I'm thinking of saying "the hell with it" and taking a bath on my $%#&* motherboard.

To sum up, I have the Soyo Dragon KT333 Platinum board. It looks nice in specifications, but it seems to be cheaply made, the company is terrible, and most importantly, it's been causing me nothing but trouble. Now, if I want to send it back on "Manufacturer's Warranty" it'll cost me as much as $70!! WTF?

So I'm thinking of waiting a bit, then buying another compatible board when the prices are cheaper. What do you folks suggest? Mostly, I'm going for reliability. I don't need the fastest, most high-tech board on the market. I'm also thinking of staying with the tested brands like ASUS.

What do you guys think of this board? It looks nice, and is already $40 cheaper than mine was when I bought it.

Thanks for your help.

I really liked the look of that one, the only problem I had was that none of the locals had one in stock and I needed a mobo that day. I ended up with the Via version (A7V8X)

The Nvidia version has two 10/100 ethernet ports and can run a pair of DDR400 DIMMs for some mega performance, but the Via version is(was) cheaper and available.
The Via version is still DDR400 capable, only has one ethernet but its 10/100/1000 as well as SPDIR in/out.
Both of them have 6.1 sound, ATA raid and more USB2 and fireware ports than you can shake a stick at.

I do like the Nvidia, but do prefer the established Promise array controller in the Via.

Either way, I am really happy with mine and I now have three PCI cards on my desk that can go into another PC (firewire, SB Live and Ethernet cards!)
The only gocha I found is that the Mic and Line in jacks get used up for the other sound channels if you enable 4 speaker or 6.1 etc.

Don't say I didn't [sort of] try to warn you about Soyo.

Anyway, It is my opinion that if you're trying to build a full size computer (full size ATX board), it is best to go with a "bare board." My all time favorite Athlon board, by far, is the ECS K7S5A. I have built tens of machines with this board and all work like a charm. Not to mention that it's only $56 at newegg. It even has a NIC on it (something that I welcome on all mobos). There are very few negatives that I assosciate with this board:

1. ECS owns PCChips
2. USB 1.1
3. Max supported CPU bus is 266MHz

If you can live with those things, getting a reliable board for $56 rocks. Just add some good sound, RAID, and whatever else yourself.

Don't say I didn't [sort of] try to warn you about Soyo

Haha, well, I won't. I wish I had listened. It's mainly the company that's soured me. I mean, the thing is under warranty, but I have to pay them a service charge to get it fixed or replaced? I have one thing to say: f*ck that.

forgive my stupidity, but on that board you suggested, are those 4 memory slots? why are two of them blue?


I'm planning on getting the ATI AIW 9700 card. is that AGP 8x? should i look for a reliable board with that technology?

The board supports both SDR and DDR memory. The two blue ones are the DDR slots.

The board is over a year old, so the AGP slot is only 4x.

I didnt expect too much from the k7s5a, but its been a very reliable board, and has some minimal overclocking features. Onboard sound and nic is convienient for building a system on a budget. Ive never owned a soyo, but have seen some good reviews of the dragon series. Ive also seen this ecs board to go as cheap as 45 bucks locally, frys or computer shows.

In reply to:

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Not to mention that it's only $56 at newegg

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Am I missing something, or does newegg not sell cpus? It would of been nice to pick up a Athlon XP 1900 at the same place...

You're missing something

That was a fast reply

Um, on the front page they are currently selling Athlon 2800+ chips (for $400). So yeah, I'd say they do

*edit*
yeah, that was a fast reply! and I thought mine was!

Not sure how I missed it...

Edit: I want to get pc2700 DDR memory to go with it. What exactly should I be looking for? It's been a while since I researched computer parts..

Rob, I have another question about the mobo. How many additional USB ports can it support? I've got connections for four on my case, and it would be nice not to loose them.

I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean what should you look for in terms of memory, mobo, or something else?

I guess I meant to say is there a certain quality memory I should be getting to go hand in hand with the Athlon XP. Or will any grade memory be fine. I just remember that athlons were picky about memory. I think. It's been a while

I would strongly suggest brand name memory. Others might disagree with me, but I found that memory is the one component where I couldn't simply go with the cheapest I could find for the type I wanted. I ended up with pretty sketchy memory. I later upgraded to some Samsung chips that I'm sure would have worked if my motherboard didn't suck

There are the standard two ports on the back, and there is at least one internal header for two more ports. The chipset used supports up to 6 USb ports, so there may be another header.

If you do go for the something with DDR333 or 400 memory rather the older slower version, make sure it is guarenteed to do CAS2, like Corsair.
I got DDR400 Corsair memory after pratting about trying to get no-name memory working at full speed.
The NVidia chipset in the A7N8X it allows you to interleave two DDR400 dimms to get some mega fast memory, not cheap, but serious performance.

<edit after re-reading original post>
Doh! you didn't need all that did you

I assume you were talking to me and not Rob. I am still considering the A7N8X because it's simply more advanced than the one Rob suggested. I've never heard of ECS, I have heard of Asus. But I have testimony on the reliability of the ECS board.

I really want a very reliable board, but I don't know if I can sacrifice as much as I need to for the ECS one. The major downside is that the Asus board is twice as expensive.

sorry 'bout that, I always read in flat mode, so I always get replies get a bit munged,
Funnily enough, the reason I got the Asus was because I grenaded my ECS K7VZA, it was great until that point, my wifes PC is still running great with one.
The reason it blew up was becuase I was adding a bigger heatsink/fan and the space between the cpu socket and those big capacitors that are real close by is a bit too close!
Of course with the age of that board, it meant getting a new mobo/cpu/fan and memory as well.
Hey, maybe I will be a bit more careful next time......

Well, I placed an order last night for the Asus A7N8X (again, thanks Rob). It will hopefully get in stock by tomorrow and ship overnight to my work. I can't wait to have a mainboard from a reliable company.

I've had problems with my A7N8X. It is constantly blue-screening with nothing installed but Windows 98se and all the latest drivers (tried the ones that came with it too). Either the driver support is bad for win98 or the board, memory or processor is defective. If it's the processor, it'll be my first defective Athlon XP in hundreds. I'm thinking it's either the memory or board. I'm in the process of testing the components to see what is at fault and will report back with my results.

constantly blue-screening [...] I'm thinking it's either the memory or board.

Or the power supply? Never underestimate the havoc that can be wrought by a marginal power supply.

Peter

Thanks, I look forward to that. Is this in an all-new PC? What's in it?

I'm hoping I have better luck. I'm semi nervous about this, because there seemed to be nothing but positive reviews for the Dragon Platinum KT333. But Soyo's not a great company. Asus has been around for a while.

Sorry to hear you're not having luck. I hope I fare better.

Amen to that. Power supply's cause ~90% of the unsolveable problems I've seen. And they're MUCH more likely to go bad than Ram or Processor, too bad they can be such a PITA to change.