[2K]Recomendations for MB, processor, memory & video upgrade

This is not another 'what's the best' thread!

I'm looking to upgrade an existing box by replacing the motherboard, processor, memory & video card.

My needs are;
1. AMD compatible based board,
2. Full size ATX,
3. I don't overclock,
4. Provisions for PATA & SATA sockets as I have two older PATA HDDs' I want to use,
5. This might be used for a HDTV tuner,
6. I run 2k, but might be using XP, but certainly not Vista,
7. I'm more interested in manufacture support and reliabilty than a few extra benchmark points. IOWs', what manufactures to stay away from?
8. Mid priced.
9. I'm not looking for cutting edge technology. I would rather look at products that have been out for a year, as long as it doesn't look obsolete,
10. Are PCIe slots standard now replaceing AGP as I would be getting a separate video card?
11. How about IDE slots for optical drives?
12. Any MBs' that have a optical (or digital) out for the on board audio?

I admit I haven't kept track of all the changes. I have always used AMD since I have no use for any Wintell based product.

Questions;
1. Are the main MB chipsets available for AMD based systems still nVidea & VIA?
2. What types of memory are used here?

BTW; the PS is a Seasonic S12 380w.

Thanks in advance.

Right.

1/2/3/4/5 What is your budget? I'd tend to go for an Asus AMD board, most have at least 1 ATA port, it would be best to have a look for 2 if you want to run 2 HDD's and obviously at least 1 optical. SATAII ports are thrown on in 4/6/8 combinations usually. HDTV Tuner would be more graphics card based, the 2400 series and 85/8600 have HD decoding.

6. You should be fine one recent hardware with Win 2k, AFAIK XP drivers would suffice in most situations, manufacturers still support 2k on the whole.

7. Asus offer the standard 1 year warranty, but their support has been good in my experience, for RAM i'd go for either Corsair/Geil/OCZ, most offer 5year warranties as it can be overclocked, so they tend to stretch the support, some even offer lifetime support, and then define what lifetime means.

8. Asus make plenty of AMD-based motherboards, and vary in price, i think they would start at about £60 and go through to £200+ for domestic use.

9. Plenty of board still around that have been our for a while and are still supported by the manufacturer.

10. PCI-E are replacing AGP, you can still get AGP cards, and ATI are still gonna be releasing AGP card into next year, but they will be eventually phased out, and there is more choice in PCI-E.

11. Answered above.(2 ports would be fine for 2 hdd's and 2 opticals)

12. A lot of boards have optical onboard.

1. Most chipsets are Nvidia and ATI, as AMD bought ATI there are a few crossfire supported board with ATI chipsets, but still a lot of Nvidia's too, i prefer the latter.

2. AM2 based board will be DDR2, which is cheap at the moment, 2gb would run you about £35.

PSU should be fine if you don't need many expansion cards, don't need a soundcard, and go for a mid-range graphics card.


Liam

To update my choices from the additional reading I have done;

AM2 socket,
nForce 5xx chipset (but which 500??),
1GB DDR2-800 memory (but, one stick or two 500MB sticks for redundency?),
nVideo video card (with VGA & DVI)

For XP - 1GB - so two 512 sticks
Vista - 2 GB - 2 sticks of 1 GB each


The way the newer motherboards are set up and if you get the ram in the right slots, you will find 2 sticks to be a lot faster than just one stick.

It would be silly to not go with 2gb of DDR2, a 2gb kit is £35.

Nvidia 520 would be fine, the 570 and 590 are SLI chipsets, which isn't needed.

For HD encoding i would go with an 8600GT, good price, takes the stress from the CPU to help with HD work,


Liam

As to the memory stick question; I always like using two sticks as opposed to one with the same amount of total memory in case one stick bites the dust, I have a fallback. With one stick your dead in the water. Though I do understand you have 2x the number of connections that can fail.

How about the 550?

Are most of the newest cards dual DVI? I'm looking for one with VGA & DVI. The 8600GT is in my price range, the 8800 is not.

I suggested the 8600GT from the start, the 8800 are gaming monsters, they will have dual DVI's and come with at least one DVI-to-VGA adapter.

A "2gb kit" = 2 x 1gb stick, which are matched to run in dual-channel mode.

550/560 would be fine, they are more mainstream.


Liam

One of my main undecided concerns is wether to get a MB with 2 IDE busses or just one with an adapter for the 2nd buss since I have two IDE HDDs' and at least one IDE optical drive for this box.

Options.

Add a ATA 133 card which will allow for 4 more ide devices.

I use the PROMISE ULTRA133TX2 PCI IDE Controller Card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...12548&name=IDE

As you will see lots of brands to chose from.
My optical are on the ide and my hdds are on the card.

The card is limited to 4 hdds each having a size of 137,000,000 GB.

Cdroms and the like can be added to the card also.

One thing I didn't want to do is that route since there is the issue of another driver that has to load and have issues with.
Someone else did point me to these that I might consider since they don't use drivers;

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812206001

But, after reading many of the reviews, it appears there are way too many issues to make these reliable.

Any time you use a card like that, you will need to install drivers.

I use Promise and they have never given me any fits.
Strickly ATA so far though. Maybe Vista has the drivers for it, I have no idea.

I was told those didn't require drivers since they didn't sit in a PCI slot, just connected to the SATA port.

There still has to be sata drivers installed, just read the con on the Rosewill.
Or what other drivers are needed.

But maybe they were mistaken as their OS had the drivers and installed them when they booted up.

For example: All my realtech based nics are picked up and the drivers are installed by Vista without me having to do anything.

A quick way to check, is to look in device manager for a yellow splat with a ! or ? mark. If none, then windows probably had a driver for it.

Anyway, drivers ot not, I see problems even if it would work, so I 86'ed that idea and decided to stick with plan one and that is a board with two IDE headers unless I find something to sway me another way. Asus, MSI & Foxconn have those boards from a Newegg search, though MSI doesn't have a digital audio out.

There you go ASUS and MSI are fine, Foxconn is a step below them.

Whatever you do and wherever you buy - avoid:
Jetway
PC Chips
ECS
These aren't the bottom of the barrel; they'd have to improve greatly to achieve that status. Their failure rates are obscene.

I would only look at 'established' companies as these for starters through Newegg (though I won't limit my choices from just here);

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131096
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813186104
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130071

The 3rd choice doesn't have a digital out which is a issue.

Many have suggested just to forget IDE altogether and go with SATA drives. Funny, I noticed most of these MBs' still have a parallel port and a floppy connector. ;)

I have not researched the MSI con , but it is something to concider.

Sata would be fine if they would not put the RAID chips on the mobo.

After spending half the day going to as many of the MB manufactures sites I would consider I have found these choices (all with 2 IDE channels);

Asus M2N-E SLI,
Foxconn N570SM2AA-8EKRS2H,
MSI K9N4 SLI-F,
Epox EP-AF590 SLI2,
Epox EP-AD580XR,
Epox MF570SLI (form factor??),
Abit KN9

Gigabyte, Soyo & Tyan had no AM2 boards with 2 IDE channels.

I know most will probably say the 1st entry would be the one of choice, but what do you guys think of the others? I'm not familar with Foxconn, other than just hearing of the name. I understand they do alot of OEM work.
Epox I'm questioning, because of some bad reports I have heard (other than the cap problems some years ago).
The MSI board didn't have a optical or coaxial audio out which I would perfer. The Abit doesn't either, but has separate outs for all the surround channels.

If anyone knows of any others with 2 IDE channels and either optical and/or coaxial audio outs, please add to the list.

I did find two more Asus boards, but they were over $170 which is out of the question.

The 2nd question I'm undecided about is;
Should I buy a low end processor and wait untill the prices drop on these newer AMD processors, or go with a better X2?

Video card and sound card may take care of the one set of problems.

As for the cpu, and seeing the video related bit and reading inbetween the lines, Go with the best X2 you can get!

Switched cpus in mobo that was dedicated for video dvd work.
A nice pleasant surprise in time difference was seen. Could not even finish a cup of coffee before the task was finished. :D