My main PC is on the fritz

[Silentus]

Actually Im going to defend ECS a little here. I have made 5 systems with these that all have performed flawlessly, HOWEVER they were all intell based systems. For inexpensive boards I rocommend them. tough it is quite possible thier AMD line are junk.

I simply dont recommend any Athlons any more after I had 3 (and Ive only built 3) start flaking out within a year do to overheating reguardless of not overclocking - the last one even had a nice volcano fan.

Anyway, sorry, back to Avengers problem - just wanted to throw that out there

[ride]

all I gotta say is that the mobo is the abosulte *base* of your system.... if you skimp here you *will* pay for it later... maybe not everytime with every board but you will....

I have built *way* too many systems to be buying them 50$ mobo's any longer.... currently I have an INTEL D875PBZ and it has performed flawlessly since it was installed (the system has been on for almost that long too )

<11:43:56 up 251 days, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00>
hehehe

I had a DFI and it ate a P4 CPU *and* a 512MB DDR400 module... ouch

can you replace the mobo in there yourself Avenger? or would that void a warranty?

[AvengersWraith]

I can replace it myself, and would love to get some recommendations for the components I have listed about halfway down.

However, the tip about looking for reviews and problems on google will help me with future purchases of components as well as a motherboard.

One of the things I will be considering is that Qwest/MSN Premium is upping their speed from 640K to 1.5 GB, so a LAN card that can handle 1 GB or built in LAN with 1 GB would be desirable, at that is scheduled to be increased on the 22nd of this month.

I'll make a list of what I want in a motherboard this time since I already have DDR Dimm replaced and do not need an either/or board to upgrade slowly.

The purchase was at nanosys1.com, business name General Nanosystems, out of state and was actually selling online before office depot and some of the other major office/coputer stores, which is why it didn't come from Fry's Electronics, they only had store location and hours on their website at the time I bought the board about half a year ago.

Like I said earlier in this post, I will definitely start looking up products on google now.

[Phoenix]

Well w/o doing a ton of shopping these boards will work good for you.

www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-130-444&depa=1

www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-127-144&depa=1

Newegg is a great online vendor, it's the FIRST place I check when shopping online. Good selection, pricing and their customer service is excellent.

Both boards also support faster processors, if you ever wanted to upgrade those at a later time.

EDIT: oh, and the connection speed your upgrading to is 1.5MB/s not GB, so your not going to need a faster NIC, a 100MB/s NIC will do just fine, heck a 10MB/s one will do.

EDIT2: Don't look for reviews on google, you will get lost in 2 things, the volume of hardware reviews and shoddy reviewers. I visit these sites for computer news.

www.hardocp.com and it's forums www.hardforum.com
www.anandtech.com
www.arstechnica.com

HardOCP and Anandtech are excellent review sites, both have good user forums, and I post regularly to hardocp's forum as Phoenix86.

[Preedy1978]

Upon looking over the manual for the piece of junk ECS motherboard that I own, you are completely right Phoenix. The Increases are fixed to 3 settings. *tips baseball cap*

As for DFI gobbling up memory...nahh, sorry R1de, I disagree with you there. I run a 2.8 with 1gig of 3200 DDR, and this puppy FLIES.

Anyways...as for some of the other components, as graphics cards go, you can either go for Ge-Force, or ATI.
Ge-Force have MUCH better drivers, and are more flexible and compatible with most programs. an ATI card (like my 9800) have a MUCH faster FPS rate (Frames Per Second) than comparable Ge-Force cards...but they are NOT as reliable on the driver front. (although they are getting better). As I have said in a previous post...my 9800SE locks up a lot running NWN...but when it does work properly with something, I cant fault it.

Erm, just as a side note...maybe this should be moved to the technical section of the forum? ;D

[Silentus]

After youve done your homework and know what you want, you can frequently save some $ by going to www.pricewatch.com - these are all real vendors, but some are easier to work withthan others - anyone whos had to deal with returns knows what IM talking about

Also Ive seen some rediculously good deals on occasion at www.tigerdirect.com

Good place for benchmarks (especially for athlon based) www.tomshardware.com - note that they dont usually focus on stability too much there though.


(incidentally, this is the correct forum, the tech forum is for in game/world problems - not user hardware issues)

[Phoenix]

If you look at pricewatch and wonder, who the **** is that? Check them out at resellerratings.com/ you can generally figure out if the vendor is up to snuff or not.

Be aware tigerdirect has some questionable practices. I have ordered from them and got my parts ok, but many other have reported things like receiving brand X equipment in brand Ys box, sold as new. Also stay away from their rebates, they take anywhere from months to never-gonna-happen.

[W(ie-ei)rdness]

If you really are a cheap scum, go to CompGeeks

They got so much refurbished fun that I can't even stop browsing. But honestly, if you look hard there, you might find a decent deal.

[AvengersWraith]

I love rebates, I fill out the forms, cut out the UPC symbols or whatever they ask for, scan it onto my hard drive in a folder marked rebates, include a copy of the scanned items with the real items and keep a copy on my desk (have no money normally so I look forward to receiving rebates back) until the rebate check arrives.

If I don't get my rebate after 8 weeks I send another letter to the original address with another copy of the items asking if they received the originals.

For those companies that still don't send me a check after another 6 weeks I send another letter asking if I need the local news companies to follow up, they eat up stories about people on Disability or in hard situations getting a run around. (If the items I bought are doing a good job or was a great deal because of the rebate I compliment them on the quality or the reason behind my purchase.)

I only had one or two companies go this far in four years, but if they still didn't send my money I found their e-mail address (most PC related companies have websites or at least e-mail addresses) and posted copies of all the documents on an old anglefire.com website I had made and gave them the address of where to find the copies of the rebate information along with copies of the second and third letters.)

I haven't missed a rebate check in 4 years, although the past year and a half I haven't had my own money to spend or a car to take shopping so I don't get out browsing the stores as much as I used to, make that almost never these days

Still underclocking my CPU to keep it from over heating and browsing different online stores for motherboards and reading reviews, and I always look at the rating and more importantly, the number of feedbacks leading to that rating. A trick I learned with Amazon.com, although I still use individual people for used items at times; I mean, I myself, have sold my used items at Amazon.com.