Re: Oh, No, Not Again! - What Motherboard Should I Buy?
- From: "Peter A. Stoll" <Lyn2Stoll_spamdel@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 20:54:06 -0500
Mike Rivers <mrivers@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:1191973698.299991.205310@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
I know that Asus has a reputation for good quality and reliability in
the past but these things can change overnight. Your 2001 experience
may or may not be relevant to my 2007 experience.
For balance, an ASUS P4B533-E I powered up in 2002 developed pretty
serious capacitor electrolyte bleed I noticed in the fall of 2006. for
pix see:
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y231/PeterAStoll/problems/BadCaps/p4b533
e_caps_0.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y231/PeterAStoll/problems/BadCaps/p4b533
e_caps_1_later.jpg
However, ASUS was certainly not the only manufacturer to use electrolytic
capacitors vulnerable to this problem. If longevity is a concern, you
might want to consider models which use other types of capacitors, or
which you believe to use electrolytics of especially good durability.
I've recently built a couple of systems using the Gigabyte 965P-DS3,
partly because of the claim that they use a different sort of capacitor.
I can't imagine that any computer that I buy today won't provide high
speed transfers from my audio software to the hard drives. My 1996
Pentium 2 can do that good enough for me.
Agreed, and modern SATA or IDE hard drive controlled by any modern chip
set will run circles around your 1996 system.
My reservation
is that what I buy will either have something missing or will have
features that I don't understand and configure in a way that will
limit its performance for audio work (even though I don't notice it).
Could you define "performance for audio work" a bit more? The
motherboard itself alters computational performance most directly by disk
I/O, which you've plausibly indicated is probably not limiting for you.
Indirectly it affects it by the CPU socket, and CPU compatibility.
After several years in the doghouse, Intel CPUs in the Core 2 generation
are doing rather well in price/power/performance, which might argue for
an LGA775 socket. One with the P35 chipset would almost (but not quite
certainly) allow you to run Penryn generation parts (coming in mid-
November). A 965 chipset board may well run those, but might not, but
will run any interseting Conroe generation CPU--which if you are buying
in the near future will give you very attractive choices among quite
inexpensive and pretty fast, up to medium expensive and nearly the
fastest currently available. You've mentioned your preference to avoid
bleeding edge--in the Intel line at this moment some flavor of the Conroe
generation (marketed as Core 2 xxxx) would fit your stated preferences
and the realities of the line.
As to acoustic noise, a motherboard consideration is provision of
appropriate fan control. Modern CPU Heat/sink fans generally accept
advice from the motherboard as to how fast to run to control temperature
(look for PWM and for four leads on the fan connector.) This advice can
include not running the CPU fan at all in the case that the demands you
are making on the CPU don't heat it enough to exceed its needs given
decent box ventilation and a good (partly = large) CPU HSF. Motherboards
can also advise case fans which are listening on how fast to run. This
can be a nice tradeoff for a really quiet box when the CPU is not very
busy, but one which can actually deliver its compute capability when you
want it.
Vista compatibilty here mostly means more RAM than you otherwise might
need, and faster graphics than you otherwise might need (yes it is silly
that the OS has an appreciable graphics performance demand, but they say
it is so). The bad thing about fast graphics can be box power
consumption and fan noise, so don't go higher than you need. A
motherboard with integrated graphics claimed to be Vista performance
capable is likely to give you the cheapest, lowest power, least
integration hassle adequate solution, compared even to the $50 fanless or
tiny fan graphics card that I tend to choose.
Expandability is touchy. We are in a transition from PCI bus to PCI-E
for motherboard add-on slots. As regards add-on cards for such things as
Firewire and extra USB ports, you'll find much cheaper and more abundant
choices still on the PCI side. Probably you want to choose a board which
has at least enough PCI slots for the near-term needs you can count, but
more than one PCI-E for future-proofing. It is an ugly moment, a bit
like the time when PCI was coming but had not happened, as compared to
ISA/EISA.
Fair warning: I'm not an audio guy beyond the "gentleman amateur" level,
but am a career computer guy retired in 2004. But my box level
understanding is based more on building a few for home use than my
career, which focused many levels tinier than that.
.
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