Cant decide on board !!

Being a complete n00b on overclocking i thought id pop in here for a little help on deciding which board to buy. Although i dont know much on overclocking i WILL be looking into it soon and hopefully gain some knowledge on it. Knowing this please dont let it reflect on advising which board i should try out.

The other components ill buy are 2 x 512DDR PC3700 ram sticks
and probably a 2800XP "Barton" chipset.

Basically what i need to know is what would be the best MOBO to go for knowing that in the future i will want to overclock it and possibly fit the vapochill components to it aswell.

Any help and information will be much appreciated!!!

Cheers

seems the most popular choices here are the ABIT NF7-S r2.0 and the Asus A7N8X r2.0 from what i've seen/read. Personally I'm in the same kind of boat as you and after much deliberation I'm going with the ABIT board.

as this was my first system and found overclocking on it a complete breeze, i too recomend the abit nf7 (any) v2.0

I will say that you might be better off buying a 2500+ or even a 1700

I just got a 2500+ barton and an EPoX 8rda+. The motherboard has been spectacular so far. I was able to get the FSB up to 205....any more and I couldn't get into windows. 210 wouldn't boot windows, and 213 would post, but it would not enter bios.

If you're into extreme overclocking, from what I hear the NF7 2.0 has more options. But, for $96 at newegg, the 8RDA+ doesn't have much less. This is in terms of overclocking options. I think the nf7 has more voltages.....but all nForce2 boards have a huge range of voltages and general overclocking options.

As for on board options, the A7N8X Deluxe has every single feature available for the nForce2 chipset. In benchmarks, it's on top of almost all other nForce2 boards....i think the NF7 and Soltek boards are comperable...the downside is it's an Asus.....they're HORRIBLE for tech support, and I heard that the A7N8X have a relatively high DOA rate....i'm not sure of that though. Basically, if anything ever goes wrong, you better hope that the vendor will cover it, because asus sure as hell won't.....

Get Nforce board no doubt what so ever.

I personally am a fan of Asus Boards always been high quality.
But on other hand ive heard really good things about the Abit boards and had the local shop i bought my board at had both Asus and Abit boards i woulda proabably bought the Abit.

Just heard good things about that board.

well some might ban me for saying this but i suggest buying the soltek nf2 mobo and a 1700dlt and also some good hyperx 3500 with a slk800.

going out and buying the top end stuff when youve never done this isnt the best route.start about were i said and do it cheaply and learn as you go.then you will see what you need and want.

and trust me the items i mentioned altho not the "top dog" parts will oc like mad and will be a sweet fast rig.

but a vapochill and a 2800 barton is not the way to learn ocing.


btw welcome to the forums!

Thanks for the help guys... (tho still a little confused)

The main purpose for my new pc will be for gaming the overclocking will possibley step in as a sideline or when the comp gets out dated.

Im currently running a 1800XP 512 DDR gf3 titanium. So ill be going for the 2800 barton anyway as it seems to be the best value for money without going to great amounts of money.

Games being released lately are getting very demanding and my pc at the moment cant handle some. The MOBO question i think has been answered .. ASUS seems the way forward, im using a A-BIT KR7A atm and ive had nothing but problems with it..blue screen errors and my pc locks up atleast 3 times within 30 minutes of its 1st boot up of the day. It says driver conflicts but i have changed every possible driver with no success.

Im not running down A-Bit as some friends swear by them and think they are great " maybe i got a bad 1 " but i have also heard great things about ASUS.

What im wondering now is what ASUS board would be best for me for the overclocking side and support the ram and chip i mentoned in 1st post

Thanks again !!!!

Had the ASUS mobo's both version 1.04 and 2. Not bad boards until you get a NF7-S version 2. IT ROCKS see signature

I say the NF7-S 2.0

Yeah it seems the NF7-S 2.0 is the most popular board so i cant go wrong with that

Thanks for the help guys !!!!!!!!!!!

Had the ASUS mobo's both version 1.04 and 2. Not bad boards until you get a NF7-S version 2. IT ROCKS see signature

Click to expand...

He said it all I own two Asus 2.0 boards......... and even the abit NF7-S 1.2 rocks the asus 2.0 board.

ive been thnking of getting an abit nf7 or the epox. i have had some problems with the asus dying. it will work fine, then just die out of nowhere. but from what i understand, its nvidias fault.