I’m on a limited budget and looking for QUALITY and RELIABILITY—something that will last. I’m trying to decide which motherboard of these two to choose, and which one has the better capacitor setup. I’m not expert enough to look at the board tell if it’s 3 phase, 4 phase, or what…
Can someone give me your input please?
The two boards are:
• GIGABYTE GA-K8N Pro-SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4
o http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128301
• ABIT KN8 SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI
o http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813127225
From what I can tell these boards are practically identical—the only difference in features being the number of USB and fire wire ports.
Abit appears to have the better cooling solution with the built-in heatpipe, but I’m a little wary of their phase control. If I’m not mistaken, they use fewer phases and try to compensate with heat-sinks.
If I have any clue as to what I’m looking at, Gigabyte appears to have a better phase-control setup, but the cooling solution on the mobo sucks.
* For CPU I’m thinking AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ …. **or**…. Athlon 64 3200+ (Venice) (not sure how much money I want to spend yet).
* For video card I was thinking of starting out with a XFX PVT43PUDS7 (Geforce 6600 256MB GDDR2). I haven’t been gaming much lately and figure * I can toss in another 6600 and run them in SLI when I get more serious.
* For power supply: ENERMAX EG565AX-VEFMA2.0-SLI ATX12V 535W
* I’ll use my existing 1GB of Corsair 3200 “value ram”.
I’m on barrowed time, so need input quickly please!!! The motherboard I’m using has a bulging cap next to the AGP slot and I had trouble posting a few days ago.
Input, suggestions? Mostly I’m looking for stability and reliability—hence my concern about Abit’s long-term life expectancy with their rather exotic capacitor cooling setup. It worries me. I don’t have experience with either brand.
Not looking to recap this board--the SATA controller went out a while ago, so it's not worth it.
Can someone give me your input please?
The two boards are:
• GIGABYTE GA-K8N Pro-SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4
o http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128301
• ABIT KN8 SLI Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI
o http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813127225
From what I can tell these boards are practically identical—the only difference in features being the number of USB and fire wire ports.
Abit appears to have the better cooling solution with the built-in heatpipe, but I’m a little wary of their phase control. If I’m not mistaken, they use fewer phases and try to compensate with heat-sinks.
If I have any clue as to what I’m looking at, Gigabyte appears to have a better phase-control setup, but the cooling solution on the mobo sucks.
* For CPU I’m thinking AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ …. **or**…. Athlon 64 3200+ (Venice) (not sure how much money I want to spend yet).
* For video card I was thinking of starting out with a XFX PVT43PUDS7 (Geforce 6600 256MB GDDR2). I haven’t been gaming much lately and figure * I can toss in another 6600 and run them in SLI when I get more serious.
* For power supply: ENERMAX EG565AX-VEFMA2.0-SLI ATX12V 535W
* I’ll use my existing 1GB of Corsair 3200 “value ram”.
I’m on barrowed time, so need input quickly please!!! The motherboard I’m using has a bulging cap next to the AGP slot and I had trouble posting a few days ago.
Input, suggestions? Mostly I’m looking for stability and reliability—hence my concern about Abit’s long-term life expectancy with their rather exotic capacitor cooling setup. It worries me. I don’t have experience with either brand.
Not looking to recap this board--the SATA controller went out a while ago, so it's not worth it.
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