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.
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.