Hello all

I realize that this question is not at all unique but anyway...

I'm putting together a computer for my friend. I will go for the Opteron 165, 2x512 RAM and X800 GTO PCIE video card.

Here are my criteria for the board:

Quality - Very Important (will be delivered to Sweden and I do not want to RMA it from here.)
Stability - Important
Decent Overclockability - Important
Quiet NB fan or possibility to change fan - Important
Price - Quite important
SATA II (instead of only SATA) - nice to have
Gb Lan (instead of 100Mb) - nice to have
Extreme overclockability - nice to have but secondary to price and noise
SLI/CF - Not at all important, will never run SLI/CF
Other tings I forgot about - might be important, please enlighten me

I have been looking at (in order):
DFI Lanparty ultra-D
ASUS A8N-E
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum
EPoX EP-9NPA+Ultra

Any good advice?

EDIT: Criteria edited

check the A8N32 by Asus, i think they implimented 8 phase power http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdo [...] i=2589&p=2

DFIs are very good boards. I've never had an ounce of trouble with them at all. Easy to setup and they fire right up. ASUS is known for its very good stability too. Hard choices to make but me personally, I would go for DFI.

yeah, if the ATi 580 MotherBoard chipset doesn't come out until "June" then the DFI SLI-DR Expert or Asus A8N32 will be my mb's of choice

the DFI SLI-DR Expert is there top of the line right?

yes it is. I just got one two weeks ago and its an incredible board.

Asus all the way! oh and good for you opening your home by adopting an opty

Seem like nice boards, though a little on the expensive side (and I guess I will be paying for the SLI which won't be used). The heatpipe on the ASUS looks like a really nice feature though.

How do the DFI Lanparty ultra-D and ASUS A8N-E compare to the two you proposed?

The DFI ultra D is the better choice in my opinion for non-SLI, but heres the kicker you can make SLI!!!
Anyway DFI has the best support fourm thats is ran by DFI techs and engineers to my understanding...good luck with ASUS with a support fourm :!:

Besides that they are very good manufacture's but in my opinion DFI is the better of them. DFI is also known for being the Overclockers dream mobo. in that it has just about every option for OC'ing

Do the research bro

support site for DFI

www.dfi-street.com

good luck

The MSI board doesn't support dual-core.

Thanks for the input. Don't know if you made he choice easier though

SLI is still not of any interest, but money and noice is...

DFI: the NB fan is placed quite badly just beneth the videocard. This will make it imposssible to change the NB HSF to a bigger, passive HS. How much noice does the original fan make?

MSI: Does it still not support dual core? Not just an old BIOS issue?

ASUS: Is the A8N-E a good quality board? I know asus is regarded very high but my history with asus is not good at all. I've had 2 of their cheaper models and they were both crap. The NB is situated in a good spot for switching HS though.

Comments?

WOOT WOOT! I can not wait to try one with my X1800XT and Opteron 175!

If a board has 2 PCI-E x 16 slots, can I use any of these slots for the video card without loosing performance?

If this is possible I will go for the DFI ULTRA-D, plance the video card in the "second" PCI-E slot and then remove the original North bridge HFS solution if it gets too loud. This would not be possible if I place the video card in the "first" slot ("First"=closer to CPU, "second" = closer to PCI slots), hence the question.

I would greatly appreciate if any of you would comment with my concerns in mind (see my first post).

Thanks
Bjorn

Dont worry about that. The boards are not able to fully utilize the speeds of SATA much less SATA II.

Actually I was reading some posts at dfi-street.com about that "northbridge fan" (it's actually a chipset fan as newer AMDs don't have northbridges) failing. And about people replacing it with better cooling solutions (or just replacing the fan). I don't think pulling that fan out would be too wise if you don't replace it. Alot of complaints have been lodged by alot of end-users about this and other manufacturer's mobos for the vid card being over that HSF on the chipset. But I think it's prolly much to-do over nothing. YMMV. I don't know the answer to your question about the other slot, sorry.