MWAVE "ASRock 939Dual-SATA2" + Opteron 144

[straightalker]

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/DeepSearch.hmx?scriteria=ASROCK+939&ALL=y&TP=6

65$ for the Asrock motherboard and 143$ for the Opteron 144 (socket 939).

8.31$ Shipping 1200 miles

Just thought i'd do you the favor of alerting you, since it sounds like the '100 series' of cheap Opty's are going to get alot rarer.

No report on the my Opteron's overclockability, but i'll let you know what version i got later. Item in route.

Could use some advice on the best way to spend 200-250$ on a new case, power supply and memory. Can't afford top of the line so have to go midway.

Was considering Kingmax Hyper X at 92$ shipped (after 15$ rebate).

Was considering an Antic "smartpower series" powersupply in a cheap case. Though i see even barebones Antic cases going for cheap.

I'd like to overclock this rig to a reasonable 2.5ghz. Up from the stock 1.8ghz.

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As a side note, ...just read the thread on thieves. WTF!! Sorry to see that Sh-t going on here. Ebay seems the only best way to deal on private held items for sale. Heck, the thieves don't use Ebay just because they want to do a ripp-off. If you got something to get to one person - i think there are ways to do it over Ebay. Don't want to get into that and no nothing about it. Just trying to help.

If you can show me a good online store deal on case, power and memory will appreciate that...

 

[kamranziadar]

Looks ok to me.

 

[Ghettocowboy]

Bad combo, Opteron is considered to be AMD top notch and teaming up with hmmmmm, Asrock, the rock bottom, still above ECS motherboard. A few dollar more get Gigabyte SLI pro if you are looking for big bang for the bucks

 

[QueZart]

Mwave has a Antec Sonata II case fro $99 - $20 rebate, I'd Pick one those UP Great Case and Comes with an Antec Smartpower PSU

 

[Pothead]

the asrock will allow you to stick with AGP until you upgrade to PCI-express

 

[lebe0024]

I bought these two things (mobo from newegg and cpu from mwave) yesterday. I bought the CPU before I know what mobo I was getting, otherwise I would have saved the $5 and bought it as a combo. Oh well.

I will use a PCI-Express video card, but I still got the Asrock for a few reasons:

1) passive NB cooling that is not in the way of the video card.
2) VERY VERY fast at stock speeds in games.
3) Overclocks very well.
4) < $70 !
5) 20-pin ATX connecter will work well with my existing 20-pin single rail Antec PSU.
6) AGP port for backup/just incase/ troubleshooting AGP cards.

 

[apexi350z]

no problem with my Asrock Dual sataII motherboard. I am running it with A64 3700+ oc to 2.6ghz, aircooled, 1.4v vcore.

reason is I still have ATI x800XL agp card, and it's good enough for me, so why waste it?

 

[sjwaste]

Bad combo, Opteron is considered to be AMD top notch and teaming up with hmmmmm, Asrock, the rock bottom, still above ECS motherboard. A few dollar more get Gigabyte SLI pro if you are looking for big bang for the bucks

That's an ignorant comment. You're clearly basing it only on the price of the board.

I'm running a 165 in one of these and it overclocks very well and is extremely stable. I'd recommend it to anyone not trying to squeeze every last MHz out of a CPU (because real world performance is what counts and 10 more MHz isn't going to do anything for most of us that aren't running benchmarks so we can brag to people on message boards).

 

[Krakn3Dfx]

Originally posted by: Ghettocowboy
Bad combo, Opteron is considered to be AMD top notch and teaming up with hmmmmm, Asrock, the rock bottom, still above ECS motherboard. A few dollar more get Gigabyte SLI pro if you are looking for big bang for the bucks

I take offense to that, have a 939Dual-SATA2 in my system, bought it refurb'd for $42 on the egg and it's awesome. I run an Opty 146 on it at 2.5GHz w/ a 7800GT, and it's as solid as the MSI K8Neo Platinum I had before it. ocworkbench.com has some excellent information on it as well. ASrock is a subsidiary of Asus, and the boards are solid made with good components because of that. Also, the 939Dual-SATA2 has an explansion slot for an m2 CPU and DDR2 RAM when the m2 CPUs come out, which is a plus, assuming it works well.

You usually get what you pay for. With ASrock boards you usually get a lot more.

 

[rocker68]

Been thinking of this MB because I have a high end AGP card I don't want to rid of just yet. Got some pretty damn good reviews. No it's not perfect, but seriously considering this in the near future.

http://www.ocworkbench.com/2005/asrock/reviews/939Dual-SATA2/g1.htm
http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustratingReview.asp?item=N82E16813157081
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASRock/939Dual-SATA2
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/09/16/asrock_939dual/
http://www.pcstats.com/artvnl.cfm?articleID=1860

and our very own:

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2524

 

[EXman]

My BH-5 gonna handle OCing this beast? should I get some DDR550 OCZ?

 

[ponyo]

My Opteron 144 is on its way from Mwave. I'll likely pair it up with the ASRock board since it's so cheap and I want to keep my X800XT PE videocard for little bit longer.

 

[straightalker]

The ability to overclock the Opteron 144, 146, or 148 so well makes that choice a no-brainer.

An Asrock motherboard never would have crossed my mind because i'm a very loyal Abit fan. But this time i was on more of a budgit and focusing on saving money to top the system off with the powerful midrange priced video card.

Another thing. Overclocking the Opteron to it's limits requires extra money spent topping off the system with extra expenses to cool it all down. The Asrock939's top clock is around 2.7ghz, but does a decent overclock i'd be happy with around 2.5ghz with no great heat. That's plenty fast.

Next up is apparently the M2 and DDR2. Part of the reason i choose not to dive in with current high cost SLI motherboards. Games will play fine with this Asrock and the Opteron 144 with single decent video card. Get this combo, clock it up to 2.4 - 2.5 and leave it alone. Job done. Money saved can go to the video card. heeheehe. Can't forget the enormous power of the vid-card in terms of where to balance the budgit.

 

[kreb]

I was looking at this exact setup..that Asrock is rock solid for the price and as an AGP/PCI-E solution. I'm not ready to give up my radeon 9700 pro just yet...

This isn't a bad deal but it's not a great one either..

 

[Rage187]

I have the board w/ a X2 3800 and couldnt be happier.


Did 2.5 out of the box on air, plus it allowed me to keep my 6800GT until I was ready to migrate to a 7800GT pci-ex.

 

[straightalker]

My current Abit NV7M Nforce2 that i'm on now and have been using the past 3 1/2 years is dragging it's butt. Looks like the IO or central controller (whatever) is slowly konking out. Been seeing the mouse and the Lan acting weird on occasion. Have to bail out and move on up again to higher tech. Though i'd like to keep my AGP geforce 5500 video card for awhile as well...

...becaise i'm not at all sure how to overclock a system and figured i'd use this cheap board to learn on, without much risk. Once the Opteron is overclocking smooth for awhile, that's the good time to swap for a newer video card and hardrive.

About Asrock939 quirks. All boards have them. The Abit i hear have trouble implimenting the Nvidia firewall for instance. Many i think i heard are leaving it off. I think the main deciding factor for me getting the Asrock is there are 3 major forums covering that board...

Anandtech, OCW and DFI Street each has considerable user support for this board and how to overclock it.

 

[jmunjr]

LOL, the vast majority here making arguments about quality don't have a clue about what they are talking. It's also usually unoriginal opinions, as mosy just blabber what they heard from somewhere else. Many post comments based on their own experience which is at best maybe 3 or 4 motherboards used per year. Now that's a big sample...

Then of course there are a very small few who actually know a little about PCB design and what to look for when considering "quality". Fortunately when a product gets used so much and it gets a public track record of its performance then we have something to go by, though even then sometimes the results can be skewed.

Anyway sorry to rag on some of you but folks keep in mind I have found it best to be patient when buying this stuff. Not so much for money savings or for what performs the best, but to make sure you are getting a setup that won't cause headaches after you buy everything. I'd pay an extra 20% or 30% just to be sure what I get will work perfectly the first time and if it doesn't there will be zero hassles and zero extra cost in getting it right. Hmmm, too bad that is really really hard to accomplish..

 

[BigDaddyD]

thanks, i got in on this and finally upgraded my Barton 2500 rig.

 

[BigDaddyD]

guys, what would make the most sense in better performance for playing bf2. Like I said above I am replacing a Barton 2500 setup. Right now it has an agp 9600 and 1gb of Corsair value select. Should I get another gb of ram, wait and get 2gb of high performance ram, or get a new graphics card? If a pci express graphics card, what would be the best for me that is around $200 or less?

 

[VooDooAddict]

Originally posted by: BigDaddyD
guys, what would make the most sense in better performance for playing bf2. Like I said above I am replacing a Barton 2500 setup. Right now it has an agp 9600 and 1gb of Corsair value select. Should I get another gb of ram, wait and get 2gb of high performance ram, or get a new graphics card? If a pci express graphics card, what would be the best for me that is around $200 or less?

Definetly the video card.

Here are some examples of good budget Midrange cards:

nVidia 6600GT 128MB PCIe @ $130
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150098

ATI x800GTO 256MB PCIe @ $160
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102602

nVidia 6800GS 256MB PCIe @ $200
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130258

 

[BigDaddyD]

What would be the best to go with out of those? I am not a serious gamer as you can probably tell.

 

[GuildBoss]

Originally posted by: BigDaddyD
What would be the best to go with out of those? I am not a serious gamer as you can probably tell.

If you're not a "serious gamer" then the 6600GT is probably your best buy. Unless, of course, money is no object then go right ahead and get the 6800GS.

 

[Miklebud]

I've got this EXACT same set up. For the amount of money, you CAN NOT go wrong. The Mobo is rock solid. I have YET to find anything wrong with it, except for the cheap onboard sound card. For near $200, it was the BEST upgrade I've ever spent on my computer. Right now my Opteron is running at 2.4ghz, and will be up to 2.5 later today. I have no need for it to go up to 3.0ghz so that's why I stuck with the ASrock, I'm not a huge overclocker, but when I can get an extra 700mhz without even blinking, I'm happy. And now, I have the option of getting a PCI-E card later on. AGP performance at the moment is great. Again, I have yet to find a problem at all.

This is a super combination for the budget-minded, mild overclockers out there. Gets 3 thumbs up from me.

 

[BigDaddyD]

When I say not a seriious gamer I mean I don't plan on dropping the coin on one or two $500 cards in sli. I mean, I can plpay bf2 with my current rig, but I would like to see better performance, and the ability to see further in the game. I am thinking $200 bills tops, whatever is left can go to another gb. so if a card is only about $130, then I will add another gb for 78 ..just as long as it is a drastic improvement over the 9600, otherwise I would rather hold out until I can afford better. Also, what is the 144 equilvalent to in terms of non operaton amd 64 chips and how much better performance should I see over the barton 2500? Sorry for all of the questions.

 

[Miklebud]

Theoretically, the 144 is equal to something like (it doesnt really exist) a 1.8ghz FX. You can easily OC an Opteron to FX-53 speeds or FX-55.

And for $200, you can get a a decent video card. Find a used 6800GT for around that price, and you will see a huge difference vs. a 9600.