Motherboard replacement (Socket A)

[Goragoth]

My extremely cruddy Soltek motherboard is dying and needs replacement soon. Only a few weeks ago the northbridge fan died and got replaced but now the capacitors are looking really dodgy and when I took my PC into the shop to have it looked at they said the board needs replacing real soon or it might die horribly, possibly taking components down with it. I'm definatively never buying Soltek again.

So what is good for motherboards? The shop recommended Gigabyte and I've had a look at the online shop that I buy from and they have a nice price on a Gigabyte nForce2 board with dual channel (NZ$153) and I've heard good things about Asus who have a similarly featured board with less PCI slots (which I don't need anyway) for NZ$195. So are those extra NZ$40 worth it for the Asus board or not (halve the numbers for rough US$ equivalent)?

Since I like to keep my old PCs and still use them when I get a new one I would like this thing to last a few years so thats probably the main criteria I'm looking for. I shall hopefully get a whole new rig beginning of next year but I don't have the money right now so don't suggest taking the opportunity to upgrade to A64 (I would love to but, no money )

Any suggestions are welcome.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Since I like to keep my old PCs and still use them when I get a new one I would like this thing to last a few years so thats probably the main criteria I'm looking for. I shall hopefully get a whole new rig beginning of next year but I don't have the money right now so don't suggest taking the opportunity to upgrade to A64 (I would love to but, no money )

Any suggestions are welcome.

For socket A, I'd say anything with Nforce 2. Asus, Epox, Abit and Gigabyte all make great boards. If you want to check if there are any problems or issues, I'd check here.

 

[Guden Oden]

Yeah, NForce, definitely. Go for the version with the on-chip dolby digital audio and firewall/gigabit LAN too and you'll save both money and PCI slots on stuff you'd have to buy separately anyway.

 

[Goragoth]

Well I was definatively going to go with nForce2 again, its worked great for me so far. The question is really about the manufacturer and I think I might go with the Asus.

I did some searching on bad capacitors and it seems there was a whole big thing where a lot of different manufacturers were hit by bad copied caps. What is a bit disturbing is that the pictures I've seen online of bad caps look quite harmless to the ones on my board. Practically all of mine have brown foam coming out the top of them. High time for a replacement I think

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I did some searching on bad capacitors and it seems there was a whole big thing where a lot of different manufacturers were hit by bad copied caps. What is a bit disturbing is that the pictures I've seen online of bad caps look quite harmless to the ones on my board. Practically all of mine have brown foam coming out the top of them. High time for a replacement I think

There should no longer be any issue with bad caps. Any left should have been cleared out of inventory long ago, especially from a reputable maker like Asus that shifts a *lot* of boards every month.

 

[ninelven]

edited

 

[BRiT]

There should no longer be any issue with bad caps. Any left should have been cleared out of inventory long ago, especially from a reputable maker like Asus that shifts a *lot* of boards every month.

One would think, but I have some bad caps on my Epox 8RDA+ motherboard which was bought brand new 1 week after it was first released, and also the same thing with a JetWay SFF Mini-Q 760 system. A lot of other people have experienced the same issues with Epox 8RDA boards. I'll be replacing the bad caps on both boards within the next couple of weeks.

It's all about the bean-counters who think they're doing the company a favor by saving a few pennies on every board made by going with the cheapest parts they can find. They dont realize is how much that can truely backfire. Penny Wise, Pound Foolish.

 

[martrox]

If money is a concern, check out the Shuttle AN35 Ultra. I've got 4 of them, have installed quite a few for friends. They are inexpensive (under $60.00US), have all the nforce2 features - no soundstorm at this price, and, if you are interested, overclocks incredibly well. My secondary gaming/test machine has been running a Athlon XP-M 2400+ at 2.3 gig (11.5X200) for many months now. In fact, as I just put an X800Pro(550/535) in it, I've been playing my fav game ATM - COH - and it's been easily as fast as my water cooled P4 2.6@3.35 with a water cooled 6800GT at 440/1.15 - but the X800 is run at 6X FSAA w/ Temporal and is visably better than the GT! BTW, both rigs have 2X512K PC3200 memory.

 

[digitalwanderer]

I'm in love with the Abit NF7-S rev 2. I got it on recomends from Hanners, Baron, and a few others and I ain't never regretted it.

The bios let's me control damn near anything, it's solid as a rock, and it's dead sexy as hell.

 

[Lezmaka]

I'm in love with the Abit NF7-S rev 2. I got it on recomends from Hanners, Baron, and a few others and I ain't never regretted it.

The bios let's me control damn near anything, it's solid as a rock, and it's dead sexy as hell.

I second that. Just watch out, there's an Abit NF7-S v2.0 and an Abit NF7-S2 now. The "S2" is the sucky version, no multiplier/voltage controls, no soundstorm (I believe), just plain sucky.

 

[Goragoth]

Thanks for the advice guys.
At the moment I'm looking at either the Abit NF7-S version 2 or the Asus A7N8X. Both come in at about the same price wise and feature wise although the Abit board also has Firewire and SATA built in, neither of which I would use at the moment though. I was a little put off of Abit after reading that they were one of the manufacturers hit hard by the bad caps problem but I trust that that has all been sorted out by now and at least they were the only ones to admit that there was a problem.

 

[Lezmaka]

Thanks for the advice guys.
At the moment I'm looking at either the Abit NF7-S version 2 or the Asus A7N8X. Both come in at about the same price wise and feature wise although the Abit board also has Firewire and SATA built in, neither of which I would use at the moment though. I was a little put off of Abit after reading that they were one of the manufacturers hit hard by the bad caps problem but I trust that that has all been sorted out by now and at least they were the only ones to admit that there was a problem.

About the onboard SATA, I had the same thought as well when I bought mine, as I don't have any SATA drives and therefore have no need for it right now. But when I opened the box, I saw that it came with a Parallel ATA -> Serial ATA adapter and cable, so I was able to grab an old 30GB hard drive and add it to my system for more storage/better organization (already had 2 HD's and 2 optical drives, so I was out of parallel ata ports). I haven't tried it, but I believe the Abit converter paired with the onboard SATA supports optical drives as well as hard drives.

 

[Goragoth]

About the onboard SATA, I had the same thought as well when I bought mine, as I don't have any SATA drives and therefore have no need for it right now. But when I opened the box, I saw that it came with a Parallel ATA -> Serial ATA adapter and cable, so I was able to grab an old 30GB hard drive and add it to my system for more storage/better organization (already had 2 HD's and 2 optical drives, so I was out of parallel ata ports). I haven't tried it, but I believe the Abit converter paired with the onboard SATA supports optical drives as well as hard drives.

Ok that has me sold. If I can use SATA cables instead of those horrible grey ribbons that would be brilliant. My ribbons are really streched because I have a full tower case with 2 HDDs and 2 optical drives and it makes it a real pain to plug into the motherboard. From what I've seen the SATA cables look much nicer and should make things easier. Woot! 8)

 

[Lezmaka]

There's only 2 SATA ports on the motherboard, so you'd still need to connect the optical drives via the parallel ata. And unlike parallel ata, it's a 1 drive per port thing, but you could get rid of one of the parallel ata cables. And you'd have to buy another PATA->SATA converter to get both hard drives running off the SATA. The converter kit runs about $US 25 and comes with the converter, sata cable, everything you need for it. Not sure how available it would be in your area though.

 

[Goragoth]

There's only 2 SATA ports on the motherboard, so you'd still need to connect the optical drives via the parallel ata. And unlike parallel ata, it's a 1 drive per port thing, but you could get rid of one of the parallel ata cables. And you'd have to buy another PATA->SATA converter to get both hard drives running off the SATA. The converter kit runs about $US 25 and comes with the converter, sata cable, everything you need for it. Not sure how available it would be in your area though.

Oh I see, thanks for the heads up on that. I'll have a look around for a converter kit so that I can at least get rid of one of the ribbons and maybe get a rounded PATA cable for the other.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Thanks for the advice guys.
At the moment I'm looking at either the Abit NF7-S version 2 or the Asus A7N8X. Both come in at about the same price wise and feature wise although the Abit board also has Firewire and SATA built in, neither of which I would use at the moment though.

The A7N8X-Deluxe has firewire and SATA.

 

[vb]

The A7N8X-Deluxe has firewire and SATA.

At the moment I'm looking at either the Abit NF7-S version 2 or the Asus A7N8X. Both come in at about the same price wise and feature wise although the Abit board also has Firewire and SATA built in, neither of which I would use at the moment though.

Make sure your board has fan speed controls. makes your life so much nicer.

 

[rotten]

that's odd... ive got a soltek SL75-KAV for almost 3 years now and it never caused any kind of trouble... i understand Soltek is not that big a brand name but im a really satisfied customer.... so the only thing i can recommend is (surprise, surprise) a Soltek, the one with VIA KT880, i prefer it over Nforce2 chipsets (more USB's, native firewire, giga-lan and most important comparable in speed)