What mobo do you foks recommend?

[Tommyboy]

I am going to be running Win2000. I will be getting a 1.2 ghz cpu, geforce 2 400mx 64 meg video, Two Maxtor Diamond plus 45 7200rpm H/D's, DVD, CDRW. Not sure of sound card. 2 256 meg sticks of DDR PC2100 ram. What mobo do you good folks recommend? I will do only light overclocking. What's a nice sound card? Money IS an object but I don't want to skimp on the mobo. A couple of recommendations please?

I already have the H/D's vid card, DVD, CDRW and Ram. I will use this mostly for games.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Richard]

It seems that all the rage lately is the Epox EP-8K7A and EP-8K7A+. $120 & $150 + or - $5-$10 The (+) includes onboard RAID; via the HPT 370 RAID controller.

These motherboards are so popular in fact that they are very hard to come by. As of right now, you'd be lucky just to find one. All resellers are reporting an ETA of no earlier than 10 AUGUST. (I myself, am waiting on one. )

If you need a board right now. You could do a lot worse than the Epox 8KHA. It does not have onboard RAID, but from all accounts it is a fast, and stable board that is competitively priced. $110 + or - $5.

The 8K7A uses the AMD 761 chipset.
The 8KHA uses the VIA KT266 chipset.

I think if you look around you'll find that a lot of people recommend Gigabyte, Asus, and Abit. There is nothing wrong with their boards. It's just that those manufacturers tend to price their boards in a higher bracket. You frequently don't get any more features than you would from say an Epox, IWILL, or MSI board; you just pay more.

 

[flyman0]

I am trying to get a hold of an IWILL ka266-r. I had one, but it was bad so I sent it back, and the store doesn't have any more. I personally think that the IWILL will be great.....if I ever can find one.

 

[Hookem]

On the sound card end of it...I had chosen a Diamond Monster MX300 and was told that the drivers are not really compatible with Windows 2000... if you could please pass along any bottle necks and or hardware conflicts you have heard of for Windows 2000 as the OS..good luck on your new box!!!

 

[Richard]

http://www.vortexofsound.com/

Has Win2k drivers for the vortex2.

 

[DaveB]

Got to put in a good word for my $91 Shuttle AK31 V2. It's running a 1.4 GHz AYHJA @ 1.6 GHz with a GeForce2 GTS 32MB DDR AGP card, an SBLive! 5.1, and mixed IDE and SCSI stuff without any problems. It's a dual-boot with a Win98 IDE drive and a Win2K SCSI drive. No problems were encountered with the initial setup or overclocking. From what I've read, the Epox 8KHA would also be a good choice.

 

[toni33]

I´ve got the asus a7v133 raid and it works well... the multiplier goes to 12,5 and the bus up to 160 more or less
If you want overclock is a good choice