Hi everyone, A little bit of advice needed if thats ok. Right here's the thing, I am going to make my own plexi micro case so i am going to buy a micro ATX board, the thing is which is a good option. I am not bothered about PCI slots along as it has an 8x AGP slot, and can accept a pentium4 3.06 gig cpu with 478 socket as this is on my present board and i will transfer this over to my new board, also a board that will take 3200 ram would be great. Also is all ram backwards compatible as my present ram is 2100 and i would have to use this until i could afford to upgrade to 3200.Many thanks.
I recently brought the Asus P4P800-vm it's i865 chipset and have no complaints. You really want to use better ram than that with that setup as it's going to be bottlenecking you cpu a fair bit. Board has 3 PCI slots, onboard VGA + sound and 8xAGP. Edit/ check http://www.dabs.com/uk/Search2/results.htm?searchPhrase=Matx for matx mobos.
Thanks for reply -H- do you know of a suitable board that will not bottleneck, I don't have a clue what to buy to be honest, Kinda new to the hardware side of things.
I meant you'd need at least PC3200 ram with that CPU for stock performance (1:1) if your going to overclock then PC3500, PC3700, PC4000 etc would be better. Go for a better quality ram (OCZ, Corsair, Crucial, Geil if your on a budget) rather than cheap ram. Geil 512mb PC3200 is around £55 iirc @ microdirect Edit: AC-DC rock!
Sorry about that i missread your post, I understand what you are saying about the ram but would i be able to use my exsisting ram short term only , if i was prepared to accept the lack of performance.
yes Edit:: any ddr ram will work in a motherboard with ddr support. any ddr2 ram will work in a motherboard with ddr2 support (very new not to relevant to you).
I've just orderd the Abit IS-10 MATX board that has all the specs your are looking for. It was a tough choice for me in the end as there was a few to choose from in the end. If your interested in overclicking the Asus Asus P4P800-vm is not geared up for that sort of tweaking which was what I was advised. There was a Gigabyte board that got short listed in my final selection but have used many Abit boards in the past and have found them to be very good. My Specs: P4 3.2Ghz Northwood ABit IS-10 1GB of 2 x 512Mb Patriot RAM Samsung SATA 160Gig Ati 9800Pro 128Mb Seems Dabs has the best selections of boards that I could fine in the UK
Thanks GIB is this your board, http://www.dealtime.co.uk/xPF-Abit_Abit_IS_10_P4_865G_A_V_L_AGP_8X_SATA_MATX http://www.dabs.com/uk/productview?quicklinx=2TCX
I have my doubts that the ABit board I have chosen is any good? Whether its an hardware issue our a conflict with the hardware set up. It just won't install windows and I can't get the latest BIOS update from the site either Might just have to shell out a few more quid and bite the bullet and try another board. Keep this as a spare?
Dabs can be a bit funny about RMAing but you have a right to do so if the board is faulty. You could always get a new board first and then send the old one back .
If you ever find out, let me know, I had exactly the same problem with my girlfirend's shuttle barebones, I tried several winXP CDs but none work, in the end I had to go for win2k (which she likes better anyway). I am looking for a SFF boad for my new mod and I have looked at many MicroATX (mostly P4, but there are a few new 939s out there) Unfortunatelly, I only have room for 9 inches (microATX is 9.6x9.6) so now I have to look at FlexATX (9x7.5) which limits my choices even more. or a Shuttle SFF mobo which are expensive... or a picoBTX (??!!!) with I heard of in the FIC website.
Well I'm not sure I can send the Abit back as it does work. I tried Win2K install first as that always seems to be the less fussy and still didn't load I have a PSU off my water-cooled rig to go back and some RAM already for this one an RMA so will get these sorted first. The problems I had. 1. Going in and out of the bios would loose single to the VGA. 2. Would lock when installing windows. 3. When it did lock or freeze it wouldn't post. Had to unplug the PSU, press the power button to flush it. Before it would boot? Very strange....... 4. Unable to update BIOS from website, windows utility is of no use if I can't install windows on it! I bought the Asus P4P800-VM Motherboard from OcUK and looks like they no longer stock them. This board gets a up by me. Everything works fine and install XP fine. I also plugged everycable and card that I was going to use, no issues or conflicts. I've got a little local LAN to go to this weekend, will be a good stress test. But normally these problems raise there head early on. Having built many PC's over the years its nice to go back to Asus.
