While I'm at my wits end at resolving my problems with my Asus A7N8X deluxe mboard (no sound, even with a clean install of win2k and the new asus drivers. Device manager shows no errors, speaker setup says everythings working but I hear nothing) I'm still in need of building another Athlon system.
I've decided to go with the nforce2 chipset again. I need some advice on 2 things:
1> Ram. Is there much difference between Mushkin/Kingston/Crucial ram? I've been under the impression there's no difference (or little) between the 3- all are excellent quality.
2> Boards. So I'm looking at repeating my mistakes with another Asus board (I also don't like the positioning of the capacitors around the socket... it made me nervous when trying to secure the CPU fan since I thought I didn't get it right) or the Epox 8RDA+ or a different board. (Like an MSI that the local dealers seem to like to sell.) Sata, Dual nicks and Firewire are things I don't need. This is a rig for gaming, and I'd prefer to save $50 on a board by not getting those things. But the sound... I want good (and working! hehe) on board sound. Is the soundstorm feature worthwhile? I don't have a 6:1 speaker set up at this time & don't see myself getting one.