which motherboard to buy advice

[Tiger]

all you guys out there into computers in a big way can hopefully recommend some options and give a brief reason for choice!

realiabity is top on the agenda.

Many thanks in advance

[Treeman]

Intel D875PBZ

Rock solid, not much of an overclocker.

my2cents,

Treeman

[XtremeMaC]

I've very pleased with asus mb's

my friend just bought (by my advice) p4c800 it has the nicest overclocking utility in windows

everythings easy,

I never had any problems with asus boards!!!!

also depends on which chipset u'd want

[verlegenmanneke]

EPOX 4PC3A+ board with onboard raid

It's allready my 3rd board and never had any problems.

Nice for overclocking this board!

Spec. from Epox:

EP-4PCA3+

Intel® 875-P chipset + ICH5r

For DDR memory 4 memory banks for PC3200 Dual channel

5 x PCI, 1 x AGP 8X,

533 and 800 MHz. FSB , USB 2.0 , 6 Channel Sound

Gigabit LAN by BCM5705 10/100/1000

HPT 374 IDE RAID Controller RAID 0,1,10,5

2 Serial ATA-150 ports for RAID

[peachy]

ASUS, ASUS, ASUS!

When I first got hooked on building my own computers rather than relying on someone else to do it, I didn't choose my motherboard. I had a friend who worked at a computer store and I asked him to send me the best 430HX chipset motherboard he had. He sent me an ASUS and I've never looked back. Currently on my 7th ASUS board in the past 8 years. It's an ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe. (I upgrade every two years or so and repurpose the older ones to friends or rope them into use as testing boxes!)

[verlegenmanneke]

Oké I admit, Asus is nice. But no bad things about Epox, I never had problems!

Review from PC mag (Epox MB)

check this out http://pcmag.dit.net/reviews/review.php?id...AklEAykEDLuYVsj

Review from PC mag (Asus MB)

http://pcmag.dit.net/reviews/review.php?id...ZkVElllpZisHJRp

If we can rely on this review, the 2 mb's are great and get the same score!

[LaRcOs]

My vote goes to asus

Better BIOS...

Its a personal preference...

[pimp_gimp]

I'd go with the ASUS P4P800 Deluxe or P4C800 whichever you choose it doesnt matter, im running an older asus board right now but am looking to upgrade to the ASUS P4P800E DELUXE.....im running an ASUS P4PE Black Pearl limited collector's edition right now with the newest BIOS and it supports 800 FSB and DDR400 (not natively, but with BIOS 1007 you can run them or OC your current processor to run that high)

[XtremeMaC]

also would u like to have a wi-fi support?

asus has it

[neophyte]

Abit IC7/IC7-G.

I have the IC7 (I don't need Gigabit lan, although I'm tempted to get the IC7-G), and have loved it.

The only problem I've found, is that it doesn't like running when I set the Corsair RAM timings to this:

CAS - 2.0 clocks; RAS to CAS - 2 clocks; RAS Precharge - 2 clocks; TRAS (Cycle time) - 6 clocks

But works fine like this:

CAS - 2.0 clocks; RAS to CAS - 3 clocks; RAS Precharge - 2 clocks; TRAS (Cycle time) - 6 clocks

I know that my sticks run fine in the first configuration, as the original BIOS software allowed the sticks to do so. However, it appears that these Corsair 512MB Low Latency DDR400 sticks aren't 'up to scratch' to run at 2-2-2-6, at least thats what Abit said.

Anyway, its a great board, it has the i875 chipset, meaning you have P4 motherboard that supports an 800MHz FSB (and HyperThreading), 2xSATA (onboard raid controller integrated into the Intel chipset), and onboard 5.1 digital sound (which is dodgy, but meh, saves a PCI slot).

Its a great board, not had any issues with it (unlike the IC7-MAX, which has had a nasty rep for having the northbridge cooler fall off for no reason, and whilst in use).