Best Motherboard for old CPU

[WJWheels]

I'm building my first computer in 8 years and have everything except the motherboard & memory. I want to use a P4 2.0/400 (socket 478) that I have on hand. What would be the best motherboard and where might I get it? I've got a couple of big ATX cases so size is not a factor. I want as much on board (sound, lan, etc) as possible.

TIA for any suggestions.

[Masaki 7-11]

Socket 478 motheboards are really rare now, especially for 400MHz FSB processors, and the motherboard and ram for that type of system gets close to the pricing of a socket AM2 motherboard/cpu/ram combination. What kind of budget do you have? For around $150 you can get a good motherboard with integrated gpu, sound, lan ext. a fast dual core processor and 2GB of fast ram. In terms of speed compared to a 2.0GHz (400MHz FSB) Pentium 4, it should be at least 4 times as fast.

[WJWheels]

Thanks Masaki. Yea, I've just been looking for socket 478 mobos and about the only place to find any is ebay... mostly all used.

I think your suggestion is the right one. I don't really have a budget per se, but don't want to spend much. This computer will be used for email, web browsing & research. My old p3 550 finally bit the dust.

I do presently have another computer with a 478 board - TYAN Trinity 510 - that I can eventually, if needed, install my P4 2.0 in. I built it with a P4 1.6 a while back and it's running fine.

I guess I'm off looking for a new board, cpu, and memory. Any solid suggestions for these will also be appreciated.

thanks again.

[Masaki 7-11]

Here is a reference list of good performance parts for a smaller price (from newegg), I added a power supply to the list since the power supply is really important and the newer parts usually require more power than the older computers, and have newer connectors:


ASUS M2N-MX SE AM2 NVIDIA GeForce6100 / nForce430 uATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
$49.99

FSP Group ATX400-PA ATX12V 400W Power Supply
$36.99

mushkin 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model 996527
$45.99

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ Brisbane 2.1GHz Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Processor Model ADO4000DDBOX
$59.99

Subtotal: $192.96

[rjfvillarosa]

I did a quick search here www.pricewatch.com and they listed a few, just select motherboards and then Socket 478.
Pentium IV, socket 478's don't come cheap anymore..

[WJWheels]

I appreciate the help guys. I went ahead (after looking over the choices) and ordered the mobo & cpu that Masaki suggested. I got a little different power supply and they seemed to have a deal on some pretty red G.Skill memory, so I got 2GB of that instead of the Mushkin. I also added a 250GB SATA drive to the order.

Thanks a lot. I can start cleaning out my old tower case. It's gonna look naked without the Promise card, AIW vid card, sound card, 3 hard drives, 5" floppy, 8 fans, and other misc chit.

I'll let you know how it goes.

[WJWheels]

Well, the new computer is built. All went relatively well. Being I was installing from an old Win2K disk, I added a practically new 40 gig IDE drive and installed the OS to it. At first I kept getting the "missing NTLDR" message, but I found the solution to that here on PCM. After I updated to Service Pack 4, I added the 250 gig SATA driveI and then had another hiccup. It only recognized 128 gigabytes. Well, I found the solution to that on here also... to make the registry fix. I'm still not at full, but it did get it up to 238gig or so. All is working smooth and fast at this point. I've added a number of programs and all went well.

There's one thing bugging me, specially since all seems to be working well. In Device Manager I have a yellow ? that indicates "Other devices"/"PCI Device". I have no idea what this might be and can't find drivers for this on the mobo disk. Can onyone help me to get whatever this is installed?

Thanks

[shadowpr]

Did you install a sound card?

[WJWheels]

No, the mobo has onboard sound, but I haven't hooked any speakers to it yet. There are a lot of sound files shown in "Device Manager", but there's no speaker icon showing in the tray.

[WJWheels]

I got it working. Thanks for the tip. I uninstalled it and re-installed from the driver disk. All is well.

btw.. I too have enough money for the rest of my life.... as long as I die by next Wednesday.