What's a good, stable S939 Board?

GargGarg Purveyor of Lincoln Nightmares Icrontian
edited December 2005 in Hardware
A friend of mine wants me to help him build a video editing machine. So, I figure an Athlon 64 X2 is in order. What would be a rock-stable, quality socket 939 motherboard? He isn't interested in overclocking.

The last computer I built for him used (the now imfamous) ECS K7S5A, which at one time shot sparks out of the USB ports and fried all his attached devices. I'd like not to repeat that ;D

Comments

  • GargGarg Purveyor of Lincoln Nightmares Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    Bump

    (Needs to be ordered in next 48 hours)
  • KwitkoKwitko Sheriff of Banning (Retired) By the thing near the stuff Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum. I've built many rigs with MSI mobos and never had a problem. They are rock solid.
  • ShortyShorty Manchester, UK Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    Kwitko wrote:
    MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum. I've built many rigs with MSI mobos and never had a problem. They are rock solid.
    I also have one of these. They are the daddy for stability :D
  • hypermoodhypermood Smyrna, GA New
    edited December 2005
    MSI K8N Neo2 is also great if you want to reuse an AGP card.
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    Anyone tried an Asus A8N-VM?? geforce 6150+nforce 430 board. 1 PCI-e16, 1PCIe-1, 2 PCI. Socket 939.
  • TheLostSwedeTheLostSwede Trondheim, Norway Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    If no overclocking at all, i'd search for a quiet sollution.

    Asus A8n sli premium mainboard is my choice. Out of 12 different S939 boards i have tested now, the Premium is clearly the best. Couple that with an X2 cpu, 2GB of ram and the Thermaltake Big Typhoon heatsink and you have a solid winner.
    I can also vote for the MSI as well as i still use it on the 24/7 machine and i have uptimes in excess of 2 months without rebooting it.
  • GargGarg Purveyor of Lincoln Nightmares Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    Thanks for the tips, guys! The only thing that concerns me is that a few people are getting bad boards from MSI (looking at Newegg reviews). Ones that don't recognize the CPU or eat the CMOS batteries. It looks like I would have a good chance of getting a perfectly working board, but since I'm buildling this for a friend during Christmas vacation, if the board is bad, he's SOL, because there won't be time to RMA it and get a new board before I leave.

    The A8N SLI looks good, but I don't think he'll be needing to go SLI. What about the A8N-E? But then I noticed something in the reviews that will apply to the Asus boards, but probably most S939 boards in general - they need a BIOS update to support an X2 processor. I don't have any S939 processors to swap in to do a BIOS update. What are the chances that a board the needs a BIOS update will still boot using one core, so I can flash the BIOS?

    Abit K8N looks good, too. There are less reviews for it, but I didn't notice anyone saying that it didn't support X2's out of the box. Reviews are good, too.
  • TheLostSwedeTheLostSwede Trondheim, Norway Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    99% of the board boots with X2 even if the current bios doesn't support it. Just flash it and you're good to go.

    The A8N-E and A8N SLI both sucks really bad in comparison with the A8N SLI Premium i'm afraid. I'd stay away from them. They are noisy, hot and won't work with most ram optimally. They have issues with 1T at mosts speeds. They fixed all the issues on the Premium.
  • madmatmadmat
    edited December 2005
    Have you had any experience with the A8N32-SLI Deluxe? I hate to hijack the thread but I'm building a PC based on that mobo and I'm curious as to how well it works for you.
  • TheLostSwedeTheLostSwede Trondheim, Norway Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    I got he board a day ago and haven't tested it yet. Make sure you have the 703 bios or possibly the 805 Beta. Al other bioses stinks so far.
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    I had to RMA 2 Boards from ASUS! but the RMA was crosshipped both times with no issues!
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited December 2005
    madmat wrote:
    Have you had any experience with the A8N32-SLI Deluxe? I hate to hijack the thread but I'm building a PC based on that mobo and I'm curious as to how well it works for you.


    A8N32-SLI Deluxe?

    I am running this with my FX-57 ... no issues . Running stock settings on everything.... The board is a dream come true. in all reality... no performance increase in SLI at all... it actyally showed a decrease at stick setting over the premium A8N-SLI..... but still an awesome board...
  • madmatmadmat
    edited December 2005
    I'll be running it with 2x 7800GTX's, 4 gigs of ram and a 4800 X2.

    Should be pretty zippy. :thumbsup:
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