Following on from my earlier thread it looks like I'm in the market for a new mainboard and processor.

There seems to be a few choices of socket to choose from in the AMD range, which should I go for?

It needs to be a fairly budget setup and I don't play games but I don't want it to be sluggish.

Hi Stu

Just wander in to Nova tech and ask, I take it you are not too far away ...they have always given me good advice as well as good prices

A 13mm should do it.

My vote goes for socket 939. All seem to be very good boards.

Don't just do novatech, they are expensive and you can get much better deals.

Core 2 duo are the way forward stu, drop me a PM and if you want details.

You can buy motherboards now that will accept a core 2 duo, so even if you can't get hold of the CPU just yet publically, you can buy a really cheap P4/celeron until you can and then drop one in. They perform very very well, at a lower clock speed and also use much less power so good for the leccy bill and heat

http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=307&model=1179&modelmenu=1

Something like that would see you good for a nice long time

http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=307&model=1179&modelmenu=1

Something like that would see you good for a nice long time

It needs to be a fairly budget setup.

:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

I'm looking at no more than

You can get boards for that socket for much less.

What have you currently got (PM me if you like) and I can give you some advice relating to that. If you can stretch to it get something that can take a core 2 duo, as they* will be the CPU of the future, even if that means getting a slightly lesser CPU at the moment.

*Or the AMD equivalent if/when it comes out.

EDIT oh and sorry, didn't see the budget bit, will teach me to skim read.

I have an MSI KT7 something or other, Athlon XP 2100+ and 1gb DDR 333.

All my drives are IDE not SATA.

ok in that case you could buy a cheapo socket A board for about £20-30 and be all ok for another year while you save up for a newer system should you choose you want a newer one.

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?asr-k7nf2r&P=1

Something like that is pretty reasonable i have built a system off it and you can save £4 elsewhere but as you can pick it up from NT it will be cheaper to get ti there.

AMD (Venice) Athlon 64Bit 3200+ Socket 939pin 512k L2cache 90nm Retail Boxed Processor £50.99

The board is anyones guess, there is so much choice and i'm well out of touch these days.

What about -

Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro-SLI, nForce4 FSB2000 Skt 939, PCI-E x2, SATA Raid, IDE Raid, Gbit LAN, 6ch Audio, USB2, Firewire, ATX £58.20

Or

Asus A8N-E Nforce4 Ultra PCI-E DDR400 GB LAN SATA £62.86

That's the sort of budget I am looking toward.

I'd consider the Gigabyte one, but tbh since it is 2xPCI-e you are looking at a new graphics card and depending on how many IDE devices you ahve you may not have enough chanels for all of them.

Personally I wouldn't buy a 939 as all the last generation of CPU use a lot of power (135W thermal envelope for a CPU against 65w for a dual core core duo).

Other thing is can it take your DDR ram ok, (I think it can, but can't remember)

Personally if the CPU is good, then just get a cheap board and save the money for a future upgrade.

Hadn't given a thought to the video card, mine is AGP.

Socket A boards are difficult to come by, it seems to be just the cheaper end left.

The novatech one is unavailable now.

I found -

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/59288

But if I bought that then found out my processor was toast I'm no further on, although you're theory of the dodgy components is probably right as the current MSI board I have is a replacement for one that did a similar thing.

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/113956

Cheap board, only a couple of PCI slots but supports Core 2 Duo according to the specs

Have a look for those caps, as if you find them i have sucessfully changed them for pittance before

The problem you really have it that the whole PC scene is just taking a huge about face from paralle to serial interfaces, PCI & AGP to PCIe, PATA/IDE to SATA.

That with the whole jump to dual core, lower heat and power CPUs means that a cheap upgrade will be pretty much a dead end in terms of future upgrade. Add to that that you will only pick up budget boards that will take your old parts and prices start to add up :(

If you can (and obviously this is an if) then I would sit down and look at not using your old kit, and buying a while system. You could then flog some of your older parts to recoup some of the money.

Is this the one

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?asu-p5vd2m&P=1

What chip would you put with that?

Sounds nice but it doesn't support my memory.

Pity.

Problem is that none of the mobos either of us have suggested support your old discs, and GFX card and memory, and of course any of these could be causing the post fault.

No of the other bits are causing the problem, i've taken them all out.

What about soemthing like this -

Dimension 5150 PentiumD 820 DualCore(2.80GHz, 800MHz fsb, 2x1MB cache)

Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005

System Price £353 delivered

Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005

Memory: 1G Memory, 2 X 512mb (400, 512)

Hard Disk Drive: 160GB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive

Video: ATI Radeon X300 SE 128MB HyperMemory

Modem: Dell 56k Data/Fax/Voice Modem

DVD Drive: 16X IDE DVD ROM

Microsoft® Works® 7.0

English - Adobe Reader 6.0

Photo Shop Photo Album (5.22) - trial version

Dell Quietkey Midnight Grey Keyboard

Dell 2 Button USB Scroll Entry Mouse

The thing that is p$$ing me off is that I've just bought a pukka copy of XP to put on it - it must be revolting against it.

was it XP or XP OEM, if it's not an OEM copy you can sell it on.

TBH I would definately avoid the Pentium D as it runs very hot.

For a cheap system you could get a low end AMD 64, or for a bit more moeny you can get a core2 duo. The due will be comming in at the Pentium 4/D price points from what i hear.

It depends what you want really, but if you are leaving the system on a lot the leccy bill would soon pay back a small amount of extra expendature.

If it is the caps, I'll try and get it sorted for you so you have a bit more time if you like.

It's OEM unfortunately, I didn't even get to install it.

If you havn't opened the packet you can still sell it on with a hard disk or something i think as long as the sticker hasn't been applied

what about this

http://www.aria.co.uk/productinfocomm.asp?ID=16759&SpecialStatus=1

you could pick a processor up for 50 quid and then youve got a fully fledged media centre.

It's a nice idea but I like the flexibility of my tower case.

I have a laptop for using around the home but I like to have a computer to sit at the desk with.

If you havn't opened the packet you can still sell it on with a hard disk or something i think as long as the sticker hasn't been applied

I opened the packet but didn't stick the sticky, I had literally just put the disk in the drive and went to restart the machine - and feck all happened.

Probably flog that on then mate as long as you don't keep any copiesx since it hasn't been used yet.

Prehaps flog it with a used hard disk

I have got a brand new, never used ABIT KN8 S939 NF4 MOBO, unopened as the supplier sent the wrong one and will charge me a restocking fee to send it back.

Got 2GB of new Ram sitting around also :-)

Socket 939 is the way to go at the moment still, AM2 will gain in popularity though.

I have to disagree about socket 939 being the way forward these days, although i have the benifit of having seen some of the hardware that isn't out yet.

The board however is a good board at the right price.