Good Processor

[puntoMX]

Better in what way? Others have:

- Intel’s cheap RAID (better then nVidia that’s for sure)

- More SATA ports

- Better bridge cooling

- Better power converters

- FireWire

- Dual NIC

- Optical IN port

It’s just what you need, so what makes a "better" motherboard for you?

EDIT: forgot: (More) eSATA and USB brackets.

[Nerwin]

I would love to have dual NICs and Integrated firewire

Edit -

I need a gigabit NIC too

Edited February 13, 2008 by computerMan

[TravisO]

I'd say wait a few weeks and get the Core 2 Duo e8300, it will be more than twice as fast and it's not too bad at $163.

Please realize the Pentium Dual Cores ARE NOT anywhere near as good as the Core 2 Duos.

I could understand if you were trying to build a super cheap system, but when you're buying a $200 mobo and a $90 CPU, something is wrong with your thinking. You can get a $80 mobo and this $163 cpu, have a cheaper faster system that runs cooler, quieter and sucks less power. Round it off with the Nvidia 8800GT or an ATI3850 and you have a very efficient system where a 300w PSU would still be enough!

Edited February 13, 2008 by TravisO

[puntoMX]

Please realize the Pentium Dual Cores ARE NOT anywhere near as good as the Core 2 Duos.

And where did you get this information from?

The Pentium Dual is based on the Core2 Conroe core, just less cache. There isn’t much difference between 1 and 2MB, but there is noticeable difference between 1 and 4MB Conroe’s. The E8400 will still be 3 times the price of the E2180, I wish the E8300 would be 163USD .

[nmX.Memnoch]

Abit's quality was good about 5 years ago

Hehe...depends on who you ask. I never thought their quality was all that good. I will credit them with reviving overclocking when the Celeron 300A was hot...but honestly, I got better results with my AOpen board at the time (which didn't have any voltage adjustments what-so-ever). But that's just my opinion of Abit...

The only thing you get with the X38 is....a bit better ICH (10)

Actually, the X38 (and X48) still uses ICH9.

and a FSB of 1600

The X38 officially supports up to 1333. The X48 are binned X38's with official 1600 support.

I would love to have dual NICs and Integrated firewire

.....

I need a gigabit NIC too

IMO none of the boards out right now have good integrated NICs (except for Intel's because they use their own...but lack some of the higher end overclocking features so that's not an option either). Don't worry about what NIC(s) the motherboard has onboard. Disable it and get a good one. This is what I've been using...they're high quality, cheap, fast and PCI-E:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se...&CatId=2380

[puntoMX]

AOpen, did they make any thing good the last 8 years?

The only thing you get with the X38 is....a bit better ICH (10)

Actually, the X38 (and X48) still uses ICH9.

and a FSB of 1600

The X38 officially supports up to 1333. The X48 are binned X38's with official 1600 support.

I changed that, it’s indeed the ICH9® that is still used, thank you for pointing me on that.

The 1600MHz FSB support is indeed unofficial, but most motherboard makers sell them for 1600MHz FSB CPUs. It’s like the 945GC motherboards I have, normally supporting 800MHz but can be boosted with not to many problems to 1333MHz (standard BIOS setting).

That Intel NIC is awesome indeed, when I start to have Steam powered tournaments on my machines (first they need better VGA cards) I will throw in these cards as well with a good Linksys switch.

[nmX.Memnoch]

AOpen, did they make any thing good the last 8 years?

They're pretty big in the SFF market, but the board I was referring to was an AOpen AX6BC...which was a 440BX powered beast. IMO it was a better motherboard then either the Abit BX6 or BX6-II. I know, I know...a lot of people swore by their BX6-II's. I had several of them and none of them worked nearly as stable as my AX6BC.

AOpen has pretty much relegated themselves down to the SFF market now as far as systems go. They make a lot of other components as well that you probably don't realize.

[419cyclist]

Everyone's out of stock, but I see plenty of people selling E8200 around $180. You should be able to clock the hell out of it too. People are reportedly getting >4ghz on air with the E8400s.

[puntoMX]

They're pretty big in the SFF market, but the board I was referring to was an AOpen AX6BC...which was a 440BX powered beast. IMO it was a better motherboard then either the Abit BX6 or BX6-II. I know, I know...a lot of people swore by their BX6-II's. I had several of them and none of them worked nearly as stable as my AX6BC.

AOpen has pretty much relegated themselves down to the SFF market now as far as systems go. They make a lot of other components as well that you probably don't realize.

The AOpen AX6BC must be, or close too 8 years now. In 1996 I started to sell AOpen motherboards as my main brand as they were one of the best for there price. The ABIT BX6-II's were nice with a lot of OC options for that time, to bad they used crap capacitors so after that I switched all motherboards that had a ABIT Sloth 1 to S370 adapter to ASUS CUBX motherboards to smoke the sh*t out of them (yep, I smoked one for real, 2.5volt on a Celeron 600 was too much ).

Everyone's out of stock, but I see plenty of people selling E8200 around $180. You should be able to clock the hell out of it too. People are reportedly getting >4ghz on air with the E8400s.

There are E8190 CPUs too, but not seen much in the retail market so they must have gone to the OEM market.

$239.99 Seems to be the price for the E8400, and 82.99 for the E2180...