Pricing Motherboard CPU Combos for friend

[DirtylilTechBoy]

I am helping a friend rebuild his computer. The only thing he has left to do is replace his motherboard/cpu/fan and memory. I found some pretty cheap motherboard combos on pricewatch for an Athlon XP 1700 with motherboard and fan. They average about $100. He also wants to put 512 megs of ddr ram, and being that he has about $250 to spend, this should be cutting it close but still achievable.

This is what I found so far.

Company

Accubyte

Motherboard

Shuttle

AK32L WITH CPU ATHLON XP 1700 1.47GHZ 266MHz -and fan - RETAIL BOXCOMPLETE COMBO KIT

Includes

AK32LVer 2.X Socket A VIA KT266 2DDR 2SDRAM ATX, 1 AGP, 4 USB, 5 PCI, w/ audio Wake On Lan connector

Price: $100
MinOrder: 1

Ship 1 : $2.00 Flat Fee Commercial



Good choice?

 

[ddwbi0]

i dont think so

 

[DirtylilTechBoy]

HA! Thats funny. Thanks for the lead.

 

[CurtCold]

Go with a reliable online vendor. NewEgg, GoogleGear, Directron etc. Also if it's for a friend, make him get a good namebrand mobo, and good ram. Because you don't want him calling you up crying about how his computer is messed up all the time, and thinking you didnt' really know what you were doing. etc....

You'll thank yourself later.

 

[Zap]

Go with a reliable online vendor. NewEgg, GoogleGear, Directron etc. Also if it's for a friend, make him get a good namebrand mobo, and good ram. Because you don't want him calling you up

I agree with most of this. Add Mwave (RR 8.47), TCWO (RR 8.76) and Axiontech (RR lifetime 7.96, 6 month 5.70, perhaps they are dropping) to the list of decent vendors. I've ordered from all the above except TCWO and GoogleGear. Newegg has an AWESOME warranty and RMA policy. Except for OEM CPUs, pretty much everything that isn't covered by the manufacturer is covered by Newegg for a year. I remember a few years ago buying an Abit BF6 from Mwave. It died after about 4 months. Mwave said to go to Abit. Abit said to go to the reseller. I was stuck with a dead board. With Newegg I've RMA'd stuff many, many months after I bought it and they've come through for me.

 

[Zap]

Whoops, clicked on REPLY too quickly before I finished...

CurtCold's post seems to imply that Shuttle isn't a "name brand." I consider Shuttle to be a "name brand" motherboard company. Heck, my first visit to Anandtech was to read his review on a Shuttle HOT-569 TX chipset motherboard (BTW, Anand loved that board). Shuttle's mini systems are really popular, and of course use their motherboards. Shuttle's AK32 v2 was one of the first stable KT266 motherboards and the AK32 v3 was a really popular KT266A motherboard for overclocking and modding. *Most* brands seem to be okay overall. Sure, there are the occasional bad ones such as the initial batch of ECS K7S5A motherboards with sudden death syndrome, but overall motherboards seem to work as specified. Now, all that goes out the door when overclocking...

RAM-wise I'd say go with whatever fits your budget. There are a few RAM threads at the OC forum which talk about generic versus premium (Corsair, etc.) and some people were having good luck by buying RAM that used the same modules as the premium and getting near the same speeds for a much lower price. The other thing is that if not overclocking, even generic RAM seem to work at default AUTO settings just fine.