uATX search

[kcunningham]

I am looking for assistance with a micro ATX motherboard search and wanted to ask for community recommendations. I have an Nvidia 6800 AGP card, 1GB of PC3200 RAM and an AMD Athlon XP 3200+ ready to make a swap for a smaller form factor PC.

I have read the review of the 50 uATX motherboards on THG, which was a great start. Your expertise is greatly appreciated in helping to make a decision. Ideally the motherboard would have the features listed below and probably others I have not considered. Thank you kindly

Socket A 3200+
uATX
400MHZ FSB
1-AGP8x
3-PCI
2-ATA ports
2-IDE ports
PC3200 memory/2GB
Audio
Integrated LAN
6+ USB ports

 

[Crashman]

There's a Micro ATX version of the Asus A7N8X, think it's called the A7N8X-VM or something, check out the features.

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<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[endyen]

He would need the A7N8X- VM/400, as the earlier models had problems with the 400 fsb chips.
I'm not sure if he ment sata, which the VM boards dont have. I also dont like the idea of putting a high heat system into a micro case.
The board <A HREF="http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/socketa/a7n8x-vm-400/overview.htm" target="_new">http://usa.asus.com/products/mb/socketa/a7n8x-vm-400/overview.htm</A>

 

[Crashman]

Depends on the Micro ATX case. The bottom doesn't do much on a lot of cases. In fact, he should be able to get by with nothing more than a stock cooler and a decent exhaust fan, decent PSU exhaust fan.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[kcunningham]

Thank you for your feedback. I have considered the Asus board since I have used them for many years and my current is an A7N8X Deluxe.

The lack of SATA and the inclusion of embedded video made me wonder about other brands and not having expertise prompted me to post the message. With that said, Asus has appeared to be a front runner. Other boards I am looking at are:

AOpen vK400Am-S
ASRock K7S41
Biostar M7VIZ
Biostar M7NCG400
ecs km400a-2 deluxe
Epox EP-8KMM3I
Gigabyte GA-7VM400M-RZ
Shuttle MK40N
Shuttle MN31L

If you have any feedback on them, I would greatly appreciate it. And since we got on the topic of cases and cooling, can you make a recommendation there as well? Of course the driver for going to uATX is low sound and compact nature. A mini tower would work best for my application, or even a small cube.

Thank you again for your time.

-Keith

 

[Crashman]

If you hate onboard video, don't worry about it. When you put an AGP card in these boards, they automatically disable onboard video. They have to, because only 1 AGP device is supported by most chipsets. Since it's completely disabled, it's not even detectable by Windows.

Micro ATX boards usually come with onboard video, it's a standard for the industry.

M7NCG400 is a good board, but you'll want to see if it's more or less featured than the Asus board.

I'm not familiar with the other boards, but I'd take the K7S41 over any of the VIA chipset boards, with a preference for nVidia over SiS as well.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[endyen]

Like Crashman, I like nforce best, then sis then via.
I dont like the idea that biostar charges a $30. rma fee on thier products, and I'm not a fan of shuttle at all.
I have heard good things lately about epox, but then it's a via chipset.
The only ones I would use are the asrock, and the asus. Having said that, I would never use the asrock on a system for myself. I deserve better, and so do you.