help me decied on mother board

[luna123black]

trying to decide on muying a pre built system or building one. the main difference would be mother board.

first the pre built system http://cgi.ebay.com/Mini-ITX-PC-w-Zo...3A1%7C294%3A50

pros a bit cheaper
pre built=good customer support
low power

second system would be built similar but with thos mobo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813500022

with this processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116076

pros would be pcie16 slot
faster upgradable processor

cons
bit more money
draws more power.

[soundman98]

one of the biggest dissavatages for me in buying a prebuilt system is that you will hav eto rely on them for tech support--- so when(and you will have problems regaurdless of which route you choose to go) something goes wrong, you will have to contact them, and if there is something seriously wrong, you will need to pull the whole thing out, and send the whole thing back to them for service, becasue the warranty might not allow user servicing-- it could also take them a week or two to service it, and return it to you(could you handle being without a radio for that long? i couldn't).

now if you were to build it yourself, and something goes wrong, you can ask people here, or trouble shoot it yourself, and service, and repair it yourself, very likely decreasing the downtime that you will experience(but there is no guarantee on this--downtime is specifically related to the issue you will have).

take it all with a grain of salt-- i am a huge proponent of "Do It Yourself" and also keep in mind your own computer skills (or lack of) should also come into play on which option you choose.

just remember, you will run into problems, and you will need to work on it, the biggest difference is who will be helping you repair it.

[luna123black]

im leaning more towards the 9300 board and building my self. i guess im just concerned about the board its self. any reason one might be better than the other?.

also will i be able to supply enough power with the m2 atx for the 9300. im a little nervous about the 65 watt processor.

[SjLucky]

I picked up the mother board like this one. (minus the dvi and pcie16)

mobo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813500010
chip
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819116072

I have yet to install in my truck but on my test bench it screams. Haven't finished setting everything up, (if time allows this thursday should be install day), but so far im happy. The bios is nice, i guess, its bios. drivers installed like a champ. The wolfdale is nice and snappy with 4g of pc2-6400. With all this said I really dont care about power, I got plenty. Need some?

[soundman98]

i am not very much good at the power calculations(so i really can't say anything about what is more/less power hungry)

but you could always go with a lower power processor for the time being, and, if you choose to go with that board, it will still leave room for upgrades later, if you really needed the extra processing power.

i have been using a intel 945gclf(i am horrible with model#'s) w/ the integrated atom dual core(i want to say it is 1.2ghz?) from the mp3car store-the cheapest board they sell, and have not really run into any issues with not enough processing power.