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What is the best motherboard for around $100 to buy now, and maybe where too?
Also will need new CPU, AMD

I want something easy to install that is compatable with nearly everthing else with out having to do alot of upgrades and trouble shooting (if thats posable)

Don't know yet if I would want to tweak and over clock alot, or run stock. But I would like tweakable!

Must be AMD XP, and DDR, ATA 133.

plenty of PCI slots, not a board with only 3

1 Isa?

Don't care about on board video or sound, Might be nice to have to begin with, if It can be disabaled latter and not interfere with anything I might add.

After my parts get here this weekend I have allready bought, I will lapp the AX-7 and install it, see what difference it makes on this system, then pull out the guts, install into another case I have here and mod the heck out of this case. When the mod is done, I need something to put in here!

canton_kid

shuttle ak35 if you can find it.

Greg

Another vote for the AK35...

or

Soltek Purple Ray (but not as many overclocking tweaks in the bios as the AK35)....

Iwill XP333... Might not be as fast as a Via kt266a but its no slouch... And its a lot smoother than the ever so wonderful via shit is...

Originally posted by PreDatoR
Iwill XP333... Might not be as fast as a Via kt266a but its no slouch... And its a lot smoother than the ever so wonderful via shit is...

haha.... Can't disagree wit dat ! Now if one would just work with my Radeon 8500 This Abit KR7A-R is a killer mobo but they're a bit pricey, unless you can get a used one like I did for less than 90 bux.

For what you require I'd check out the Iwill XP333, Shuttle AK35GTR or the Soltek SL-DRV4

Shuttle AK35GTR KT266A , is that the right one? Found it for about $96 shipped.

I was looking at the pics and reading the specs.

I never messed with raid, cept to kill bugs, hee hee. What is it? I know it has to do with harddrives, but thats all I know.

I see in the pics, the board has two IDE conecters by the floppy connecter. Whats the two yellow larger looking ones for? Is that the raid? Does that take specail cables and drives, or do the standard ata133's work?

How many drives does this support? From what I read looks like it runs 4 ide and maybe 4 raids? Is that all 8 or 4 of either?

Might buy this next week or so.

canton_kid

RAID allows multiple drives to be seen as one. Different levels do different things. No special cables required or anything and it can be used as a regular IDE channel!!

Good site on RAID Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/RAID.html

You dont need to use raid though.

I have the board, and dont even have one ide unit. Scsi is for me. the board is very nice though.

Greg

I used the Gigabyte GA-7VRXP, haven't tried to overclock it but its great, its the first mb that ive ever bougt and ive had no problems it has 4 or 5 pci slots and an agp but no isa, there's onboard sound and an onboard nic but both can be easily turned off, im running an athlon 1800+ and 256 ddr 2700

i got my mb at harddrive.com and my processor at tcwo.com but use pricewatch.com to see where it's cheapest

Yea, USE PRICE WATCH!

Best price I found on my 1700xp (thinking of buying another) is TCWO, then I found the link here for price watch and looked up the 1700xp, geuss what, tcwo was still the cheapest, but it was about 15-20 cheaper using price watch than going directly to their site!

I tried it both ways, at the same time, so they hadn't just lower the price since I was there before, they actually had a better price using pricewatch. Even said on their page Welcome pricewatch shopper or something like that! But you don't get anymore savings if you just start shopping the site with their links!

Also if you go through price watch, add it to the cart, then in another window go back to price watch and look up somethng else at tcwo and add it to the cart, you get the price watch price on both! Tried that too. They had several things at better prices on price watch than on their site, so look it all up on pricewatch and follow the links, then add it to cart! You don't get the lower price on everything just becuase you follow the first item there! You have to follow the price watch link for each item to get the best price, but they do all go into the same cart!

On a test order I did not buy, I would have saved about $40 dollars by jumping from pricewatch to tcwo back to pricewatch back to tcwo for each item. If I just shoped for the rest of the items after adding the CPU on the first jump, I would not have gotten anymore savings, just saved on the first one about $20.

This was a suprise to me, and I have been buying there already! Actually I think I kinda feel ripped off on the other orders now, I was happy with them before!

Canton-kid

Oh yea, I didn't try it, but it might be the same on the other sites too. Have to look each item up on price watch before buying it!

I would look stuff up both ways at the same time from now on, and see whats what. Make sure some palces don't have a LOWER price on their own site for somethngs too!

$5 fan might not be worth much trouble, but saving $20 on a cpu IS. Just make sure it's a decent company your buying from. I saw a couple ragtags on pricewatch too I would NOT buy from at any price!

And watch the shipping, some of them offera low price but try to get it back on shipping charges, saw that a time or two too.

canton-kid

Epox 8K3A+ or Gigabyte GA-7DXR+. I've got em both and I like em!!!

I have a 7DXR, great board. I wish it had all the features the plus has. I replaced the crappy Chipset fan with a Zalman NB Heatsink, works nicely, haven't had any problems pushing up the FSB..

I got busy and also been doing some travelling.

I had ordered some parts, (still in the box), but not the a motherboard. just no time.

I will be having more time soon so I think I will order the Shuttle Ak35R or Iwill 333 this comming week.
Been a while, I'll need to see how CPu and ram prices are now and rethink those, should have came down again now.

Canton_kid
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