2 IDE Mobo?

[petebert]

I'm now upgrading again, its been about 4 years. I'm thinking of going with a Core 2 duo 6300 or 6400 for the price vs. performance. Uhh looking on newegg theres at least 50 mobo's for me to choose from but I've only found one that is 2 IDE? I suppose 2 IDE is a silly feature to base my purchase off of when there is so many other damn features but it looks like its a good one anyways. MSI 975X Platinum V.2 Socket T (LGA 775) Intel 975X ATX Intel Motherboard, know of any others?

 

[yas]

What is your price range?? What kind of ports do you want? Do you plan on overclocking?

 

[petebert]

hey I might not need the 2 IDE's, remember I havent done this in 4 years and went and looked at the HD section of newegg I see that SATA is the new standard? and they are huge, and they are cheap. So I can get a new SATA drive and still keep my IDE in there as a 2nd drive with the dvd burner.

So this brings me back to square one with a bazillian mobo options. I like $150-160 as an upper limit for price. Overclock? probably eventually, when I bought this Athlon 2100 there was no reason to OC it then about a year later I got bored, bought a better heatsink and its been a 2700 ever since. Back in my 66fsb celeron days I OC'd the day I got it, but I'm pretty content with what the current CPU's do out of the box. So yes some day I just might bump it up a bit.

Ports? I dont think I do anything special, dont need on board video, I will get my own card. I do like as many USB's as possible. I still have a printer which uses the giant connector. I'm assuming onboard NIC is standard too?

 

[yas]

Yes all boards come with atleast 4 or 6 sata ports. the best boards I can think of in your price range are:

asus P5B-e
gigabyte DS3
MSI platinum
ABIT AB9 PRO

Check out these cards and see which one you like best. I would personally recomend the ABIT AB9 PRO because it has a hell of alot of features like more expensive boards but sells for a reasonable price.

 

[Newf]

yas choices are good. I like the Gigabyte S3. Another to consider:

MSI P965 Neo-F LGA775 965 ATX Conroe $93+6 11/23/06
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813130052
http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=P965_Neo-F&class=mb
Hardwarezone Review MSI P965 7/21/06
http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=1987&cid=6&pg=1

You can always buy a PCI or PCI-E card with IDE ports for expansion if you need it. Make life easy and get an SATA HD for your boot drive

 

[petebert]

I was looking at that gigabyte board earlier, newegg is running a combo with it, for me the choice would be between the core 2 duo 6300 for $315, or 6400 for $353.

How do I know what ram speed to get? Do I just get the DDR2-800 since thats what the board supports? With the 6300 and 6400 whats the min ram speed required? So far I can not figure it out from the specs.

 

[Newf]

I was looking at that gigabyte board earlier, newegg is running a combo with it, for me the choice would be between the core 2 duo 6300 for $315, or 6400 for $353.

How do I know what ram speed to get? Do I just get the DDR2-800 since thats what the board supports? With the 6300 and 6400 whats the min ram speed required? So far I can not figure it out from the specs.

You need DDR2/533 to run a Conroe at stock speeds. To overclock one, you need to bump up the FSB and thus also run the ram faster. If you do not plan to overclock your new Conroe, get this:

Kingston value DDR2 2G 533 KVR533D2N4K2/2G $211+5 11/23/06
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820144157

Want to Overclock Conroe:
Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4 DDR2 2G 2.1v $300-40Rebate+0 11/23/2006
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145034

The Kingston has dropped $10 over the last month. The $260 Corsair is the same. If you buy the Corsair (whether you OC right away or not), once it POSTs go into BIOS setup and bump the ram voltage from the stock 1.8 up to 2.0 to keep it stable.

 

[petebert]

since I might and probably will OC one day, I'll think I'll go PC6400 but just start with 1GB. newegg has that camo heatsink OCZ for $110 after rebate, guess I'll have to read toms review on it.

 

[Newf]

since I might and probably will OC one day, I'll think I'll go PC6400 but just start with 1GB. newegg has that camo heatsink OCZ for $110 after rebate, guess I'll have to read toms review on it.

Be very careful about which enthusiast ram you buy. Make sure it will work with the board you pick. The Corsair I listed is compatible with most 965 boards and you can get the same ram as 2x512 sticks.

 

[yas]

still you shouldnt need to worry now since the chipset has been out for so long so most ram should work no probs.

 

[petebert]

is dual channeling 2 512's any benefit over a single 1GB?

 

[zjohnr]

I guess you've given up on 2 IDE connector boards, but ... oh, well.

I'm holding on to see what a motherboard based on the Nvidia 650i Ultra chipset might look like. Though I'm sure they will also only have 1 PATA connector, technically the 650i chipset supports 4 PATA devices. In reality, any new motherboard will probably continue the "We hate PATA" trend.

Another possible option is a PATA to SATA converter dongle like this one. Do they work? Sometimes. For some people. Would it work for you? I have not the faintest idea. Ya pays ya's money and ya takes ya's chance.

I've got one of these dongles and I've got a spare 120GB PATA drive. So I guess I really should take a few hours sometime and see if I could get Windows XP to install and boot on my IDE drive via a SATA port using it. However since I have a Pentium 3 system, whatever the result it wouldn't be applicable to anyone else , but still ... I wonder if it would work.

-john, the redundant legacy PATA dinosaur

 

[Newf]

is dual channeling 2 512's any benefit over a single 1GB?

Yup, 10-15% improvement.

 

[Newf]

Sabrent PCI-->IDE controller $16+? 11/05/06
http://www.directron.com/sbtrdit.html

 

[zahid]

All motherboards have 2 IDE - Primary and Secondary on the motherboard.

May I suggest the ASROCK 775 DUAL VSTA?

 

[petebert]

I had planned to get a new drive and with the price of SATA drives theres no reason for me to hang on to 2 IDE's, now I'll just use my biggest IDE as a back up.

 

[Newf]

All motherboards have 2 IDE - Primary and Secondary on the motherboard.

May I suggest the ASROCK 775 DUAL VSTA?

You really are kidding, aren't you????

 

[petebert]

keeping as many old parts as possible is certainly an intriguing idea, but I think the core 2 duo would be pissed off while waiting on the 9600 pro to finish its business.

 

[operaman]

Did I miss something ?
What about a 9600 pro?

I'm holding off my purchase until some mobo's with the 650i show up.
I expect most or all of the mobo's with that chipset to have 2 PATA ports; it's a huge selling point of the board.
I *think* the 650i is the only Conroe-supporting chipset with 2 PATA controlers (for 4 PATA devices) built in.
Sure there's a handful of mobo's that have add-on IDE control chips onboard, but they're not really part of the chipset and that means that software support for them won't be nearly as common.