[Novalug] Motherboard Choices

[Jay Hart]

Mike,

My two cents:

1. I've used AMD chips for over ten years, I've only had problems with one (1)
chip/MB combo, and I probably caused it by overclocking the chip.

2. I like giga-byte boards, they seem to be a little more solid than other
boards I've tried. I currently have two PCs running these boards, and I'm just
now starting to see a few little issues with my oldest board (4 years old).

3. Buy great memory, I personally like Mushkin.  Only had one issue with them
so far, and it was with my original Athlon 600 board (way back in the day). It
was not their memory, it was my board.

4. Spend a little extra money, and get yourself a very high quality power
supply.  I have found over the years that this simple often overlooked area
can prolong the PC life by years.

5. High quality case fans go along way towards preventing heat related
problems. I had the dickens of a time early last year with my new Mini-ITX
PCs, until I was able to get some fans that would last longer then six weeks.

Hope this helps,

Of all the items I've listed above, to me #4 is the most important...

Jay

> Hi all,
>
> I'm faced with a dying motherboard.  Well, a dying chipset fan to be
> exact.  It's an Asus A8N SLI Deluxe.  I've been a fan of Asus for a long
> time as far as hardware goes, but I've been disappointed lately.  This
> is the second Asus board in a row to have the chipset fan die with just
> over a year of operation.
>
> The first one was turned on all day after the fan died on its own.  I
> came home to a crispy north bridge :)
> Luckily, I caught this one in time and have given it some TLC to keep it
> alive until I can either replace the board or the fan itself.  I'm not
> sure whether the fan uses a proprietary connector, though.
>
> My question is this -- what boards and other manufacturers do you
> suggest?  Perhaps staying away from a chipset fan is the better idea
> here, and if I decide to go that route with a new board, I'll likely
> choose Asus again.
>
> Existing hardware is an AMD 4200X2, socket 939.  2GB DDR400 RAM,
> PCI-Express graphics.
>
> I haven't yet decided whether to take this as a sign to upgrade the rest
> of the hardware as well or not.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> -- Mike
>
>
>
>
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