Need a new motherboard. Any advise?

[geirj]

The thing is that I'm having major hardware problems at the moment.

My setup:

Motherboard: Abit NF7 v.2
Cpu: AMD Athlon XP2500, Socket A
Ram: 512MB DDR - PC3200 (Cl2.5)
DVD: Pioneer DVR-A06
Harddrive1: 40GB IBM
Harddrive2: 180GB Western Digital Caviar
GF-Card : Geforce2-Ti
usb optical mouse

I'm dualbooting win2000 (drive1, master), and Libranet 2.8.1 (drive2, slave).

Some weeks ago, the computer started feezing when I was using windows. Freezing meaning that I couldn't move the mouse cursor, not use the keyboard, and there was no harddrive activity. There was no "pattern", no special aplications that froze the computer.

I thought to my self that it was probably just windows messing around, and desided to give linux a go.

Installed Libranet 2.8.1, but the problems didn't go away.

I'v tryed about everything there is to try, Changing GF-card, networkcard, soundcard, updating bios, reinstalling, memorychecking etc etc.

The only thing that comes to my mind is that there is something wrong with my motherboard.

That's why I need some recomandations on a good, stable motherboard, that will work with linux. I don't have to much money right now, so it should not cost more than 120-130$.

Any advise would be apriciated. I'm having a java exam in about one month, and really need a stable computer to program on.

[CopperTop]

I recently had to replace my motherboard. Evry 5 mins or so, the PC would restart itself. I tried replacing the memory, the vid card (needed an upgrade anyway ) and checked out the CPU. Then I noticed 3 of the caps on the motherboard were swollen. Sure sign that the board is failing. It was an 18 month old Gigabyte that my local retailer swapped for a new one. Only cost to me was a small shipping charge so they could send my old board back to Gigabyte.

If it hadn't been replaced like that, I would have gone back to ASUS. In my own experience, I think they build a more reliable board than Gigabyte. But those are the only two I've ever used, so I can't comment on any others...

[Giro]

Anything Asus IMO used them for a while and had no problems, Also what are you looking for onboard everything (sound, gfx, eth)? Do you plan on upgrading your CPU soon? You need to think what you want. I have an Asus A7V600 and a A7V8X-X and both run fine I have had the latter for a couple of years now and seems stable when overclocked. But the A7v600 is a better mobo.

[Opnosforatou]

All my computers run on Asus motherboards, as are all videocards.
Never encountered any trouble.. except for one.
That was when I got my hands on the first Asus V9950 videocard.
It was bye bye within 3 months and barely used.
They replaced it and the new one works like a ....

Other than that. I would stick to Asus.

[1badex96]

hey man look at computergate.com you can find awesome motherboards for way less then 130.00 bones. good luck