AOpen AX4PER - motherboard - ATX - i845PE

Advantages: Cheap and lots of features
Disadvantages: average overclocking ability

...The AOpen AK77-600 Max has a unique feature of having double bios chips, specially these days when virus attacks are common these days. With having twin bios, the second bios can store a good bios version that can be used when the first bios other one fails. It is also bundled with a Norton virus 2003, s very helpful software which can protect you from e-mail worms and viruses. This board has via kt600 chipset instead of an nforce 2. The motherboard has a little heat sink at the middle which helps to avoid overheating. All the headers of this motherboard are place on the near bottom of the motherboard. The USB 2.0 header s located at the second third PCI slots. A total of 6 USB ports are located at the back panel of this board. There is also a printer port and 2 ps/2 ports. Four mounting holes are located in CPU sockets, which free... Read review

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Advantages: Has RAID, 266 FSB, upto 4 IDE’s, cheap
Disadvantages: 1.33 Ghz speed limit

...Erm… Well no actually! Motherboards can be drastically different in quality and speed. You just need to know how to look at them and what are the good and bad points of them all. Okay so here goes for the bad points about the Abit SoA AMD 761 ATX R motherboard Bad points: ~~~~~~~ 1. Windows will fight you over which device drivers are best and you’ll generally end up not even using the disk of drivers they give you. The navigation on the disk is painful at best and could be so much simpler. 2. There is no on-board sound (which I consider a plus personally, but others may not) (On board sound is normally crap!) 3. It may not come with the CMOS cleared (Mine didn’t and wouldn’t do a thing till I clear it! V. Annoying) (CMOS is your internal clock, and bios setup options) 4. It will only cope... Read review

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Advantages: Very cheap, intelligent electronics keep wasted disks to a minimum
Disadvantages: None so far. How long can something this cheap last?

...-RW and 24 speed read machine, was, as I’ve said, a good machine at the time of purchase, but it’s replacement, an AOpen CRW5224, is only costing me a shade over £30 (yes thirty!) from www.dabs.com, AND it’s got a maximum write speed to CD-R of 52x, making full CD copies possible in just a few minutes, and I do mean a few. AOpen may well be more familiar to you as the makers of motherboards. Even if this machine only lasts the 12-month guarantee period and no longer, it’ll only cost me 66p a week to own (as for the DVD player, the most that can cost me is 50p a week thanks to the 2-year warranty). Every month beyond the first year is a bonus for the AOpen, and if it lasts as long as the Yamaha, it’ll cost me about 22p a week. Anyway, that’s got the skinflint bits out of the way. What’s it like to install and use? A BIT OF THE OLD ‘IN OUT... Read review

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