can someone please suggest me a good motherboard for under a £100, :rolleyes:
I want to get a athlon 1.4GHz processor and I need a good motherboard,
the board does not need to to have onboard graphics or sound as I have other money to spend on these things.;)
the thing is that my mother is going to buy the motherboard and she has said that she will not spend more than £100 :furious: (joking)
anyway any suggestions would be a great help

thanx in advance :tup:

M_rsa

Now M_rsa m8, if I told you that you could buy a top class socket A board with all the features you require and rock solid reliability to boot for *HALF* yes *HALF* your £100 I'm sure you would bite my hand off! :D (Please don't bite my hand off!)

The board I am talking about is the ECS K7S5A. I use one, I fit them on nearly all the AMD based systems I build. They have the lot:- O/B sound, DDR + 133 memory slots!!!, will take all the latest Athlon XP chips right up as far as they go!

I upgraded my own system only last weekend and was very tempted to fit an Asus A7V266-RAID board. But was it really worth paying out £155???? Not when you can buy the ECS for £50 from www.ebuyer.com (I paid even less trade) and just stick in a RAID card for £30!!! :D So I bought another ECS taht now takes the XP chips. I bet you might not even want or need a RAID card either.

But don't just believe my verdict, check out OC Workbench and Tom's hardware guide for what they say about this board. Tom's said and I quote:-

"This motherboard provides much better value than any AMD760, ALi MaGik or KT266 board can offer"

sounds great m8, I have taken a look and it seems great and at that price i can afford to spend more on a processor

has anyone used this board ? wot do you think ?

M_rsa

I've used them lots in the past bulding PC's and not had a problem yet.

The specs sound great and the customer really thinks they are getting an expensive setup.

The board is pretty much jumper free, one to Clear CMOS and one to enable Keyboard Power on so its a simple board to setup.

Ive been using the ECS K7S5A board for about 4months, the only prob i had is that it was picky about the psu when i 1st installed it and i had to get another 1, apart from that it's been running great but saying that take a look at this forum which is for K7S5A problems and you'll find a few thousand horror stories :eek:

http://forum.ocworkbench.com/ocwbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum&f=27

I've just built a system with a Jetway (830CH I think it is). £50ish from dabs, audio, video..........looks good what I've seen of it so far!

I have not tried the board myself, but I have seen some good reviews. I do not think you can go wrong with this board.
http://www.amdmb.com/article-display.php?ArticleID=112
http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/01q3/010924/sis735-04.html

Originally posted by Trondos
I have not tried the board myself, but I have seen some good reviews. I do not think you can go wrong with this board.
http://www.amdmb.com/article-display.php?ArticleID=112
http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard/01q3/010924/sis735-04.html

Cheers for that amdmb URL Trondos!

I'd not seen that review before and found it very interesting.

Once again thanks. :)

yeah , cheers for the links , it was good to read a review on this board , I think at the price that it is, you can't complain , I will probably get one . thanx fore the help and advice guys


:tup:

iv got the jetway board with a 1.5 athlon and its very good for games
pity my graphics card is crap

would this motherboard work ok with all amd chips?
I mean athlon . athlon xp and duron ?

Originally posted by M_rsa
would this motherboard work ok with all amd chips?
I mean athlon . athlon xp and duron ?


Yes, no problem. The only difference is the FSB setting in BIOS (you will set 100 for the Durons and Some Athlons ) and 133 for the XP's and Some Athlons. It all depends if they're 200 or 266FSB chips.

Set 100 for the 200FSB
Set 133 for the 266FSB

HTH

ok thanx for the info m8, I think I am going to have to go for a cheaper chip than first thought, prob a duron 1.2ghz

anyway thanx for that info

M_rsa

try the Epox 8k3a its a ddr 333 motherboard w/ onboard sound. the 8k3a+ comes w/ raid. Newegg.com has a great price on these and the board had gained a lot of respect by overclockers. I just installed one and no problems or regrets except I wished it came w/ usb 2. You won't be disappointed on this one. Very easy to intall and I hear it has become an overclockers favorite. Good luck