Beginner\'s Guide to Motherboard Selection

[yyrkoon]

Correct, excessive amounts of money. I have a LaserJet III for printing documents, why? Because it cost me nothing but some electricity to use it. The toner cartridge last for THOUSANDS of prints, and I find free spares in trashed-out LaserJets.

I have a SCSI card because high-end SCSI scanners are free now too. Anything USB under $200 can't compare.

I have a nice joystick collection: The new joysticks lack ergonomics found in a select few older models. Takes a joystick port, of course.

I can't afford the USB 2.0 to SCSI adapter that Adaptec just took off the market. I can't find a USB to Joystick adapter that's universal. But I can afford to adapt the printer to USB.

Heh, printer companies sell inkjet printers for free after rebates . .. Why ? because they make all thier money on cartridges 😉 One thing to note though, Color laser printers can be had fairly cheaply now ($300 ish). As for what you said about USB scanners being free, well, I dont know myself, but using SCSI instead isnt a very portable / universal way to connect to more than one PC.

 

[quantumsheep]

Correct, excessive amounts of money. I have a LaserJet III for printing documents, why? Because it cost me nothing but some electricity to use it. The toner cartridge last for THOUSANDS of prints, and I find free spares in trashed-out LaserJets.

I have a SCSI card because high-end SCSI scanners are free now too. Anything USB under $200 can't compare.

I have a nice joystick collection: The new joysticks lack ergonomics found in a select few older models. Takes a joystick port, of course.

I can't afford the USB 2.0 to SCSI adapter that Adaptec just took off the market. I can't find a USB to Joystick adapter that's universal. But I can afford to adapt the printer to USB.

Heh, printer companies sell inkjet printers for free after rebates . .. Why ? because they make all thier money on cartridges 😉 One thing to note though, Color laser printers can be had fairly cheaply now ($300 ish). As for what you said about USB scanners being free, well, I dont know myself, but using SCSI instead isnt a very portable / universal way to connect to more than one PC.

You guys in the USA are very lucky. Here in the UK we don't get any rebates 🙁

Plus there's our energy prices (Petrol £1 a Litre, compared to your $1 a gallon! etc).

 

[Crashman]

Your fuel prices are due to taxation, fix it or quit complaining 😛

 

[quantumsheep]

Your fuel prices are due to taxation, fix it or quit complaining 😛

I suppose the taxation is useful in that we get healthcare free, rather than wasting thousands of pounds everytime we get ill.

 

[Crashman]

Your fuel taxes pay for health care? Wow, ours only pay for road repairs. I guess I could learn how to carry a square meter of PC equipment on the back of my bicycle...

 

[Crashman]

Were I to try carrying all this equipment on a bicycle, I would probably NEED the free healthcare!

 

[Crashman]

The latest high-efficiency diesel panel trucks get up to 22MPG highway, 12 city. That's about what a midsized van gets (Chevy Astro for example), but with around half the acceleration rate...

Modern commercial tractors get around 12MPG pulling a 6-ton load. But a 6-ton load is very little for so large a truck. 8MPG pulling a 12-ton load would be...more efficient.

 

[ikjadoon]

Ah...Gotta love those Dr.Z commercials, lol...

People in the UK get free healthcare, but horrid prices on gas, and I hear you guys have a tax on TV?!? I am still amazed about that.

~Ibrahim~

 

[Crashman]

Hehe, an "independant" government-installed franchise?

 

[quantumsheep]

Hehe, an "independant" government-installed franchise?

Well it's quite independant, they keep criticising the government all the time. Then again, our Government has lots that can be criticised!

It's almost as bad as the Government you guys have over in the US of A

 

[Crashman]

Yeh, we have PBS over here, they used to host Al Franken commedy nights.

Al Franken is about the biggest liar there is, so he wrote a book called "Lies, Liars, and the Lies they tell" or something like that, where he lied about how everone else lies. W0W!

The guy is just a bit left of Michael Moore...ok, he's way left of Michael Moore.

 

[Ratsneve]

I am going to make a few of my friends read this so that maybe when I start to ask them some serious questions about what they want they can just tell me, not me spending hours on newegg bringing up dozens of possibilities for a build.

How can this be resolved? What serious questions would you ask? I think I know what I want--a gaming PC to last a couple years maybe that isn't bleeding edge Core 2 Duo (with Hybrid Drives?) for under $1.5K. But I go to Newegg and look at 7950 GX2 cards and still don't have a clue which one to get. Somewhere somehow I have to squeeze something to spit out one answer--not a dozen new questions to spend a 40 hour week resolving. (Now I should continue reading this interesting thread--maybe there are answers? 😀 )

 

[wussery]

A daunting task for beginners, choosing a motherboard is \"only\" as difficult as deciding what matters the most. Here is a helpful guide for the uninitiated.

Speak out in the Toms's Hardware reader survey!

Is there a way to get this guide in a printed version? I think it's an excellent guide, but would like to get the entire guide and pdf it.

 

[maitre]

Hi Y'all,

I need to fix my old PC. I'm looking for a budget mobo bundle that can take my PC2700 ram and my agp 8 video card. I'm not a gamer, I don't overclock, I just need to fix this old PC on the double.

I'd appreciate any advice as to what I should buy.

Thanks,

Ed

 

[quantumsheep]

Hi Y'all,

I need to fix my old PC. I'm looking for a budget mobo bundle that can take my PC2700 ram and my agp 8 video card. I'm not a gamer, I don't overclock, I just need to fix this old PC on the double.

I'd appreciate any advice as to what I should buy.

Thanks,

Ed

What CPU are you using? Hard drive? (SATA/IDE?)

 

[Crashman]

I'd suggest the Asrock 939Dual-VSTA, it uses the one chipset combination that supports both AGP and PCI-Express natively. It's Socket 939, I suggest you buy the fastest 939 processor you can afford to go with it.

 

[maitre]

I'm not currently using any CPU, it's shot. That's why I want to buy a bundle (mobo & CPU).

The new bundle has to support PC 2700 RAM, two IDE ATA 133 HDDs and an AGP card.

I plan to build a high end box for Vista early next year so I don't want to spend an arm and a leg for this machine. If I could find another socket A bundle with those features (the old mobo is an ASUS A7V8X-X) that would be great.

Thanks,

Ed

 

[quantumsheep]

I'd suggest the Asrock 939Dual-VSTA, it uses the one chipset combination that supports both AGP and PCI-Express natively. It's Socket 939, I suggest you buy the fastest 939 processor you can afford to go with it.

I second that idea.

 

[hergieburbur]

matire, you should be able to build a combo with the Asrock board mentioned above and a cheap 939 chip for less than a socket A combo would cost you, and it will run much better, along with giving you a board you could optionally use with your new Vista rig next year.

 

[maitre]

But it supports only ATA 100 and I'd like to take advantage of my two ATA 133 drives.

 

[Crashman]

But it supports only ATA 100 and I'd like to take advantage of my two ATA 133 drives.

There's no noticecable difference.

 

[hergieburbur]

As crash said, there really is no "advantage" to ATA133 other than for marketing purposes, since drives can't saturate the ATA100 connector most of the time anyway.

 

[maitre]

I found the Asus A8V-MX. Does anyone have any experience with that MoBo?

 

[maitre]

Hey Guys,

I did heed your advice and got me the Asrock 939VSTA Mobo and an Athlon 3200+ CPU.

When I turn this thing on, the BIOS (1.2) recognizes everything correctly, the CPU, the HDD, CD-Rom, RAM, etc. The problem is that I can not get Win XP to install. It never goes past the DOS part of the setup. When it comes to the point where it has to reboot and continue with the GUI part of the install, it starts with the same setup again. Same old thing, format, copy files over, reboot, etc. I tried it half a dozen times, nothing works. Sometimes I can see a split-second error message flashing by that says something about "BIOS translation" does not work. It's really to fast to read it. Can someone help?

Thanks,

Ed

 

[Crashman]

It sounds like it's just rebooting from CD over and over again. Normally this shouldn't happen unless you're hitting a key when it says "press any key to boot from CD". You could try changing the boot order in BIOS when it reboots.

Also make sure NONE of your ATA/SATA controllers are in RAID mode.