Choosing Replacement Motherboard

[Bovinicus]

I'm current in the market for an nForce2 Ultra 400 motherboard. My criteria are the following:

-SATA (RAID is not necessary) support for at least 2 drives.
-Onboard firewire support for my brother's digital video camera.
-I already have an add-in sound and LAN card, so the quality of that is of NO importance.
-I will possibly do some light overclocking, but nothing intense. So, BIOS tweakability has some bearing on my purchase.

I have narrowed down my choices to the following (Prices are at Newegg, shipping included):

EPoX EP-8RDA+ PRO - $69 - This one appeals to me the most right now, simply because of the price and satisfaction with my current board.

Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2 Rev2 - $91 - This one looks great because of the reviews, features, and still reasonable price. However, $22 is nothing to ignore for a broke college student. Even so, I would be willing to sacrifice some pizza and beer if I hear some compelling reasons why it's worth the extra cash.

ABIT AN7 - $96 - Also looks like a solid motherboard, but I don't notice anything particularly grabbing about it. Besides the fact that I have had some good experiences with ABIT motherboard (My father has one in his system), this is probably at the bottom of my list because of the price.

Any other suggestions in terms of what motherboards I should be looking at would be much appreciated. Personal experience, feedback, questions, suggestions, comments, etc. are all welcomed. Thanks for your help.

 

[powerMarkymark]

I just RMAd one of those Epox boards, the chipset fan failed and poof went the board.

Not an uncommon occurence so I was told.

Was going to sell that board so I couldn't as a result.

Replaced it with the MSI "K7N2 Delta2-LSR" NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 and found it to be a great board.

Marc

 

[Bovinicus]

Originally posted by: powerMarkymark
I just RMAd one of those Epox boards, the chipset fan failed and poof went the board.

Not an uncommon occurence so I was told.

Was going to sell that board so I couldn't as a result.

Replaced it with the MSI "K7N2 Delta2-LSR" NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 and found it to be a great board.

Marc

Thanks for your input and the quick response. I will look into that motherboard as well.

 

[Kid Vicious]

Abit NF7-s ver 2
Asus A7N8X-e

both solid mobos. the NF7 is an nforce2 ocing favorite.

 

[dainthomas]

Originally posted by: Kid Vicious
Abit NF7-s ver 2
Asus A7N8X-e

both solid mobos. the NF7 is an nforce2 ocing favorite.

Ditto. I have an Nf7-s and it's a great little board.

I'm really looking at getting an NF3 Ultra pretty quick here. Are you sticking with NF2 because you already have a CPU? If not, you should look into getting a 754 or 939 board and cpu for not much more.

 

[Bovinicus]

Originally posted by: dainthomas

Originally posted by: Kid Vicious
Abit NF7-s ver 2
Asus A7N8X-e

both solid mobos. the NF7 is an nforce2 ocing favorite.

Ditto. I have an Nf7-s and it's a great little board.

I'm really looking at getting an NF3 Ultra pretty quick here. Are you sticking with NF2 because you already have a CPU? If not, you should look into getting a 754 or 939 board and cpu for not much more.

YI already have the CPU. Otherwise I would definitely be going that route. My chipset and video card are suffering from an incompatibility. The only way the system runs is if I install only certain drivers that are chipset related and AGP reads, writes, and texturing are turned off. It is a common problem that there is no known solution for (Radeon 9600 Pro & KT266/333). Trust me, I have done a lot of research.

 

[Bovinicus]

For some reason I passed up the NF7-S in my search even though that's in my dad's system without any issues. I'll definitely be considering that now. Thanks.

 

[Super6]

Make sure it's the Abit NF7-S ver2 not S2.

Super6