Motherboard recommendations

Rev

Can anyone point me in the direction of a decent motherboard? There's so many I get lost.

I have an intel pentium 4 3GHz (socket 478). I'm not looking for anything fancy, just a good, reliable board. Only requirements are that it takes my CPU (obviously lol) has 4 memory slots as I have 4 x 512 sticks, and ide slots, as all my hard drives are IDE.

Thanks

wolfman

Asus are very good for Intel boards. Around that time the P4P800 was very good. Or the P4S8X (which is what I had). You should be able to pick something up for around £35-50.

I think they both support hyperthreading. They definitely have 4 memory slots and an ide interface for you hard drives. Have a look on the Asus website for their full specs.

T4i

The only mobos I touch and never have problems with are:-

Abit
Asus
MSI
Gigabyte
Epox

Soltek are cheap and ok(ish) for the price, I've seen/used worst but at the end of the day you get what you pay for.

Edit** and with the above at least you know you will get the best support if anything does go wrong.

Toxteth_OGrady

Dont get MSI. The S478 865/875 boards have problems with 4 banks of memory in dual channel mode.

:cool:

TOG

wolfman

MSI are generally better suited to more recent AMD boards. Although the Neo-FISR (875 board which my brother has) is very good. A very quick board, well reviewed, although it has a few niggles, the same goes for my Neo2 Platinum AMD board.

Actually MSI suffers memory problems with AMD boards too. If using all four banks it drops from 400Mhz to 333Mhz. Although I think this is partly due to my AMD's (Winnie) memory controller.

Asus have been my favourite of the boards I've had in the past (Gigabyte, Asus, Abit and MSI). I've found the MSI and Gigabyte boards I've had very good, although they've had a few niggles, but these are usually fixed eventually with bios updates.

Toxteth_OGrady

I already have an MSI 875 board and it's a good overclocker. The reason I advised the OP to steer clear is that he has 4 x 512 and it's a known problem with these boards. Works fine for me with 2 x 512 (1,3 dual).

:cool:

TOG

Rev

Thanks for the replies. I was thinking of ASUS, having heard they're good but as I said, I got a bit lost looking around.

I'll stick with ASUS. Thanks everyone.