want

CPU > Athlon 64 Venice 3000 or 3200 (Socket 939)
Heatsink > Arctic 64 Freezer Pro
Video Card > Radeon X1800 XT (or GTO if it can be flashed)
M/B > ????

Absolutely no idea about motherboards. My current is an ABit NF7 which I am pleased with but even if I just limit my choice to Abit there are 8 Socket 939 models to choose from. And it doesn't have to be Abit so this just leaves me with a bewildering choice.

I'm not interested in the following
- Dual Video Card
- RAID
- On Board Graphics
- On Board Sound

I'm interested in the following
- PCI-Express
- CPU Overclocking
- Possibly being able to add a better processor later

I guess once I've bought the other bits I have £50~£70 for a M/B but just from the Overclockers webstore this leaves me with almost 20 to choose from.

Help - there's too much selection!!

Cheers,

Nigel

Gashman · 19 Jun 2006 at 22:52

how about ASUS A8N-E nforce4 ultra for £64.57, abit KN8 nforce4 ultra at £61.04 or MSI K8N platinum nforce4 ultra for £76.32. had the MSI was brilliant but wanted SLI so, but i would highly recommend the MSI if that appeals

fenderbass86 · 19 Jun 2006 at 23:34

Yep, the MSI K8N Neo4 in clearance for £76.32

dark4orz · 20 Jun 2006 at 07:50

or look around u can pick up a DFI NF4 Ultra-D for around £80inc, thats if u want to really overclock

dale1uk · 20 Jun 2006 at 08:07

Another vote for the MSI, using it in my set up and is soild as a rock and has good overclocking potential - got my 3700sd up to 2.85gb. Cant fault the board at all.

nheather · 20 Jun 2006 at 08:17

Thanks for the suggestions ...

What are the advantages of Geforce4 Ultra over plain Geforce4 ?

What are the benefits of the MSI board ? When I read the blurb the big selling point is Crossfire which I don't need as I don't want two GPUs. I'm concerned that Crossfire is where the money has gone or it is an older board - for example it has SATA 1.0 whereas, the other recommendations have SATA 2.0.

Cheers,

Nigel

dale1uk · 20 Jun 2006 at 17:46

nheather said:
Thanks for the suggestions ...

What are the advantages of Geforce4 Ultra over plain Geforce4 ?

What are the benefits of the MSI board ? When I read the blurb the big selling point is Crossfire which I don't need as I don't want two GPUs. I'm concerned that Crossfire is where the money has gone or it is an older board - for example it has SATA 1.0 whereas, the other recommendations have SATA 2.0.

Cheers,

Nigel

Think your looking at the wrong MSI board. The one I recommend is the Neo4 Platinum that can be found in the clearance section HERE (4th one down)
Its a high spec'd board and mine handles anything I can through at it.
Full spec for this board can be found HERE