Edit: By popular vote, I ordered an Abit NF7-S 2.0 from eXcaliber last night. Thanks everyone![/b]
My secondary system needs a new board. I won't be overclocking that rig. I demand stability and a long-lasting board. It'll be going in this system:
Abit KR7A-RAID
Athlon XP 1700+ JIUHB TBred B
Corsaor 256mb XMS2700C2 (I have Corsair 2x256mb TWINX2700LLPT for new board)
MSI GeForce 4 Ti 4200 64mb
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1
Linksys 10/100 PCI NIC
IBM 20gb Deskstar 60GXP ATA100, 7200rpm hd
Black Lite On CD-RW/DVD: 48x24x48, 16x DVD Read
Black Floppy Drive
Green Aluminum Chieftec server tower w/window
Green 12" Cold Cathode
Black Rounded IDE & Floppy cables
Enermax 431W daul fan PSU
Logitech z640 5.1 sound
The system is used mainly for watching DVD's, playing music (Winamp), e-mail & surfing, MSN Messenger 6, PSP 8, Tribes 2, and GTA3 & Vice City. It handles everything fine, but the board is old doesn't play well with multiple sticks of RAM. The computer looks amazing. I'm very happy with the A7N8X Deluxe 2.0 in my main system, so I think I want another one of those. However, the NF7-S looks great. What should I get? I can't decide if I should get the ugly board with a great layout, or the good looking board with a crappy layout (power connectors, memory slots, IDE slots all suck).
Here's what I've come up with:
A7N8X Deluxe 2.0
PROS:
-Great layout
-Stable
-More features
CONS:
-Costs ~$15 more
-Brown/Orange PCB
NF7-S 2.0
PROS:
-Great looking Red PCB
-Costs ~$15 less
-OC's better than the Asus from what I've read?? (not that I'll be doing that)
CONS:
-Terrible layout
-Only 2 of 6 USB ports are on the backplate, whereas 4 of 6 are on the Asus' backplate.
My secondary system needs a new board. I won't be overclocking that rig. I demand stability and a long-lasting board. It'll be going in this system:
Abit KR7A-RAID
Athlon XP 1700+ JIUHB TBred B
Corsaor 256mb XMS2700C2 (I have Corsair 2x256mb TWINX2700LLPT for new board)
MSI GeForce 4 Ti 4200 64mb
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1
Linksys 10/100 PCI NIC
IBM 20gb Deskstar 60GXP ATA100, 7200rpm hd
Black Lite On CD-RW/DVD: 48x24x48, 16x DVD Read
Black Floppy Drive
Green Aluminum Chieftec server tower w/window
Green 12" Cold Cathode
Black Rounded IDE & Floppy cables
Enermax 431W daul fan PSU
Logitech z640 5.1 sound
The system is used mainly for watching DVD's, playing music (Winamp), e-mail & surfing, MSN Messenger 6, PSP 8, Tribes 2, and GTA3 & Vice City. It handles everything fine, but the board is old doesn't play well with multiple sticks of RAM. The computer looks amazing. I'm very happy with the A7N8X Deluxe 2.0 in my main system, so I think I want another one of those. However, the NF7-S looks great. What should I get? I can't decide if I should get the ugly board with a great layout, or the good looking board with a crappy layout (power connectors, memory slots, IDE slots all suck).
Here's what I've come up with:
A7N8X Deluxe 2.0
PROS:
-Great layout
-Stable
-More features
CONS:
-Costs ~$15 more
-Brown/Orange PCB
NF7-S 2.0
PROS:
-Great looking Red PCB
-Costs ~$15 less
-OC's better than the Asus from what I've read?? (not that I'll be doing that)
CONS:
-Terrible layout
-Only 2 of 6 USB ports are on the backplate, whereas 4 of 6 are on the Asus' backplate.