Thread: Which Mobo to buy?

Originally Posted by Alex121

I dont know which Motherboard to get, i want to place a p4 1.5ghz (Socket 478) cpu in it (from this comp which i will be upgrading soon, the olds parts are going into carputer), and i want it to have 2 DIMM slots so around 1gig of ram. i dont want onboard sound becasue i plan on buying a sound card. i want to be able to put my old NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900XT in it too. and im looking for something under $200 AU? I would really appriacate input like what you use, what you think is good?

I found this on ebay if any one would mind taking a look at it:
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI....&rd=1&tc=photo

My thoughts:
1) You're trying to cram way to much power into your carPC with that CPU and video card. You're obviously going to need an inverter, and you could damage your car's electrical system as a result.
2) You can get a single DIMM with 1GB of RAM on it. But if you already have the DIMMs, I can see the need for 2 slots.
3) Personally, I have had bad experiences with ECS motherboards. I've known people who have them that are perfectly content as well. As far as I'm concerned, their build quality is hit-or-miss.

The main concern is #1 above. What is the intended purpose of your carPC that you need to have the P4 with the GeForceFX card? Or are those just the spare parts you'll have available?
I'd say if you're going to go with that motherboard (or something comparable), stick with the onboard video to reduce the power draw.

I think you will find that you are going WAY over kill for a carPC

What I find so funny is that when I talk to most computer science people here at school, they want to go WAY overkill for a carPC. They can't understand why I would only put this much power into a carPC....why? because you don't need mad processing powre, you don't need MAD video capability, you don't need the biggest and baddest out there. Why? because you are going to be listening to MP3s most of the time and THAT'S IT. DVD on occasion, and GPS sometimes, OBD-II stuff doesn't take that much processing power, and it's not like you will be able to do any mad gaming in the car, after all you will most likely have a 7-8" screen! Not to mention the driving thing....

I would suggest rethinking what you THINK you needs are...

I can see wanting to use what you already have but you also need to understand the whole power consumption thing with a car as well

good luck!

what is a 'huge' collection of mp3s? hehe

all of that I can currently do with my MII-12000 without a problem

=]

I'm running the audigy PCMCIA card for the simplifity of it, the secure 'mounting', and the optic in/out

use the 1.5 as a media center processor?? hehe

talking about using your 1.5 processor in the house as a media center...for like mp3 play back, tivo (or whatever the home brew version is, etc

I have a Athlon ATX board made by Soyo in my home PC. Works great, never had any issues.