most stable motherboard

[zappppp]

can anyone suggest most stable board for pentium 4 with the 533chipset. i need ide raid. do i have to buy the raid separately(what brand?) or onboard?

[unplugged]

First, I can advise one based on Intel 845G (or any Intel with DDR333 support).
As brand I feel to advise Epox (it's his momemt :)), Abit or GigaByte (this last is cheap, fast, full-featured... although lacks good overclocking... ).
If you pick Gigabyte you may easely find a potent board with Promise controller included (although, I'm not sure if it's RAID)

I can't advise MB with onboard controller HighPoint HPTxxx, choose another MB and separately Promise RAID.

P.S.: for (Intel) processor I advise Pentium 4 Northwood 1.8GHz (0.13), very very overclocking inclined! (2.4GHz with no particular cooling)

[nikthebak]

Traditionally ASUS motherboards have been extremely reliable.

Asus P4B533-E has RAID, but is equipped with "only" 845E, which means DDR266 only. P4B533-V has 845G but no RAID :).

Abit has performed poorly in P4 market, except for their brand new IT7 MAX2. It has all the features (845G, RAID) and none of the legacy components (ISA, serial, pareller, PS2). Costs even more than ASUS boards however.

Besides the good old ASUS, I hear Gigabyte's and MSI's latest boards are total bargains with 845G's and RAIDs.

It depends on do you want to sacrifice well-known reliability for a cheap price...

[maven]

i personally can't recommend promise (raid) controllers. although they are fast, the don't support standby-mode (at the time i had one) and they don't work _reliably_ in dual CPU-workstations (be it 64bit PCI or not)...

[unplugged]

Originally posted by nikthebak
Traditionally ASUS motherboards have been extremely reliable.
Today this "powerful" brand isn't strong as past years, years that have built its important name (especially the years of P2B/P3B-F, when it was really strong with the most acclaimed intel chipset, 440BX ;)).
My boss is a vendor that sells customized and assembled PCs, I have assembled and soft-installed (considering also on-center tech support) many of these: in around 3 years almost 200 samples(only considering ASUS boards).
Its Intel chipset implementations seems very fine in all points of view, with exception of P2-99 models (Intel 440ZX) that even today continue randomly to damage DIMM sticks :devil:.
The incredible amount of problems that I have encounted are located in VIA and ALi models: CUV4X, CUV4X-C, CUV4X-E, A7V133, A7A266.
CUV4X (Pentium III) models IMHO are the most critial; with several samples even keeping particular care to BIOS version/settings and correct drivers/OS they tends to show very random malfunctions.
Even sometimes they don't flash correcly (clean DOS floppy (or HD), latest AFLASH.EXE, final ROM) giving CRC error after programming!! :scared:
(never happend even with the cheapest...)
And thus, further flashed with external hardware flash unit!

A7A266 models start to work "flawlessly" from a certain BIOS version. LOL asus LOL. (and with ultimate IDE driver they have gained where went bad :D)
Some samples of A7V and fews A7V133 suffer by too low voltage for "old" Athlons (800-1000) keeping the nominal default (1.75) to 1.70 or 1.69, this even with good 300W PSUs (of course, raising to 1.80 solved...).

Originally posted by nikthebak
...It has all the features (845G, RAID) and none of the legacy components (ISA, serial, pareller, PS2). Costs even more than ASUS boards however.
EPOX :)
Originally posted by maven
i personally can't recommend promise (raid) controllers. although they are fast, the don't support standby-mode (at the time i had one) and they don't work _reliably_ in dual CPU-workstations (be it 64bit PCI or not)...
Even your lack these, you have a more robust and tech supported product than HighPoint HPTxxx. Probably you could choose SCSI for such setup.
I have had an Abit KT7-RAID with integrated HPT370 and a my friend has Abit BE6 with HPT366 and its nature conflicts (no Win2000; WinXP at all).
HPT support is too restricted to few serious HD fix and pre-HPT370 chips lack by Win2000 or XP *working* driver.
Now I have a (non-RAID) Promise Ultra133-TX2, I am very pleased of resuls and standby-mode works fine as the rest; its driver haven't had need of any upgrade since the first date was out and seems that no drive issues are reported for Ultra133-TX2.
Promise controllers are (well) suited also for CD/DVD units, plus driver and HD compatibilty don't suffer by problems reported by many many users of HPT366-37x integrated controllers. (RAID mb version by Abit and Epox use these).

Apart HighPoint and Promise, I don't know there are other money resonable alternatives.

[Emp3r0r]

I recently got the Gigabyte 8IEXP and put some PC3000 XMS CAS2 ram in it with a P4 2.26ghz. I got it up 2.8+ghz but it was unstable (encoding xvid) unless I upped the voltage. I'm sure I could get it up to 2.9+ ghz if I lowerd to CAS2.5 and upped the voltage on both the CPU and memory. As of right now I'm running it conservatively @ 2736.5 MHZ with the system clock at 161MHZ and the Bus at 643.88MHZ QDR. The Multiplier is locked at 17. The chip runs cool and can get over 40fps encoding dvds to xvid. All with stock cooling. I'm sure there is more speed to be had if I ever crave it, but prolly won't for a couple years.

[nikthebak]

Originally posted by unplugged

Its Intel chipset implementations seems very fine in all points of view, with exception of P2-99 models (Intel 440ZX) that even today continue randomly to damage DIMM sticks :devil:.


That's what I meant, ASUS boards with Intel chipsets. I also owned an A7V and was really disappointed with it. I forgive them however, it seems to be impossible to make a good, stable board with VIA chipset (USB, audio crackling, AGP 4x, PCI control and so on). VIA has damaged both AMD's and ASUS' reputation more than anything else in the world.

If purchasing a P4-based system, you can have i845. You generally can't get much better than ASUS + Intel chipset. Of course you can get a faster one with AMD + VIA, if you ever get your system to boot and don't mind purchasing a liquid nitrogen cooling system.


Apart HighPoint and Promise, I don't know there are other money resonable alternatives.

ASUS P4B533-E has Promise PDC20276, others seem to have HighPoints. Of course one could buy an Adaptec or Promise external RAID controller. They're both rather cheap.

EDIT:

Heh, I guess I'm not a man behind his word. I just went and purchased an EPOX 4G4A+ (i845G + Highpoint RAID) with 1.8GHz Northwood P4 and DDR333 memory. I cant wait to get my hands on that baby :D

[zappppp]

is there any motherboard with onboard adaptec ide raid? coz didn't seen one. which is better promise or adaptec in terms of ide raid

[unplugged]

Originally posted by zappppp
is there any motherboard with onboard adaptec ide raid? coz didn't seen one.
Think about the cost, you could realize that everyone pick HPT/Promise or directly SCSI.
Originally posted by zappppp
which is better promise or adaptec in terms of ide raid
- Promise is even more powerful then integrated Intel/VIA south-bridges (for ex. in Adaptec ThreadMark 2.0 test these shines), and 2x RAID pretty doubles the perf.

- Adaptec is overall a promise :)
(really haven't ever seen 1 review of adaptec ATA... however that brand is certainly strong... what do you think to expect?)

[unplugged]

zappppp, do you like my advise of the moment? :sly:

- Choice a Gigabyte board VIA KT333 or KT400 with Promise RAID integrated
- pick AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (thoro 0.13)
- pick Thermalright SLK800 heatsink with medium/silent 80mm fan (absolutely the best air heatink ever made :eek:... don't know exact price, sure not far from $50 US dollars) and happy under-control ;) overclocking
- pick 512 Mb 333MHz DDR cas delay 2 (Crucial, Corsair, Nanya...)

pick 3 7200rpm IBM HDs:
- 1 HD for Windows/Linux system, programs and non performance application jobs (more secure from failures, because out of "RAID buildings" :))
- 2 HDs to stripe RAID (2x transfer rate) for performance application jobs and various huge stuff (MPEG, VOB, WAV, AVI...)

I have found IBM Deskstar 60GXP 60Gb HD about 100 euro.
If you have enough money to spend and to build a monster PC don't miss a Chieftec case (http://www.chieftec.com/products/Workcolor/ColorDA.htm)!! Their cabinets are beatiful, smart, serious-line and low cost!


...or maybe I am not predicted your final target? :rolleyes::D

[zappppp]

do you have any suggestion? i can't get ibm drives here. what can you say about seagate baracuda?

[unplugged]

Don't know about Seagate, but sure that latest Wester Digital HDs are also fast (especially models with 8Mb cache, they are quite interesting).
Don't know if Maxtor recently has made new units... they are good too, but 7200 models that I know since some month aren't really *top* choice.

You can search some different reviews over the net to known exactly what you can buy safe.