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Non-Integrated Motherboards?
Anonymous Coward asks: "Nowadays no matter where you look, most motherboards have built in everything. Built-in sound, video, LAN, and so on. Are there any reliable manufacturers that still make motherboards without the extras? One example: I want to build a high-end workstation for video processing. Often with on-board audio there are timing issues. Disabling the on-board features doesn't always work. When your on-board NIC fails, a piece of your motherboard is no longer working, not just a replaceable expansion card.
What manufacturers are still making 'barebones' motherboards (and what models) without having to buy a server backplane?"
P4G8X made by ASUS. Though I have not read any reviews it comes with a 8x AGP slot, and it doesn't look like it has onboard features but I'm not sure. Its a good start and made for high-end workstations.
Some (many?) offer their motherboards with varying amounts of integrated stuff (I know Tyan does this, at least to a degree), but they are hard to find because most people like integrated stuff. That said, I know what you're going through. I've got a great old motherboard but the SCSI on it is completely useless. It really annoys me to have built in SCSI that doesn't work. The rest of it works fine, but it just seems "broken" anyway.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I've had good success with Abit's motherboards in the past, and they always offer boards without the integrated crap. They're usually cheaper, too.
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I've had great luck in the past ordering online specific models w/o frills. Also, many times local Mom & Pop shops can order specific boards from their vendors (PC King here in Chicago suburbs is working on hooking me up w/ that radeon 9700 non-pro that no retail store seems to carry).
And as for network cards and such dying on the board, well, as bad as that is, I've seen boards with many PCI slots AND integrated stuff, so you don't lose anything by going integrated. The sound may genuinely be an issue, I do not know, but for example the network card, well you just throw a PCI card in. Onboard video has a notoriously bad rep, but believe this has been improving, and it's great to run a second moniter. I wish I'd purchased a mobo w/ integrated video and AGP slot (they ARE out there!), because I'm running 3 moniters. 3 video cards, network, sound, and tv tuner fill up a system real quick!
Anyway, just remember, it may irk you to pay for things your not using, but at the same time, it's really annoying (and very very difficult to fix) when you run out of slots!
I've had the same question, and a product search on NewEgg.com brought up three results from ABIT and none from anybody else. I'm thinking about buying the KD7-E in the near future.
It looks to be a powerful board, but I would be making the switch from SDRAM to DDR, which doubles the cost of the upgrade to get any acceptable amount of RAM.
"I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.
I think it is going to become much harder to find motherboards with non-integrated parts. The reasons are integrated cost vs. seperate cost and cost vs. value perceived by the customer.
The cheap AC97 sound chip that a lot of integrated audio uses costs something like $0.10 a unit. Let's imagine that the three stereo jacks in the back also cost $0.10, so there's a hardware cost per motherboard of $0.20. This can represent, to a Dell or Compaq type OEM, a huge savings vs. a PCI card that might cost them a few bucks per computer.
To the customer directly buying a motherboard, it can seem (and usually is) an even better value to get a motherboard with integrated sound and maybe pay a buck or two (the marked up $0.20) than to pay at least $20 for a sound card at CompUSA...
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
I don't really care about integrated components, why? Because they are usually such low quality anyways that they might as well be dead components...
- Video - When was the last time you saw decent video coming from an integrated component. I know that nVidia was trying to combat this philosophy, but we all know that a good video card has to be at least 1/4 the size of the motherboard.
- Sound - I know somebody who had integrated sound and some games just hated it (ie. no sound, or bugs with sound). Much like the video aspect, you need 1/4 motherboard components.
However, I do have to agree that integrated sound isn't all _that_ bad if you just have some stereo speakers and aren't an audiophile.
- Networking - I can't really comment on this, but I can say that from past experience, that unless you know what chipset you've got and it's good quality, it will suck. I have a 10/100mbps card which operates at 10mbps no matter what is at the other end (and I have tested the other end).
- Serial/Parallel Bus - I suppose you want this on a seperate card too? Well, I too like the days when you had a vast range and choice of new/replacement serial cards (hell, back then you could have multiple ones for a whole range of different things.
The new ATX-style cases don't give a lot of room for cards, especially when you have to fit in a big processor with a bodacious heat sink. As a result, there's a paucity of available slots. The cost of adding these extra interfaces to the system board is, on the other hand, minimal.
I personally think it's just fine to have this stuff on the mobo, so long as they can be disabled in the BIOS set-up. Having an extra video interface in the machine can be useful for diagnostic purposes, for instance, if you didn't bring a spare card with you; I've used that myself.
My personal fav is Tyan, I've never had a problem with a Tyan and their server boards can be had without the extras.
I have built a few with ASUS motherboards, the last one did have on-board audio, I disabled it and it disappeared. The systems have been really stable and no problems.
I have also had an incident with GigaByte. The issue with this board was ram related, the board would fail to see the ram all together, or only see a single dimm. The RAM tested fine with every other machine and I had the reseller test it too. I swapped the RAM out with junk generic and it started working. No Clue, it is however still running, so that's good right?
Not sure what revision they are up to, but the Soyo Dragon series has a full complement of slots in addition to a couple of integrated peripherals. I can nearly saturate a 10 Base T network with the onboard LAN. The sound easily disappears when you want another card.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
As others have alluded to, it is very cheap, and easy, to add most of the integrated features on most motherboards. And, assuming you are talking about full-size, high-end boards, whether you get the integrated parts or not, you lose almost nothing. The integrated video will be disabled if you put a video card in the AGP slot (and yes, most chipsets now support integrated video and an AGP expansion slot), you can put a real sound card in if you like (or you might find the integrated sound perfectly adequate). If you get something with onboard ethernet, think of it as a bonus -- you just saved yourself a PCI slot (because, unless you're running a high-volume server, there is little practical difference between the various commodity ethernet chipsets -- well, unless you need gigabit).
And this stuff is cheap, real cheap, to put on the board -- in the case of video, the only cost is the connector, the sound requires a ten-cent codec and the connectors, etc. You most likely won't save any money deliberately avoiding integrated hardware, and you could end up paying extra for the "privilege". So just get the board with the features you want and don't pay the slightest regard to the integrated hardware, it won't bother you if you don't want to use it.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
PC crap is PC crap. That you get some of it for free and some you pay extra for does not make up for the essential commodity status of the hardware.
'jfb
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
I used to not like on-board components. Simply because they limited choice in one way or another. And customizeability was key. So was performance, and an actualy video card or sound card was always 10 times better than an on-board one. However ABIT's new NF7-S and the nforce2 chipset. I don't mind an on-board video card if it's a GeForce 4. Especially since a GeForce 4 card will run you a few hundred. An on-board NIC is just a PCI slots savings and on-board sound means two sound cards for me. 2 sound cards can be more useful than you think.
If you really don't want any onboard stuff ABIT, ASUS, SOYO, and all the other major board manufacturers make boards without built in stuff. But built in no longer means crap.
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I have the same delema. I work at a so called "White Box" store. We have some great systems, but they all have some level of integrated components. I have a Mac and a PC, love my Mac...and I love upgrading my PC, go figure since I use my Mac more.
I started my PC with an Asus P4B w/ onboard Audio. Now that I have a Audigy and many other PCI hogging components (cost + 5%, you can't blame me for upgrading and upgrading)
What I need now is a 533 MHz FSB board w/ Dual Channel DDR. So I am looking at Intel, MSI, and Asus boards. Before you go and knock MSI, they have been doing very well with their products. My problem, like so many other people here, is that I don't want on-board Audio at all! 99% of boards have it now, well all the good ones do.
Things that are okay onboard now are SATA RAID, cards are too expensive. 10/100/1000 networking is okay as long as the chipset is of good quality. All the other stuff is useless.
So come on all you board manufacturers! Please make some good plain/performance Boards. Oh yeah and use passive cooling more! I don't need a bunch of stupid chipset Fans for components that just need a good finned heat-sink.
I want to build a high-end workstation for video processing.
Not to sound contrarian, but you could always bypass all of these problems by buying a Power Mac. Dual processors, AGP graphics, built-in high-quality FireWire and Gigabit Ethernet, optional PCI cards for SDI and HD-SDI video I/O, optional internal ATA or SCSI RAID or external SCSI or FC RAID, and no audio sync problems. Plus, the power of UNIX, and you can run Shake, Final Cut Pro, After Effects, and ProTools.
This is the part where you all mod me down as a troll, or flame me for recommending expensive hardware from a dying company.
I write in my journal
Yes, Most come with the built on sound, but I turn that option off in the BIOS (the same way I can turn off the serial/parallel/hdd controllers also) and it doesn't affect any operation of the system, because as far as everything is concerned, when it doesn't show up on boot, it is not there.
My question has to be...did you even attempt to look before you asked? You stated that you needed "high-end" boards, however the research I have done seems to illustrate that all the "low cost" systems and motherboards use this method, and the more expensive motherboards don't integrate a whole lot other than the standard that has been in place for years now.
You keep going until you die..."Me".
http://iceberg.pchomeworld.com/cgi-win/mobotGen/mo bot.asp
Put in what you want, or don't want, and it will tell you what there is out there.
(Score:0, Interesting)
Asus A7V333 or P4B553
Gigabyte GA-8SG667You are right, however, in saying that non-integrated mobos are difficult to find...I have found that the quality of mobos is on the rise (in general) and the integrated features save me PCI slots for additional cards (and other crap I lust after, but would rarely use..).
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?descript ion=13-138-214&DEPA=1
On Sale w/free shipping
Biostar Motherboard for AMD Athlon/Athlon XP/Duron Processors, VIA KT400 Model# M7VIT
5 stars from 13 reviews
I've heard good overclocking reviews of it as well.
I just bought one myself a little while ago.
Reminds me of an old machine I put together for my sister so she could learn Linux. We called it Gimpy.
...not to mention that this was some time in 2000, and a 486 was considered beyond slow.
...eventually Gimpy got retired when my sister got a 'real' PC with enough power to run win2k, but she happily got through a year of APCS using it. Now he sits dormant as a reminder that you -can- get by with less than 100MHZ & use free hardware for useful jobs. All it takes is a little knowlege & a little creativity.
Gimpy started life as a 486DX-25, one of Dell's better models at the time; He lived in a FULL-tower case, with a large, expandable cache memory card and expandable onboard VGA controller (2MB). Gimpy had all the available bells & whistles that were available at the time of his birth, including a comprehensive self-diagnostic tool, built into the BIOS.
I got Gimpy as scrap from school. Primarily he was given away 'cuz the IDE controller on his motherboard was fried; the self-diagnostics would paste a big, red FAILED and lock up immediately after starting to test them. Second, the not-entirely-standard sized AT power-supply was toast.
Fortunately, being friends w/ the tech guy, I got all the goodies I could find that went along w/ Gimpy; enough RAM to bump him up to 24MB (!!!), a 486DX2-66, and a power-supply from an dead 386. The power supply was one that looked like it came from the original PC, you know... with the Big Red Switch on the back corner of the machine.
The first step in bringing gimpy back to life was to get the juice flowing. With the sheetmetal panel enclosing the case removed, the PSU fit without a problem. Unfortunately, trying ot close up the case ended up covering the big red switch that turned the machine on (the orignal PSU had a cable going from a switch on the front-panel to the PSU; remember, this was pre-ATX soft-power). The obvious solution was to take a pair of tin snips & cut a hole in the case, resulting in a tower with a big red switch sticking out of it; classic ghetto-tech.
Step 2 in bringing the beast back to life was getting some HDDs attached. Being a collector of old PCs & components, I dug through my pile of spare parts, and found a pair of 386 'servers' that had disc controllers & decently sized HDDs. The first was an ESDI controller with a 500MB-ish drive attached and this cool bank of 8 diagnostic LEDs that did this Night Rider pulsing thing during normal operation. The other option was a full-lenght, 16-bit ISA slow-narrow SCSI-1 card with the various SCSI drives I'd collected for it (a 300MB Quantum, a 500 from a microVAX-II, and an 80MB Quantum stripped out of a Mac).
Purely for capacity reasons, I went with the SCSI.
After this point, things were fairly simple. Toss a pair of floppies (3.5" and 5.25") on it & give it a NIC (a real NE2000, which got hooked up to my coax ethernet network), give it a monitor (IBM 8514; those things are tanks, I've had 2 and they NEVER die or go bad, you just get annoyed at the tiny screen). I then threw slackware onto it, and told my sister how to login & use man.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Unless you already have a decent amount of RAM that will be obsoleted by the upgrade. Say you have 1GB of ECC SDRAM. You can get a new MB, and TWO CPUs for about $400, but 1G of good RAM will run another $500. Extremely cheap. Yeah right. I only have a $500 budget, it looks like I'm going to be swapping an awful lot for a while. Thank god I have a 3.4ms seek drive to swap on.
- dave f.
I know that this doesn't really help the original poster... A 486 won't do much useful video editing, but mod this guy up, somebody. I know I'm sick of hearing people bitch because 1.4GHz isn't enough to word process. This guy's got the right idea here.
Both the initial board and the replacement board (which took almost a year to get) died after a few weeks and just wouldnt boot up anymore.
:p
The retailer told me he wouldnt carry Tyan anymore because of the return rates.
We're now stuck with a dead Tyan mobo and no more warranty
Before you email me, remember: "There is no god!"
Why? Simple.
Because I replace my processor every 6-12 months, and I usually have to buy a new motherboard as well then (socket changes, FSB changes, RAM type changes, whatever).
And then I have to buy new HDD controller, FDD, keyboard, mouse, parallel, serial, USB, Firewire, health, whatnot controllers and connectors as well. Basically the whole southbridge and all the connectors at the back, which I bet are together 50% of the mainboard cost, don't need replacement, but I have have to replace them, because they are hardwired to the old board.
Why not break motherboards in 2-3 parts?
- A backplane with PCI and AGB slots
- (plus maybe) CPU socket, northbridge and RAM sockets
- southbridge with all this clutter and connectors etc.
Frankly, it makes more sense to save the CPU socket (significant cost, I guess) and to solder the CPU to the mainboard than to hardwire the southbridge to the northbridge, at least when I look at my buying pattern.
Apart from saving me a lot of money (as described above), it would give a lot more choice. Mainboard manufacturers wouldn't have to make a P3 board with audio and without, with video and without, with RAID and without, for SDRAM and DDR, same for P4 and Athlon and soon Hammer. The northbridge would be dependant on the processor and RAM type, and the southbridge would offer the gimmecks, and any southbridge could be combined with any northbridge.
I, for example, would like to have an athlon or hammer, without legacy crap like parallel, serial, PS/2, FDD etc.. Just USB and maybe Firewire, health control, maybe a HDD controller, nothing else. If I am building a server, I wouldn't even need Firewire, but would like a cheap video card built in (console only), but no audio needed. And nothing from VIA please, I have been burned *way* too much by the KT133A.
Now, try to find me a mainboard, stable and reasonably cheap, with my specs. I would totally expect to be able to relatively easily build such a computer, if most mainboards had north- and southbridge separated.
And the north/south cross-vendor connection standard is simple: PCI (in a modern/fast variation, if needed). Not long ago, even VIA's own north- and southbridges communicated technically via PCI, so it's definitely possible.
The only problem is physical: The ATX standard (case holes, screws etc.) assumes that the connection crap is on the mainboard.
And the willingness of mainboard manufacturers to build such parts.
Get a supermicro board. OK, they may have on board LAN but at least it's a quality intel chipset. :)
Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to find out the current specs for this board. At the time I got mine, it took up to two 550 MHz PIII's and 2 GB RAM. I've been satisfied with it.
on the AMD side
EPoX 8K3AE
only thing integrated is the sound & i can tell you from personal experience that they disable quite cleanly
for you Intel guys
EPoX 4BEAV
ditto, all it has is sound, & its gone if you want it to be.
Ive been using epox for years, never had a prob with any of their boards ever for any reason, period. theyre bulletproof.
just to give you an idea how long ive been using them, the first EPoX i ever used was for a Pentium 90
Does anyone here remember AT motherboards? Nothing integrates except the keyboard controller?
Add a card for your parallel port. Add another to get two serial ports. Add another for your bus mouse, another for your sound card, and another for your video card - if you are lucky, your mobo supported the VLB bus for your video card and/or ide controllers.
Ah, those were the days... But back to the real world:
Most integrated components can be BIOS disabled. Either that or just don't load the drivers for them. Seems simple enough.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.