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  1. #1
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    Aug 2000
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    Can someone help me choose a motherboard .

    I've got a budget of around £130 (Can swing to £150 if needed) the website is done in pounds so that should help.

    http://www.cclcomputers.co.uk/acatalog/

    It's to fit in this case - ATX Midi Tower H-01

    Oh and a recommendation on cpu would be nice too .

    Thanks for any help given .


  2. #2
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    What's it for? Home PC, gaming station, server??

  3. #3
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    Well intended for general use really at first. Just surfing the net, Might put paintshop or photoshop on it but nothing too fancy. If i need it for much more i'll upgrade at a later stage .. could call it a home PC.

  4. #4
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    Celerons or Durons are pretty amazing in value. Fast and inexpensive. I don't know much about AMD related motherboards. I have an Abit BE6-II with a Celeron 566 (overclocked to 850) and it's more than enough for any application I run. The Abit board goes for about $190 Canadian dollars, so you should have no problems affording it.

  5. #5
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    Thats only £85 in uk currency. I'm guessing a 650mhz processor would be enough for what i want?.

    The pc i'm on now is old its about 3 years old and runs on 166mhz and i find that fast.

  6. #6
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    Oh yeah, 650 will be fine. Just make sure to get a minimum of 128 MB of ram. Any less and it won't matter how fast your processor is.

  7. #7
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    I've currently got 64 i think guess i'll buy another block of 64 then i should be fine?

  8. #8
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    yep, get more ram. Otherwise you won't benefit from the increased processor speed as much as you should.

  9. #9
    I would suggest a brand new 128 ram, since your current 64 ram is most likely 66 mhz.

    a 64 ram for that will be hard to find, and probably almost as expensive as a 128 ram @ 100/133mhz

    And yes, ram is definately the thing to invest on if you plan to do some graphic design... I have 256 and windows manage to eat 150mb just to start IE :p
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  10. #10
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    The current 64 i have is not in a machine. It's still in its box. So guess more cash to fork out.

  11. #11
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    With AMD processors, I believe Asus motherboards are reasonable, though they aren't *the* best on the market (my comp's running a K6-2/350 with an Asus and it's doing OK).

    Though the more RAM you have the better obviously.... Though don't use so much that Win98 can't handle the extra RAM
    My 2 Cents.... (or is that 2.2 cents inc. GST...?)

    Have a think about this : Programming is like sex. Make a single little mistake, and you'll be supporting it for the rest of your life.

  12. #12
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    Gotta watch the RAM if you're doing much with graphics. Careful on the DIMM slots so you don't wind up eating expensive RAM later if you upgrade...

  13. #13
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    So would 128mb ram be good enough?.

  14. #14
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    I find 128M plenty on most systems... though I do usually buck up to 256K or more on the systems where I do intensive graphical work, and often a full 1G on our development systems.

    For most uses, though, on a 600MHz or better board with a decent graphics card (16M minimum) and a fast bus, 128M system RAM is just dandy-fine-plenty, really.

  15. #15
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    Yeah, 128 MB is good for 90% of tasks. But like others have stated, if you're going to be doing a lot of graphic design and/or heavy gaming (Unreal Tournament, Quake, etc....) 256 is even sweeter.


  16. #16
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    You may as well go for the 256MB Ram. I have that much, and wished I got more . When you are scanning big images, or playing games ( We all need to shoot some people every now and then ), it really does make every go along faster.

    As for the mother board, have a look at the Asus A7V, it is a good mother board.
    Cheers,
    Michael Bray

  17. #17
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    I don't play games much on my pc i use my playstation or dreamcast for that. Don't do much graphic design either really just the odd image. And i wouldnt subject any scanner to my picture .

  18. #18
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    Kind of a side note, but Michael's got a good point on scanning applications -- I've run into this; but it didn't come to mind because I do little of it, routinely.

    Scanning at high resolution on larger source material can take half-way to forever if you have to keep swapping RAM to disk; so if you're planning much of that, extra RAM is nice to have.

  19. #19
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    An Abit motherboard would be a good choice, especially a KT7 with an AMD Duron 700 and an HB pencil (You'll need that to get your duron overclocked - we have one running at 1050Mhz in our office and it makes windows fly along with 256Mb RAM).

    The more memory the better and seen as it is only £100 for 256MB PC133 Ram in the UK at the moment then you would be slightly mad not to go for it (And I know your not mad).
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  20. #20
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    256mb ram from where the place i use its about £130.

  21. #21
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    Just becareful with the RAM. I got screwed over, well not screwed over cause it didn't cost me extra, but was misled at the computer store.

    I got PC 133 Ram, and an AMD Athlon 900 - but PC 133 only works with Intels, AMD's default back to PC 100.
    Cheers,
    Michael Bray

  22. #22
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    256MB PC133 for Abit KT7-RAID is £93.59 form Crucial ordered off the net - this is top grade memory.

    http://www.crucial.com/uk/index.asp?...RAID&x=16&y=19
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