Which of these Asus motherboards do you recommend?

may_hem1 · Post by **may_hem1** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 8:23 pm

I'm about to buy a socket 754 motherboard because I need a cheap PC now, and then I'll upgrade the motherboard and cpu later in the year.

I'm going for Asus because the last motherboard I bought was an Asus and it was great, real smooth with voice prompts and booting from USB devices.

I've bought a PC Chips budget motherboard before and found that was awful with slow bottlenecks and everything was jerky. So I'm hoping that Asus won't let me down.

So I looked on Ebuyer for socket 754 motherboards from Asus and found 4 of them under £40. Which of these would you recommend?

1. Asus K8U-X AMD Skt754 ULI M1689 +SATA RAID +LAN SPDIF +6Ch.audio ATX (QuickFind Code: 95461)

2. Asus K8V-MX SKT754 VIA K8M800 Chipset DDR400 AGP SATA USB2.0 ATX (QuickFind Code: 97260)

3. Asus K8V-X SE SKT754 (QuickFind Code: 101647)

4. Asus K8N Socket-754 nForce3 ATA - Sound Lan USB2 800FSB SATA Retail Box (QuickFind Code: 74703)

Will the chipset make a huge difference? If so, is ULI any good? Or VIA? Or nForce3?

Thanks,
May

depravedone · Post by **depravedone** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 9:15 pm

If you're looking for a system that is at all future-proof, I think that going with Socket 754 is a HUGE mistake.

You'd be better off going with the cheapest Socket 939 processor you can buy so that your motherboard, etc. are not totally obsolete.

Lliam · Post by **Lliam** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 2:58 am

Going with 939 for now is a good plan
Read this (the 939 section)
Happy building.

may_hem1 · Post by **may_hem1** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 5:14 am

Thanks for your suggestions, and I do intend to have socket 939 motherboard and AMD x2 processor at the end of this year.

But right now the cheapest Asus socket 939 mobo at Ebuyer is £46 + vat. The cheapest AMD x2 cpu is £230 + vat. The cheapest AMD single core cpu is £123 + vat.

The cheapest Asus socket 754 mobo is £29 + vat. The cheapest socket 754 cpu from AMD is £39 + vat.

So my 3 choices are:

1. So if I go directly for the socket 939 x2 solution then it will cost me £276 + vat.

2. Alternatively if I go for the single core 939 solution then it will cost me £169 + vat now plus whatever the cheapest x2 chip is later this year.

3. Alternatively the 754 solution will cost me just £68 + vat now, plus the cost of a budget Asus 939 board and AMD x2 cpu later this year. Going by the price of the 939 board above (£46 + vat) this still works out £55 cheaper than option 2 above. And if the cheapest x2 cpu is less than £162 plus vat then this is the cheapest option overall.

So this is why I believe that I should go for the socket 754 solution now, especially as all the other components (including RAM) can easily be switched from 754 to 939.

Do you agree?

Thanks,
May

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 5:31 am

So my 3 choices are:

Actually, there is a 4th choice: you could buy an Asrock K8 Combo Z motherboard, which has both 754 and 939 sockets on board, which will save you having to upgrade the motherboard when you go to dual-core later on. The Combo Z is about £50 including VAT and delivery.

Asrock Combo Z

Asrock Combo Z @ FX Systems

may_hem1 · Post by **may_hem1** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 11:22 am

jaganath wrote:Actually, there is a 4th choice: you could buy an Asrock K8 Combo Z motherboard, which has both 754 and 939 sockets on board, which will save you having to upgrade the motherboard when you go to dual-core later on. The Combo Z is about £50 including VAT and delivery.

Cool, thanks Janath! I checked out the talk about this mobo on Computing.net and the review on PC Perspective. It sounds like it's a poor performer but does the job of being a 754/939 combo.

In the long-term I do want a motherboard which won't produce lots of bottlenecks. I do convert DVD to DivX and it's important that whilst the mobo doesn't need to be lightning fast, it does need to be reasonable and smooth. I will use this new PC mainly for transferring movies from my camcorder to the hard disk and coversion to DivX, transferring the files across my local network or direct playback. I've had ultra-cheap mobos before that give awful performance and jerky recording & playback, and I must avoid this. I'm worried that the Asrock Z Combo may fall into this poor performance category. What do you think?

I think that at least if I stick to ASUS motherboards then I should do ok. What do you think?

Thanks,
May

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 11:50 am

I've had ultra-cheap mobos before that give awful performance and jerky recording & playback, and I must avoid this. I'm worried that the Asrock Z Combo may fall into this poor performance category. What do you think?

You may well be right. Inevitably, trying to shoehorn two competing socket technologies onto the same PCB, some compromises will no doubt have been made.

I think that at least if I stick to ASUS motherboards then I should do ok. What do you think?

The Asus mobos are generally high quality products and are extremely popular on SPCR and elsewhere. However, one thing to be aware of from a noise perspective, is that only certain Asus boards offer undervolting. For example, you mentioned the Asus K8N in your first post; I'm pretty sure you can't go below stock voltage on that board, whereas it's slighly fuller-featured sister board, the K8N-E, does. However, seeing as this is a budget rig which you won't use for long, maybe that doesn't matter.

Will the chipset make a huge difference? If so, is ULI any good? Or VIA? Or nForce3?

nForce chipsets have a reputation for running hot, VIA chipsets are supposed to run cool. I cannot offer any personal experience in this regard as I have neither.

vertigo · Post by **vertigo** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 2:29 pm

I've had ultra-cheap mobos before that give awful performance and jerky recording & playback, and I must avoid this.

Which boards were they? I don't think motherboards really matter (performance-wise) as long as it has the proper memory speed, FSB and slots/functionality that you want.