PC Motherboard Chipsets and Parts Vendors


It's been time to update my old 266 MHz Pentium studio computer for a few years now. After years of indecision and not being able to find out enough about what was available to decide what components to buy, I bit the bullet and bought a ready-to-go brand new Dell for $400 at Micro Center. It had enough power to do everything I needed, came with WinXP so no Vista hassles, and all the software I loaded on it ran just fine. But the rub was that it was shy on ports that I needed to integrate it into my working environment and the short story is that I eventually gave up filling holes and finding "should work" solutions that didn't, and my neighbor bought it from me for the price I paid for it.

So I'm back in the market. What is there to know about "chipsets" and why should I choose one over another? We have P31, P35, G33, X38, X48 and probably some others. One difference seems to be that some include VGA graphics and some don't, requiring a separate graphics board. There also seems to be a difference in what types of memory they'll talk to. Do I need to care?

Also, are there still motherboards to avoid, either because of reliability or incompatibility with certain software? I know there was an issue with some electrolytic capacitors (apparently made with the wrong formula for the electrolyte) that failed in a short time, but apparently they've all vanished from the market. Anything else?

I'd really like to buy everything from a local vendor so it'll be convenient to return anything that doesn't work right but all we have around here is Micro Center. They turn over their stock so fast that by the time I research what they have and decide to make a purchase, they no longer have it in stock. So I'll probably have to buy from an on-line vendor. I know that NewEgg.com is pretty popular and has a good reputation for fair prices and good service.

I've been looking at MWave.com, the attraction there being that when you order a motherboard, memory, and processor from them, for ten bucks extra, they'll put them together and test the assembly. And if you buy enough stuff to make up a full computer, for $80 they'll put it all together and test it. I'm sure I can put it all together myself, but knowing that I won't have to send something back is probably worth the extra $80.

Yesterday's shopping list (which might be good for a week or two before something goes out of style <g>) is:

Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L (P35 chipset) motherboard
2 GB DDR2/800 RAM
E6750 CPU
Zalman CNPS7700-CU fancy fan
ATI Radeon HD3450 PCI-e16 graphics board
250 GB SATA 7200 RPM hard drive
Cheap SATA Lightscribe DVD drive
Antec Sonata Designer 500 case/power supply

The motherboard has the two PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports that I need for compatibility with my KVM switch and Mackie HDR, a parallel port for my Sequoia dongle. Those were the biggest hangups with the Dell, which I couldn't resolve with several different adapters. There are three plain PCI slots so I can install my Lynx L22 card and a Firewire card that works with the Firewire audio devices that I have (I put that in the Dell and they were all happy there) and still have one PCI slot left over if I need it.

The whole thing comes out at about $615 without assembly or OS, another $165 ready to go, which seems pretty fair to me. MWave is in California so it'll have to come all the way across the country. Their shipping charge is $45, more than the local tax would be (I guess it's not expensive enough to be the other way around).

Does any or all of this makes sense? If I were to get one of the "Audio preconfigured" systems from places like Sweetwater, Rain, or that other place that pops up often that's the same name (but completely different company) as the company that makes microphones, that I don't remember, I'll get what they want to give me, and the price seems to be 25% or so higher than choosing the parts and paying for assembly.

Is this as good a motherboard as any other one? If not, why (other than that YOU chose something else) would another one be better? Is the 2.66 GHz CPU a reasonable level between bottom of the heap (which the Dell had) and cutting edge? And does the P35 chipset do what it needs to do?



--
If you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring and reach me here:
double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo -- I'm really Mike Rivers (mriv...@xxxxxxxxxxx)
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