board recomendation ( special circumstance)

hello everyone
i have a gigabyte dx7 rev3 board ( old ) at home and its having trouble i think dealing with the proc (amd tbredb 2100) after i patched its bios so i was thinking of upgrading it

the kicker is i need a board roughly the same size and it has to deal with cls3 ram well.
i also have a nf7-s rev2.0 that i hear wont play nice with most cls3 ram .

I DONT NEED AN UBER BOARD for the dx7 im replaceing . i need a stable board with good performance and ata100/133 for primary not sata ( this is why i wont get another matching nf7-s)

i was thinking i might try a nf7-M because of the onboard grafics and no sata but i dont know about the dimentions so i might just stick with a gigabyte board .

MY beast im building will use my nf7-s rev2.0

price is a little important to me too btw ( not terribly but a little)


so what do you think

ok here are some of the boards im thinking about
The ASUS A7N8X-X

GA-7N400-L1

GA-7NNXP
( this one does not have mounting holes for a waterblock which means later on i mey not like this one)

8rda+ is the way to go.. its about 80 dollars us now

Is there something about the size of a 7DX that you're worried about? IIRC that's a full ATX board. You'll have to elaborate more on your space issue.....

ah the case i have is from micron on one of their old dream machines ( it was the first release of the 1.333 Tbirds ) and the tray was designed specificaly for the mobo so the holes have to be spaced the same . i could mod it if i have to i guess but i was just being lazy.

if i find that nf7-s rev2.0 plays well with crucial cas3 ram i will get an nf7-m board because it fits the bill for what i want but abit boards dont always like cas3 and it may eliminate it from choices .

hey thor, if i could be of any help here:

an abit NF7-S doesn't mind the cas3 ram, i'm sure, but it DOES mind the brand of ram and/or the ras timings.. e.g. 2.5-4-4-4 works but 2.3-3-4 doesn't...

basically you wanna manually adjust the ram timings until it quits bluescreening and/or actually completes memtest...

also if the ram just simply gives more problems beyond that, you need to go single channel, e.g. use slots 1-2 and not 2-3/1-3...

using only single channel solves the other 80% of them unknown weird memory problems...

thats as far as the nf7 goes... (all of em', cause i had a -M also)


but otherwise if you're not really opting for speed/overclocking then go either a chaintech 7njl3 if you can find one, it should be about 60usd and its the smallest full atx nforce2 board i've seen so far... (i got one cause i needed a cheap board for a linux storage/router box) this board also has the biggest clearence around the socket of almost any other nforce2 board besides shuttle's, though there's a small capacitor you have to bend out of the way... otherwise its got an area of maybe 9-10cm x 6cm until it hits the edge...

and also if that's not an option then go for the abit KV7.. a solid kt600 board that'll trump most of the cheaper nforce2's out there and has hardware southbridge SATA (i know you don't need it) and the via envy24 sound too... (kinda like via's soundstorm)

i'd definitely stay away from the 7nnxp cause it doesn't have the mounting holes and its been proven to have some weird problems here: nforcershq.com forums...

and also are you sure you wanna go water for the micron machine? (dun wanna paint another lian li huh?)