The Nightmare Before Xmas (PC Upgrade/mobo help)

[jtsawyer]

Hello everyone,

I am new to building pcs (I have done one so far) and am looking for some advice on motherboards. The parts so far that I have bought for this upgrade are: 512x2 corsair ram, 6600GT PCI-E graphics card, I intend this weekend to buy an AMD 64 3200+ (Venice Core), but have been unable to decide on a motherboard. The hard drive and cd/rom etc I plan to just take from the old pc.

My only experience with motherboards in terms of building is with Asus, for the pc I built I used an Asus P4P800 Deluxe and have never had any problems with it.

That said, two of the boards I am considering for this upgrade are the Asus A8N-E and A8N-SLI, a subquestion in all of this is if I am not going to be using two graphics cards (which I am not) is there any performance enhancement with an SLI chipset with one graphics card?

Also, I am open to any other suggestions for motherboards I am trying to spend roughly $130.00. The pc will be used primarily for gaming. Also, this may be a bit off topic, but does anyone have any recommendations in terms of power supply or how many watts will be needed to run this kind of setup?

Any information would be greatly appreciated, especially regarding the motherboard issue. I forgot to mention I do not plan to do any overclocking maybe minimal within the bios or applications software as I would definitely fry things lol.

Thanks in advance,
Jim

 

[RichPLS]

I am fond of Asus's newest ATI chipset board, A8R-MVP, and the HiS X1800XT, but since you are going nVidia graphics, probably won't be interested, and it is a very good overclocker...
but it sometimes pays to be well informed...

 

[nobly]

If you are absolutely sure you are not going to go SLI or even upgrade to SLI, then the only thing that matters between these 2 mboards are 1) price and 2) features.

I do not think that the SLI chipset will help at all with just 1 video card. If anything, it will probably be worse (but negligibly) since the board will have to have more logic in order to handle SLI.

As for the power question, I would say 300W minimum (thats the standard anyways). 350W is what I'd put the minimum at and 400W+ would be super-safe. Make sure you get a good PS, not some silly no-name one. If you even has the remotest idea of going SLI, get a big PS.

You can go here to have a somewhat better idea - keep in mind to check out the Test System for comparison before you draw conclusions:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/09/seven_of_nvidia/page40.html

 

[jtsawyer]

Thanks for the information, we will definitely not be using SLI in the near future (price issue), the only thing that concerns me about these boards is I have heard a lot of complaints about chipset fans.

I have tomorrow off so I plan on driving over to the Seattle area to pick up whichever mobo I decide on and the case/cpu and processor. I will probably end up going with the A8N-E, and hopefully this build will go as well as last time.

Funny little story from my first build I pushed the power button and nothing happened - forgot that last important feature to plug the power cord into the back of the case lol. Worked fine afterwards though!

 

[nobly]

I haven't come across anything on the chipset fans you mentioned, but I haven't looked that hard.

Building computers isn't too hard once you get the hang of it. Its a heck of alot easier than it used to! I remember having to juggle tons of controller cards around for the 386's cuz not a whole lot was integrated on to the mboards then.

Heh, yeah I hear you on the funny story! I did the same thing, cept I plugged in the power and forgot to connect the power switch to the mboard... doh! and the time I forgot to plug in the 20 pin mboard connection... heh.