nforce 2 mobo help

[athalus]

my aunt wants me to update her machine. currently she has a 586 running windows me and 128mb of ram, and i thought my celeron at the office was slow. oh well.

as it stands now i'm going to use some spare parts both from myself and ones in her current machine. so far i have the following:

case w/antec 300w power supply
wd 30gb hard drive
ati 64mb 9100 video card
lite-on dvd/cd-rw combo drive
xp home sp1

my aunt has the modem v92, which i put in her machine to replace a bad one, also a monitor, mouse keyboard etc etc.

i'm planning on using an athlon 2500 xp retail processor and 2-256mb ram (512 total)

what i am looking for is an amd nforce 2 mobo w/the following features:
on board sound: yes!
sata: no
raid: no
price: around $70 - $85

i've been looking at the various site for their recomendations on their sub $1000 machines and here is what i come up with is:
asus a7n8x (nforce 2 400): $68
abit nf7-s rev 2 (nforce 2 400): $86
msi 7n2 delta l (nforce 2 400 ultra): $63

personally i'd like a version of the abit, mainly because of the great things that i've read about them from this site, but i'm open to suggestions.

suggestions on ram would also be appreciated? 2700 from kingston is what i'm looking at.

almost forgot the machine will mainly be used for e-mail, word processing and surfing the internet.

thanks in advance for your help.

 

[endyen]

The sound on the Abit board is better than on the Asus board. Any of them should be fine, but Abit seems to be going that extra bit lately.
As far as ram goes, samsung makes some good inexpensive memory, though DDR400 might be more useful down the road.

 

[Spitfire_x86]

ABIT makes the best nForce2 mobo

------------
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<A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86/myrig.html" target="_new">My Rig</A> & <A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86/benchmark.html" target="_new">3DMark score</A>

 

[blah]

Why is that?

..this is very useful and helpful place for information...

 

[Spitfire_x86]

Great stability, performance and overclocking capability combined with good pricetag.

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<A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86/myrig.html" target="_new">My Rig</A> & <A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86/benchmark.html" target="_new">3DMark score</A>

 

[blah]

hehehe, if you'r looking from THAT direction then Epox is bester, gg.

..this is very useful and helpful place for information...

 

[Coyote]

If it's Kingston Value ram your thinking about, I'd steer clear of it. Too many posters at various nForce forums seem to report problems with it.

I've got a slab of Corsair Value select running fine in my my nforce2 mobo's.



Mobile XP 2600+ (11X200)
Abit NF7-S v 2.0
Maxtor 60GB ATA 133 7200RPM
512MB Corsair Twinx 3200LL
BBA 9800 Pro
Enermax Noisetaker 420 watts
Win98SE

 

[sturm]

just built a machine with the xp2500 and the the MSI k7n2g board(IGP). Tried a new memory company called PMI newegg had a 512mg ddr2700 for 61 bucks. No problems at all so far. Been running over a week now. Since she wont be overclocking you wight try it.

 

[Spitfire_x86]

To you, Epox is better and to me ABIT is better.

The difference, you have Epox and I have ABIT

------------
<A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86" target="_new">My Website</A>

<A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86/myrig.html" target="_new">My Rig</A> & <A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86/benchmark.html" target="_new">3DMark score</A>

 

[blah]

To me is no difference, I had both

..this is very useful and helpful place for information...

 

[athalus]

i've been doing some more checking and i'm leaning towards the msi. the abit is good but it's $30 more than the msi and has things like sata which would be useless. i went looking for the basic version of the abit but newegg didn't have it.

as far as the ram goes newegg has come corsair value select for $47 per 256mb. i have corsair in my p4 and its never failed me. if anyone has had any problems w/it i'd appreciate a post.

right now i'm up to about $250 total cost of the machine which is about where i want to be. money's an issue but what's nice is that i get to clean out some of my "toy box".

thanks for all the info.

 

[upec]

Another vote for Abit. I have NF7-s Rev 2. It is great.

 

[endyen]

I love my NF7-S, but it is a little feature rich for aunty Loise.

 

[gath2]

I thought I would jump in here with my own questions.
I'm looking to get a Athlon XP 3200 400 and already have a GeIL 512MB PC3200 Value CL2.5.
Dual Channel memory support and SATA is not really important to me. I have also always overclocked my system, but probably will not mess with this much on my new system. Thus, I don't need anything fancy.
Good onboard sound would be great to replacee my aging SBLive 5.1. Obviously onboard video is not even a thought. I'm looking for a good budget board here. I would love to upgrade later, but most likely will not until I'm ready for a whole new system.

Are there any nforce2 boards that support dual channel ddr as well as SATA or do you have to go with a nforce2 ultra?

What boards does everyone suggest for the best value board?

 

[blah]

For budjeted reliabel overclockabel feature "crippaled" (talking budjet here, right board look at epox line. They are bullet proof.

..this is very useful and helpful place for information...

 

[gath2]

I currently have an EPOX 8KHA+ and have been fairly happy with it, so I have no problem going with EPOX.
Is the EPoX "EP-8RDA3I" nForce2 Ultra 400 a good board?
Better question, is EPoX "EP-8RDA3+" nForce2 Ultra 400 a better board for the extra $26.
It adds SATA which may be nice down the road and an extra LAN port. I won't use the LAN port for sure. Are there any benchmarks out there showing these two boards in comparison? I'm assuming since they use the same chipset they are almost identical.

 

[gath2]

while I'm at it does anyone have any suggestions on a cheap case? I'm looking for functionality and a good sturdy case more than looks. I won't have too much time to do the usual paint job and modding, so a good looking case won't help. There are so many freakin cases out there and I can't tell one from another just by looking at them.