hi guys i'm looking for a new a socket mobo can anyone tell me which one is good but does't cost too much. what chip set should i go for? what do you think of ASUS A7N8X-X for £41.00 but i don't know any ideas it need to work with a AMD 3000+ socket A and 1gb DDR ram and have onboard sound and lan
the A7n8x range are the best for sability, if you can get a Deluxe one, with pcb rev 2.0 get it. For overclocking, get an ABit NF7-S
What he said, except avoid the NF7-S2x series, cut-down rubbish which doesn't overclock well at all. (Although it does have a better SATA controller than the crappy Silicon Image ones on the NF7-S...
honestly I would just go for the NF7-S PCB 2.0; its dead stable, overclockable, and the A7N8X-X is a lousy board tbh.
If you're on a real budget (and I mean a tight one), go for the Asus A7V8X-X. It's a lot of board for the money, but if you have more to spend I'd recommend getting an nForce2 mobo.
For serious o/c I would like to say... ABIT NF7-S v2.0 (I had 3 of them) all rock stable and using modded BIOS I ran my Bartons at 260+ FSB (no mods in mainboards)...
i'd say go for the NF7-S as it has excellent onboard sound and is very stable. I've had mine for a year and have had no issues with it yet (i do overclock so any stability issues would have come out) I'm getting the Asus NF2 chipset mobo (A7N) tomorrow for a different build (i got it cheap) so will let you know what thats like when i get it built up.
I have one of the first A7N8X Deluxe rev2.0 still running 24/7 Only goes down when i have to move it. Runs as a distributed box.
ask anywhere what the best Socket A board ever was and everywhere you'll get the same answer: NF7-S (rev 2)
All agreed that the NF7-S rev2 is the best Skt A board around, but if you are not considering overclocking then go for any of the main branded Nforce2 boards, one that has the most extra's for the cash.
+1 for NF7-S rev2.0. You may have to hunt around though as they have been discontinued (though the inferior "NF7-S2" is still being made, so watch out and make sure you don't get one of those!") Only problem with it is the poor Sata controller (mine starts corrupting stuff with two drives connected... with only one drive connected it works 100% though .... may have been related to something else being unstable though as i was still setting up the system at the time though as i adjusted a few bios settings (voltages) and took one drive out and all was fine :s ) SATA RAID is also very dodgy i hear. its probably a good idea to buy a seperate card if you want to run raid or multiple Sata drives reliably
If you can find one, the NF7-S (REV 2.0, not version 2.0) is still fairly inexpensive; I got mine in socket A's glory days for only $110
NF7-S Rev2 Cheesecake! If you wanna pay for international shipping, I have one that's about to be out of use but works great.
Look out for the Soltek motherboards, should be cheaper than the Asus and Abit counterparts. My ex-housemate ran his stuff stably on a socket A Soltek, gave no problems at all. I personally used an epox 8rda+ in the past, good board.