This past week my motherboard died. Again. In fact, for the third
time in three years. All were BioStar M7NCD Pro or Ultra boards. I
think it is time for a change (especially since apparently only one
place in the world has any and those are open box with only a 15-day
warranty).
So, I am looking for recommondations on a new motherboard (and processor
and memory, while we're at it). I have searched the list archives, but
the most recent threads discussing different motherboards were from
2004.
I am planning on running either 32-bit or 64-bit (doesn't make that much
difference to me). I'd like to start with 2 GB RAM (maybe going to 4 GB
later on), so 64-bit might be better. The hard drives currently have
Sarge installed. However, I think that I may have lost some data in the
failure and will likely do a clean install of Etch. The components
which I currently have that I'd like to carry over are:
- AGP nVidia GeForce 5900 (unless there's good dual-head onboard video)
- 3Com PCI NIC (for dual-homed network, unless dual-LAN is available)
- 2 x IDE HDDs
- 1 x IDE DVD-ROM & 1 x IDE DVD+-RW
The other parts (Athlon XP CPU and 184-pin DDR memory), I imagine are
a loss. I was actually hoping to get another M7NCD Ultra (as I have the
other times it has failed) so that I could reuse everything. At this
point, I'll go for a new board.
The case I have is an Antec with a 300W power supply, but I can upgrade
the case and/or power supply if necessary.