I previously asked for upgrade advice here http://www.techist.com/forums/f76/help-me-decide-what-do-170316/
After researching a whole bunch of MB reviews, I finally settled on the new ASRock 4Core1600P35-WiFi+.
I was able to locate a Wolfdale E8400 (for a price
) to install along with 2 Gigs of Kingston Hyper-X 800 DDR.
I understood when I chose that MB that I would need to upgrade the memory which was an added expense since I could have used another solid capacitor ASRock board and saved the money, but I figured that in the long run it would be worth it.
Reading all of the reviews was really confusing but very much worth it toward making a final decision. The professional reviews really inspired confidence to purchase the MB too, especially for my purposes & only running 32 bit XP Pro.
The system is running great and my tech. guy liked the MB's quality, price and features so much that he said that he'd start installing them in his own builds.
The WiFi software wasn't installed properly yet but that issue is getting resolved soon. The software was supposed to be loaded before the card and not afterward I'm told.
There is one little glitch in XP though. The Windows function to change the name of the computer administrator won't come up on it's own for some reason, and I had to change it through the "run" function.
Does this mean that the windows installation was bad or that there's a conflict with another program?
My tech. guy can't give me a reason for it not showing up in the control panel tasks where it's supposed to appear.
I don't think it's the MB's fault, and the system boots up in no time flat it seems which is a huge performance improvement over my previous Intel board and CPU combo.
So I paid extra, but I'm really happy at this point with all of the new components that I mentioned.
As much as I was always insistent on Intel MB's, reading all of the reviews & prices about Intel, Asus and the other MB's led me to make what I really believe was the right choice. It's a solid mid-price board which helped me to save some money in place of where I spent extra on the other new components.
I now think that ASRock really does rock! If it wasn't for this newer MB offering, I probably wouldn't go near the brand. But these new solid capacitor models seem to work excellent and have received great reviews from both the pro's and home-builders alike.
I appreciate all of the input that everyone kindly offered so much that I'm just wanted to offer a little bit of useful feedback in return. :happy:
After researching a whole bunch of MB reviews, I finally settled on the new ASRock 4Core1600P35-WiFi+.
I was able to locate a Wolfdale E8400 (for a price
) to install along with 2 Gigs of Kingston Hyper-X 800 DDR.I understood when I chose that MB that I would need to upgrade the memory which was an added expense since I could have used another solid capacitor ASRock board and saved the money, but I figured that in the long run it would be worth it.
Reading all of the reviews was really confusing but very much worth it toward making a final decision. The professional reviews really inspired confidence to purchase the MB too, especially for my purposes & only running 32 bit XP Pro.
The system is running great and my tech. guy liked the MB's quality, price and features so much that he said that he'd start installing them in his own builds.
The WiFi software wasn't installed properly yet but that issue is getting resolved soon. The software was supposed to be loaded before the card and not afterward I'm told.
There is one little glitch in XP though. The Windows function to change the name of the computer administrator won't come up on it's own for some reason, and I had to change it through the "run" function.
Does this mean that the windows installation was bad or that there's a conflict with another program?
My tech. guy can't give me a reason for it not showing up in the control panel tasks where it's supposed to appear.
I don't think it's the MB's fault, and the system boots up in no time flat it seems which is a huge performance improvement over my previous Intel board and CPU combo.
So I paid extra, but I'm really happy at this point with all of the new components that I mentioned.
As much as I was always insistent on Intel MB's, reading all of the reviews & prices about Intel, Asus and the other MB's led me to make what I really believe was the right choice. It's a solid mid-price board which helped me to save some money in place of where I spent extra on the other new components.
I now think that ASRock really does rock! If it wasn't for this newer MB offering, I probably wouldn't go near the brand. But these new solid capacitor models seem to work excellent and have received great reviews from both the pro's and home-builders alike.
I appreciate all of the input that everyone kindly offered so much that I'm just wanted to offer a little bit of useful feedback in return. :happy:
