I found this shop wich sells mainbaords at verry low prices cuze the packaging is damaged and/or its doesnt have the wires that come with it but the mainboards work 100%. But they have many choices so I'm not sure wich to get. Here are the ones that are avalible: Asus A7M266 Socket A Moederbord €65,- Asus A7V266-E Socket A Moederbord €70,- ECS K7S6A Socket A Moederbord € 65,- Gigabyte 7DXR Socket A Moederbord € 80, as you can see they are all very cheap(right?). they all run at 266mhz ddram(I now have slow sdram ) Is the preformance much better? Right now I think I would get the Gigabyte 7DXR as its good for overclocking(up to 250fsb but that is a overkill and isnt stable) Would this be worth my money (I'm gonna sell my old mainboard for 20 euro to my sister so cut 20 euro of the price )?
Damn you Europeans really get ripped off . Can get the Asus A7v266-E here for $70 CDN new. Anyways too answer your question I'd go for an Asus board, it's a better name brand and while the 1 Gigabyte board I have used in the past was rock solid they don't tend to do bios updates very often compared to other manufacturers.
I really have not been impressed with ECS boards, specifically the K7S6A---that is the first, last, and only time I will deal with an ECS board ever again. The Asus A7M and that Gigabyte board both use the AMD 760 chipset as I recall. Personally, I'd go for whatever has the most features. If the features are similar, go Asus. Gigabyte seems to be pretty good, but if they're fairly similar, there's no point in buying the more expensive board. And yeah, syngod's right about you getting ripped off. I just bought an refurbished Iwill XP333-R for $50 off Newegg. I don't remember if they charged shipping on that board or not, but regardless, it still was newer and cheaper than what you're getting locally. Granted, they are local shops, but if you're adventerous, buying a used part from a good dealer could be a little cheaper, even with shipping.
sorry for the late reply but I was moving to a new house and internet didnt work for few weeks. I decided I rather w8 untill I buy a new motherboard cuze what I really needed was a new harddisk, so I bought a WD 80gb with 8mb cache(verry fast about 40mb/sec ) I also bought a new case: pretty nice huh? And finally I bought a new cooler the themaltake volcano 9 coolmod and damn that thing is quiet running at 1400rpm(temp stays down 45c ) comapered to my coolmaster at 5000rpm lol about my new case :does anyone how I can connect the 2 usb 2.0 ports and sound out and mic in(I dont c any connectors on my motherboard) ? do I need any sort of pci card ?
oh and yeh, we do get ripped of here, specially in the UK, better off looking for a deal on the net most of the time!
For the connections, it kinda depends on what they are. If they're simply extensions, you'll need to have a bracket plate in the back with a hole for the wires to go through. If it's a rectangular block of jumpers for an internal header, that's up to how you're motherboard is setup. It should have one pin missing or blocked off so the USB jumpers will only go on one way. For the sound, internal front connections seem to be pretty rare. I've seen a few AOpen boards with that feature (The AOpen AK77 Pro I reviewed had this), but I'm not sure about ECS. I really haven't seen it on many motherboards, so yer kinda SOL. You probably already know this, but I'll say it anyway: the USB 2.0 connectors won't make it USB 2.0 unless the mobo supports it--which yours doesn't last I checked. You can still use it with your current board though. For the motherboard, now that yer holding off, MSI tends to be pretty good overall. Abit's pretty good now, but they've been having issues with the first revision or so of a motherboard working correctly with the latest and greatest Athlons they should support. Iwill seems to have some pretty good packages for the money. If you don't mind really skimpy features, Tyan has some good products...though I'm not sure if they have a recent single CPU socket A board out or not. I'd also vote for SuperMicro---but they're kinda expensive and only make boards for Intel CPU's.
I think they are jumpers(it are like 20+ jumpers so I really dont know where they shud go) jumpers are those things wich u use to connect your power led and hdd led right? I dont wanna use the sound anyway so thats not really a problem. On my mainboard I can c brackets(and this is where jumper shud go in right?) with usb next to it but I cant figure out wich jumper is for the usb, it also has a firewire (same as my soundcard has) but I also dont wanna use that. its weird that I didnt got a manual with the case
Unless the pinout on the jumper block (like the Power and Reset connections) is some wierd setup, you should be able to just follow the instructions in the motherboard manual (you do have that?) Oh, and by bracket, I meant the metal covers for the open expansion slots in the back of the case.
