Recommended Motherboards

myminitony · 14 Feb 2006 at 12:13

Hi all,

It's been a while since I've built a new machine but I'm looking to get an Athlon 64x2 processor.

I've been looking at ABit and Asus motherboards but I'm not sure what to go for. I'm not majorly into overclocking, but I find the 'silent' design motherboards a good idea (with the copper pipe to take away heat from the chipset).

Can anyone recommend motherboads between £100 and £200 for the above processor, and that support DDR2 RAM? Also what's the best chipset to go for? NVidia sounds like it's popular....

Thanks in advance!

Tony

Mekrel · 14 Feb 2006 at 12:43

You will not find any boards that support DDR2 for the socket 939 AMD X2 processor, well some would consider the ASRock as one being as they plan to release an add in card for the future AM2 socket. Not much is really known on the add in card though.

The nVidia nForce4 chipset is one hell of a stable chipset for the AMD 939 socket. I would say the Asus boards would suit you well if you require passive chipset cooling. The only other options you need to look at then are the need for SLI, the amount and type of SATA ports.

Asus A8N32-SLi Deluxe nForce4 SLi which has 2* 16x speed PCI-E ports which isn't really a major advantage for your needs it seems. This has 8 phase power control too which supposidly will give more stable power to parts of the system.

Asus A8N-SLi Premium nForce4 SLi well equiped motherboard, with passive cooling but with 2* 8x speed PCI-E ports. This is obviously abit cheaper and in my opinion your best bet.

If you were wanting to push your set up to the maximum, any of the DFI boards would do well, either the ultra-d or the SLI-DR.

myminitony · 14 Feb 2006 at 12:57

Thanks for the reply! I think I am getting confused on DDR2 and Dual DDR 400...

I can't see that I am going to need an SLI board but I would rather spend the money and be prepared and have the option to upgrade in future!

I've had a look at the Asus boards and they all look pretty good. I've been recommended Asus by someone at work who's told me it's extremely stable.

I had a look at the DFI boards...are these generally the 'best' boards for your money?

Also you didn't mention Abit...I was looking at the Fatal1ty range...do you not really rate Abit?

Thanks for all your advice!

myminitony · 14 Feb 2006 at 13:01

Also just had a look at this board:

LANPARTY UT nF4 SLI-DR

For now I wanted to use my AGP graphics card...but with this I would have to buy a PCI Express I think? Or do AGP cards fit into PCI-Express slots?

Thanks

Mekrel · 14 Feb 2006 at 14:26

AGP will not fit into PCI-E no.

If you want to go socket 939 with AGP, you will need to be looking at either the ASrock Dual Sata board which has AGP and PCI-E ports with the ULI chipset or look at the Nforce3 939 boards which the best around seems to be either from Expox or MSI. Theres not a lot to offer in the form of 939 AGP boards im affraid.

DFI boards are generally the best for overclocking due to the high component quality and vast amounts of bios options, a lot of people say they are harder to setup but in my experience they are stable motherboards no matter what. Had my nforce4 setup done within 20 mins but I had already made a windows disk with the drivers integrated into the install.

Dual channel DDR400 means the board can run an even amount of sticks of ram into Dual channel mode, which all boards will do on A64 using socket 939 and above.

DDR2 is basiaclly faster running ram which has been seen on 775 intel setups.

I have no experience with abit for 939 setups but I know the two popular choices are Asus for thier extra spaced PCI-E slots and passive chipset cooling and DFI for the overclockability.