Please advise a newbie on a good motherboard

[DrPickle]

Hello all, thanks for reading.

I've recently decided I want to make my own computer. This is pretty much me buying components and my Computer Science major friend installing them for me. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to do it piece by piece, and one of the pieces I'm looking at right now is a motherboard. I don't want to spend a load of cash, mainly because I don't have a load of cash. Right now here's what I'm looking at.

ATI Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card.
An X-Blade case (still deciding on this, I may find something better)
One or two 200gb harddrives (I really doubt I'd need more than this)
About a gig of RAM.

That's all I know to get, though, and I'm stuck on other things, from processors to motherboards. I know there's some really extravigant stuff out there, but I can't really afford really extravigant stuff, so I'll stick to the "good, but not great" category. Thanks for the help.

 

[over_c]

You must answer two questions before a motherboard can be suggested.

1) What is the purpose of this computer (office apps, games, encoding)?
2) Do you have a CPU preference (AMD64, AMD Sempron, Intel P4, Celeron, etc)?

 

[sparky853]

Heres a couple other questions for you.

<b>1) What is your budget?</b> If we know what you are willing to spend, we'll have a better idea of what parts fit into that budget.

<b>2) Do you have existing parts you'll be reusing?</b> This can help with your upgrade, as you can spend more on the really important parts (CPU and GPU).

Answer those questions, as well as the others posted (usage & CPU preference, although CPU preference isn't that important) and we'll be able to help more.

Systems Running F@H:
AMD: [A64 3200+] [XP2800+ x2] [XP2400+]
Intel: [P4 2.8 x4] [P4 2.0] [P4 1.8] [P4 1.7] [P4 1.6 x2] [P4 1.4M] [Xeon 1.0] [Cel 1.0] [P3 ??]

 

[dunklegend]

Also tell us if you're going to upgrade this system in the future or just use it until you get a new one.

 

[DrPickle]

1) Mainly going to be used for college things (writing and the like) and gaming.

2) CPU preference I don't know. I'm really not that computer savy. I'll pretty much use what's good and affordable.

3) Budget for a motherboard would be about $250 maximum. I'm a poor college student.

4) I'm going to try to make this an entirely new computer. Eventually I want everything to be new, but to begin with I'll be putting it in my HP.

5) I may upgrade in the future, but for the moment I'm trying to make a system that would last me a good few years, through the next three at least, without going totally useless.

 

[dunklegend]

If you want to upgrade in the future you should get a socket 939 motherboard, they'll support dual core with a bios update.
The newer video cards use PCIexpress but if you have an AGP card you can't reuse it in one of those mobos.
With $150 you can get an Athlon 64 3000+ and a Socket 939 mobo goes from around 80 to 200+ but 120-150 will buy you something good

 

[mozzartusm]

Chill out on all that HD space. Do you really need 200G X 2= 400Gig? Thats probably overkill. Reroute some of that money into other aspects of the system.

Intel P4 550(3.4)@<font color=green>5Ghz</font color=green>
Asus P5AD2-E-Premium
Crucial Ballistix PC2 5300 2X256
TT 680W PSU

 

[mozzartusm]

Yes, and so do I but our habit isnt as widespread as you may think. At least not 400G of fun. BTW, how would you like a couple of custom DVD's?

Intel P4 550(3.4)@<font color=green>5Ghz</font color=green>
Asus P5AD2-E-Premium
Crucial Ballistix PC2 5300 2X256
TT 680W PSU

 

[DrPickle]

How do these look?

https://host201.ipowerweb.com/~hwrebuil/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=152
http://www.emicrox.com/eShop/Product.aspx?pid=1427101&SEID=1
A gig of RAM

S'all I got ideas for so far.

 

[DrPickle]

I think the main problem is that I really don't know what to look for in a motherboard. I mean... what's good? More slots? What? Maybe if I knew what to find I could search a bit better. Any hints?

 

[dunklegend]

When looking for a motherboard these are some of the options:
-Socket.- The number of pins the CPU has. For AMD the latest are 754, 940 and 939. 754 is being phased out but is pretty good in price/performance it supports AGP slot for the video card. 940 uses expensive registered RAM. 939 has a little better performance than 754 but it's a little pricier and it supports PCI express slot for the video card.

-PCI slots.- older slots used for addon cards (modem, audio, IDE controllers etc.) 3 is a good number but it really depends on what are you planning on adding in the future.

-USB ports.- connections for external devices (digital cameras, mouse keyboard, hard drives etc.) it should have at least 4 and preferrably USB2 because they have a higher transfer rate.

-IDE or PATA.- they provide the connection for the cables for your hard drives and optical devices (CD Rom, DVD etc.)usually 2, some boards have an additional one to setup a RAID.

-SATA.- same that IDE but for newer devices, it has thinner cables.

-onboard audio.- self explanatory. you don't need an extra audio card

-onboard video.- it usually shares the system memory not a good idea if you plan on gaming or use a lot of graphics, because uses the processor resources for video

If you can start by looking at the specifications of any newer motherboard and then ask what you don't understand.

 

[endyen]

Do you already have the radeon? If you own one already, get a s754 nforce3 board. It may be that it is being phased out, but the chips for it run faster, perform better than s939. <A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813127190" target="_new">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813127190</A>
That leaves enough of your $250 to get <A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103486" target="_new">this</A>
I would shell out the extra to get <A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103483" target="_new">this though</A>