The DDR mobo with de best stability ???

Helloo ppl,
I am from Portugal so first I must say: sorry my english...
I am thinking of buying a new DDR mobo with an Athlon 1.2 or 1.3 with 266 Mhz fsb but I have lot of questions:
- I was thinking of buying the Asus A7M mobo but I'm hearing from several ppl that it is really really instable and because of that Asus has stopped to produce and to sell it... is that right ???
- I have also heared from several people that 1.3 Athlons with 266 fsb are really really instable... is that correct ???
- I know that I must have a good cooling system for this CPU and I'm thinking of buying a Swiftek MC 370-0A (I know the MC462-A is better but it's just impossible to find one here!) or a ThermoEngine because I heared this one is really good too... what do you think about this??? Should I buy one of them or buy a Peltier ??? Is it difficult to install a Peltier??? What do I need to know ??? Water cooling is difficult to install ???
I just told you that my DDR memory will be Crucial PC2100 and I'm thinking of buying the new MSi KT266 instead of the Asus A7M, is this one better than the Asus A7A with the Ali chipset ???
Thank you for helping me to decide and to get a really godd stable machine... here in Portugal it's rather difficult to talk about this to ppl who know what they're talking about...
One more time thank you...

i think the most stable board for ddr is probably the gigabyte ga 7dx, but you're into overclocking you should look elsewhere because there's no multiplier settings, or anyway to change the voltage, you can only mess with the fsb

The A7M266 is not unstable at all. I'm using this board since almost half a year now, it's my second one (I got the first in December 2000), I have modified, tortured and oc the hell out of this, it's set up for RAID 0 with a Promise Fasttrack, and I did not have ANY problem with stability. In the oc clubs in Japan the A7M266 is THE DDR reference board. The 1.33 Giga TB is LN cooled at 2200 at the A7M266. I'm running a Duron 850@1150 and a 1.33 Giga (AXIA) at 1.6 Giga at the A7M266 with 256 PC2100 from Samsung. The A7M266 givers you excellent headroom for FSB overclocking. It is also not true that Asus has announced to stop producing this board now. There is also a modifcation for up to 2,2 volts vcore (which I don't have). Over the years, I have used many different boards, but the
A7M266 is certainly among the best ones.

The problems are: no multiplier. Like many other A7M266 owners I have modfied my board, so that I CAN set the mulitplier which is easy for somebody who knows to solder, but difficult for a newbee in this field.
Also: the A7M266 is quite "sensitive" when booting with high oc FSB (e.g above 150) . Then, sometimes, the board is not defaulting, but does not boot at all, and the CMOS has to be cleared.


oops, I just see that you are considering to buy a MSI K7T266. DO NOT DO THIS. Please check the ongoing discusssion about this board, also here on overclockers.com. The KT266 chipset is still in an early stage, there are issues, and in particular the MSI K7T266 seems to have a serious design flaw. There are MSI K7T266 boards around with a misplcaced resistor
and awful performance.

If you do not want to buy a AMD760 based board like the Asus A7M266 or Gigabyte or MSI, you still can get a ALI DDR board, they are supposed to be a bit slower than the AMD 760 boards, but very stable (I WILL for example), but definitely don't buy a KT266 board now, you might end up with a low performing design-flaw dud.
quote]MICHEL (Apr 16, 2001 10:49 a.m.):
Helloo ppl,
I am from Portugal so first I must say: sorry my english...
I am thinking of buying a new DDR mobo with an Athlon 1.2 or 1.3 with 266 Mhz fsb but I have lot of questions:
- I was thinking of buying the Asus A7M mobo but I'm hearing from several ppl that it is really really instable and because of that Asus has stopped to produce and to sell it... is that right ???
- I have also heared from several people that 1.3 Athlons with 266 fsb are really really instable... is that correct ???
- I know that I must have a good cooling system for this CPU and I'm thinking of buying a Swiftek MC 370-0A (I know the MC462-A is better but it's just impossible to find one here!) or a ThermoEngine because I heared this one is really good too... what do you think about this??? Should I buy one of them or buy a Peltier ??? Is it difficult to install a Peltier??? What do I need to know ??? Water cooling is difficult to install ???
I just told you that my DDR memory will be Crucial PC2100 and I'm thinking of buying the new MSi KT266 instead of the Asus A7M, is this one better than the Asus A7A with the Ali chipset ???
Thank you for helping me to decide and to get a really godd stable machine... here in Portugal it's rather difficult to talk about this to ppl who know what they're talking about...
One more time thank you...[/quote]