Getting ready to upgrade...

[Quaggoth]

I'm thinking about going with a NForce2Mobo, but may wait until NForce3 and 64bit... I'll need to buy memory, mobo, CPU, HS/F at the same time.

I have -

GF4 Ti4400 w/ 128MB (A250TD)
SBLive! Value (Would love to get rid of this pile of SHTUFF, I'll never buy another Creative product)
Intel Pro 100 NIC

I would like to get something with a good onboard sound card, No NIC, No Video. I need RAID, good OC options a must, and I need space for a large HS/F (Probably the new 900 from ?Thermalright?)
What would you recomend?

I like Abit but am willing to switch if there's something better. I do plan on an OC. Don't really care what it costs.

 

[Vette73]

Go with a nForce2 Abit NF7-S. The nForce3 will be megga bucks for the board and the opteron CPU to run on it.

With the NF7-S you can get rid of the ethernet card(trust me the opnboard ethernet is great, very low cpu usage), and get rid of that creative sound card. The onboard sountstorm sound is awesome.

It has 2 SATA ports and 2 IDE ports. I have my hard drive on the SATA port and a DVD rom and CD-Birner on the 2 IDE ports.

 

[Quaggoth]

I need RAID. As far as the NForce 3 and opteron costing an arm and a leg... I have an extra of both .

 

[Quaggoth]

Gigabyte 7VAXP-A Ultra.... What do you think? I like the feature set, I would imagine that after a few BIOS revisions I'll be able to make 200MHz FSB. The review I read said that with all three DIMM slots full they could not run at the most agressive memory timings but I only plan on using a single 512 at first, with another soon to follow. I won't need any more than that for a while. As far as the OCability and max FSB attainable... I don't run too many benchmarks anyway... I just want it fast, stable and with the right features.

Any Thoughts??