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Simple, Bare-Bones Motherboards?
basic0 writes "After my Windows box recently lost its life in a puff of awful smelling smoke, I tracked the fault to the motherboard. Now I'm in the market for a replacement board, but all the boards I find seem to be all-in-one models with on-board everything. I already have a good graphics card, NIC, USB audio device, etc. I just need a no-frills motherboard like I used to be able to buy. It seems like a waste to buy a board with all the built-in stuff (and probably pay extra for it) when I'm never going to use it. Has anyone else had similar experiences? Do a lot of people actually use the on-board stuff? Is it still possible to purchase a motherboard that's *just* a motherboard?"
Seriously man if you are such a newb and are going to ask a really really dumb question use something else other than Slashdot. Plus how did this crap end up on the front page? There are hardly ANY mobos that are ALL-IN-ONE. Having an onboard video card is rare and the reason for that is that people don't want those unless you have like an SFF pc or say a mini-ATX factor. In those cases the less clutter you have the better and build in stuf is actually good. There isn't a single mobo out there that does not have a build in sound card of some sort and most have a build in nic. With the quality of the onboard nics today and the fact that chipsets like nforce (>2) have a dedicated channel for your nic you must be nuts to go with a pci solution. Also codecs like Azalia improve greatly the build in souncard and for most users it would be all that they need. I don't ever use it because I like things that can do high quality 24bit sound and I also like AMD. However, the mobos that are really high quality incude a nice soundcard too. (sort of) As far as things like build in USB and firewire ports go, the more the merrier so bring it on. Other than that there really isn't much that is build on. Oh yeah disk controllers like SATA and raids are also very welcome. After all when it comes to controllers like that I would much rather have more than enough than less that enough. PCI ATA and SATA controllers are a real pain and by no means easier to use or better than what comes on a moddern mobo. If you go for a mobo that has very few features you are most likelly buying pure crap and noone that I have ever met wants that. Trust me go for the extra stuff and stop bitching. It will be worth the extra $5-10 in the long run.
The collective time spent answering this stupid question is far greater than the cost of a motherboard and a quick query stating practical business whereas it's easier to cater to a general audience rather than multiple niche audiences. I am sure if you called ASUS and asked them to build you a custom board they would for a higher price.
This question exhibits a complete lack of research and could have been answered without a discussion.
[cx]
Not all Nforce2 mainboards have nvidias audio chipset integrated, in fact most boards don't, because it costs a little more than a realtek chipset.
Yes, that is what I said. Pretty much word for word. The fact is that many people don't know that, they just read that the audio component of the Nforce2 chipset is awesome (it was madly hyped when it was released). Personally, I don't really care, I've got a standalone sound care anyway - I bought the mainboard because it was moderately cheap and the store had it stocked, not because or in spite of the chipset.
But anyway, thanks for insulting me for no obvious reason. Great talking to you.
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