[CLUE-Tech] Motherboard Recommendations

[David Anselmi]

Matt Gushee wrote:
[...]
> 
> Anybody out there have experience with recent motherboards? I'd
> appreciate your recommendations.
> 

I built 2 machines last year.  One had an ASUS A7V133, the other an 
IWill (same VIA chipset, I think).  Both of them just work, and I expect 
any that you find will too.

I have a feeling that there are some boards that are better than others, 
but I don't know a reliable place to find out.  For example, my kernel 
says things that make me think it can't quite tell what my PCI slots are 
doing.  But it works (this is the ASUS).

I did read that this (and other) ASUS boards are cheap in that they 
don't support the C2 power state for the CPU.  That means that when the 
CPU is idle it still uses full power--so it runs hotter than it needs 
to.  Again, doesn't seem to hurt anything.

On this board the northbridge chip has its own fan.  After about 6 
months it started sounding very bad.  The people at ASUS sent me a new 
one without any particular proof on my part that I had one of their 
boards.  So that's one anecdote against reliability and for support with 
ASUS.

I based my selections on tomshardware.com.  It wasn't the worst way to 
go but I definately didn't learn as much as I wanted to.

Dave