Which motherboard

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Ok, as nugget has pointed out to me correctly, I need to choose my motherboard first.

Btw for all who don't know, I'm in pursuit of building my first PC.

I've decided to give AMD a go, haven't used them before though.
I might go for this motherboard:
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe nForce2 (you have to scroll down a bit).

It's a socket A motherboard, so i presume I have to get a Socket A processor.

There's socket A processors in the following link:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/AMD_Athlon__Barton_.html

But I'm not at all which one to go for.Even with the motherboards, I'm not sure.

Does that motherboard I picked out support the use of two LCD's (which I may get) and done it support 2GB of Ram.
Sorry for being bumb, but I cna't tell.

Anyway you's told me to build and said you'd give me all the help I needed, so I'm asking for help.

Thanks

 

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mate! that motherboard sounds like a whole good package! for £52 aswell bargin. mine has simular spec just not that many treats on it but it is a old motherboard now

ive got a amd +2500 which over clocked to the +3200 which i was quite impressed however i now have it running at the original 2500 (1.83ghz).

i would look around on the net as you can pick one up cheap i bet.

good luck searching and good luck at building you'll love it he he

Dave

 

flex mate check out www.msicomputer.co.uk and check the MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR...its a fantastic board, has SATA, IEEE1394, Onboard LAN...its the same one I have and I dont intend on changing it for any other (unless I decide to go for an AMD 64 CPU) but it has never let me down and I have had it for almost a year now...love it to bits...you can go to ebuyer and check it out there I think the price is around £50 or less...(was £60 when I bought it)

but the mobo you have chosen sounds even better so I would go with your instinct on this one mate...but my personal preference is MSI, but everyone has their own...so good luck mate...

 

Sorry flex, I didn't mean to imply that you must choose the mobo first. I just meant that you need to make a choice (also depending on budget) about a mobo or cpu first. Either choose the mobo first with the features you want and then choose the cpu to fit, or pick the cpu that suits you in regards to type, speed, features etc and then choose the mobo to suit. Both methods will dictate what type and how much RAM you get so this is a distant third place.

As for your mobo choice, I can't fault you there. If you see here in my problem thread, I now have this one and am very happy with it. My specs now

MB ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe nForce2
CPU AMD Athlon XP 2600+ Barton
RAM 3x OEM 512MB DDR-DIMM PC-2700
HD Maxtor 120GB Diamondmax Plus9
GC ASUS Radeon 9600SE


As for the mobo supporting 2 screens, I could be talking out of my @$$ here but I think that's more a function of the graphics card. I think most modern gc's have this functionality but as I don't have 2 screens or been interested in game playing, graphics has not been something I'm interested in so I don't know for sure.

Onto the cpu, which one did you feel is the best for you? My choice (if I could afford it) is the 3200+, but remember if you get this you will need a fan and heatsink too as these are not included, as in the boxed retail version.

HTH

 

no nugg mate your not talking out of your bum, onboard graphics dont support two monitors only expansion ones. so flex, best get an AGP card that does support two screens...no doubt Phoenix will give more info as I am sure he has used this method before (no I dont mean anything bad by it) I am jsut merely stating he has probably done more than most of us...so please step forward Phoenix...

 

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Sorry mate, couldn't resist having a chuckle..

Although things have certainly moved on since I built my last machine - nearly two years ago now - the research I did at the time ended up with MSI as the winner on price and performance.

I used (from memory) MSI-KT4V which supports the Athlon up to 3Ghz and has 400Mhz FSB which means you can used PC3200 DDR memory (have 512MB). Of course this is not now cutting edge, but was pleased with my choice as it has been 100% solid - no probs - and just seems to run a little quicker than other systems I use at work that have the same chip, memory and graphics. I like it.
Graphics is also not cutting edge - GeForce 4 Ti4200 8X, but runs all the games I like very nicely and good resolutions too.

Choice is yours of course mate, but think you could do a lot worse.

BTW My boss has had bad experiences with overclockers - long lead times and very difficult to get through to them. Word of warning.

 

So you've got the same mobo I picked out nugget.N1, thought you's were gonna say it was no good , but if you guys have the same one, then it must be good

I'm going for AMD Athlon "Barton" XP3200+ 400FSB

It's socket A, so it should be compatible with that mobo I chose, yes?

Also, what exactly does this mean:
"3 x 184pin DDR-SDRAM ports (Supporting up to PC3200)"

Does it mean it ahs three slots to put RAM in?
If so will it support up to 2GB?

I need to know this before deciding.

As always, muchos appreciatigos for the help everyone

 

from the asus specifications of said motherboard

- 3 x 184-pin DIMM Sockets support max. 3GB PC3200/PC2700/PC2100/PC1600 non-ECC DDR SDRAM memory
- Dual Channel Memory Architecture

 

Just a quick reply, gotta go home.

It has 3 slots but will support only 2 banks of 3200 RAM. It will support all 3 with 2700 which is what I have.

You could get 2GB (2x1GB sticks) whereas I have 3x512MB sticks.

I'll post a link later for you.

 

Yeah having looked at some RAM sticks I realised that it must support up to 3GB's, coz you can get some sticks which are 1GB.

Wow 3GB's .Mind you, I don't think I'd get 3 lol, not yet mind.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Hmm, so that's the mobo and CPU sorted, now what........

Where's the best place to get RAM ie: cheap and good

Oh dear have to go to work now.I'm sure I'll be thinking on this all evening though.

Thanks and keep advice coming plz.

 

not true flex
you can get 4GB sticks but it wont support those
nor will it support 2GB sticks

my old Intel 815e has 2 slots but only supports a max of 512mb (lame) even though it could theoretically hold gigs!

the slots wont take every memory capacity that you can by for them, so you were right to ask if it supported 2gb or not

 

Sorry mate but on further inspection it looks like I remember from my other mobo.
How big do I feel now, eh?

Heres the link I promised.

 

are you buying the mobo and cpu seperately, or going for a bundle?

You tend to get a better price when you go for the bundle sets, I've found. You can get pretty good spec mobo's as well, not the cheap end of line stock stuff.

If I had to upgrade my memory, I'd defo set aside the money for at least 1GB of Corsair XMS mem. It's had really good write ups.

Also if I had to do a major change to my system, I'd have a SATA compatable mobo, I noticed when I was at the computer fair over the weekend that the SATA drives were only a couple of quid different to ATA133 drives.

 

Fron the table at the bottom of the link you gaVe nugget, it would seem the most one stick holds is 512 MB.

Therefore 3 slots equals 1.5GB total memory.is this correct?

Also what's the difference between SATA and IDE?

 

From the Asus site

Here

It's generally only a list of qualified vendors. There is a lot of RAM from unqualified vendors that will also work.

As to why SATA? Throughput mate, throughput. If you go the SATA route then make sure the mobo supports native SATA connections (which it does ). An adapter will slow the throughput by up to 50%.

As to how much memory, I'm not too sure. I have 3x512MB sticks, but the specs say 3 slots and 3 GB memory support. I would say it will take 1 GB sticks.

 

I didn't realise this mobo was SATA.It is though, so that's cool.

Right thanks nugget.However I need clarification that it will take 1GB sticks.it's oen thing saying it should, but I'm not taking the chance on buying RAM only for it to fail.

 

1GB sticks of memory cost loads (although apparently they are improving in price). Think as far as I know cheapest option is to get 512MB matched pairs - to use dual channel architecture you need 2 sticks that are the same. 1GB of memory will be more than sufficient mate, dont fall into the trap of getting more than you need!

 

nug
did you have any probs installing XP on the SATA drive? i have heard you may need to use driver disks during install like with SCSI cards and such on servers, it depends on the sata controller being used, but is that what you experianced?

I'm building a little vmware rig for work

Asus Pundit
2GB Ram
1x 76GB RAPTOR 10k SATA drive
P4 2.8Ghz

should be rather spiffy

1gb sticks are indeed more than 2x 512mb sticks
but not 'loads' like our friend cartman stipulates

from the crucial uk website

1GB £143.99 £169.19 CT12864Z40B DDR PC3200 • CL=3 • Unbuffered • Non-parity • DDR400 • 2.6V • 128Meg x 64
512MB £51.99 £61.09 CT6464Z40B DDR PC3200 • CL=3 • Unbuffered • Non-parity • DDR400 • 2.6V • 64Meg x 64

so 1GB stick of PC3200 = 170
2x 512mb stick of PC3200 = 122
i wouldnt consider that a huge jump, especially because by getting two 1GB modules for DDR you can get 2GB at PC3200 speeds rather than needing to drop to PC2700 if you use all three slots (i believe this is a limitation of your motherboard)

obviously better memory is going to cost more than that, 2x512Mb of Corsair XMS Low Latency cost over 300 quid last time i checked

anyway have to shoot off to work
bbl

 

To use 1GB sticks, do I need a board that specifically states that it supports 1GB sticks, or not?

 

no
its not the sticks size thats the issue
its the motherboards max addressable memory
which in this case is 3GB, and it mentions that
you couldnt for instance use, 3x 2GB sticks
but you could use 1x 2GB and 1x 1GB, but not in DDR mode

make sense?