Is this (Soho K7VIA) a good motherboard?

[Pekoe]

I'm thinking of buying the Athalon 950mhz\ Soho K7VIA\heat sink package (it's a good deal). Is the Athalon good? Is the Soho K7VIA a good motherboard? I have found one online report from a tester and he liked it with a few exceptions. It has an onboard sound card, which I have been told is not the way to go, but my son thinks Soyo gives you a way to turn it off (?).
Also, I have discovered that I have a M5ALA (I *think* by BioStar) motherboard and an ATX case. The present motherboard is pretty large and the Soyo (onscreen) looks fairly small. If it is a good mb, will it fit the holes in my case if they are different sizes?

Sorry for my newby questions. I just want to be sure before I buy and I don't have a lot of money so I want the best bang for my buck (doesn't everybody). <grin>

TIA,
P.

[Cyberbrett]

The Soyo K7V is an excellent choice. I have owned a couple Soyo's and have built systems for friends with them also. The K7V has onboard audio (that sucks) which can easily be disabled in the BIOS, and then you can use a conventional PCI sound card. As far as sound cards go, use the Guillemont "Muse". It has 4 channel surround sound and is only $30 at BestBuy. Not too bad.

[Pekoe]

Cool, thanks! I ordered the 950 MHz. How do you disable the sound card in the BIOS? (Sorry for the dumb question.) I currently have Sound Blaster but for $30 bucks "Muse" sounds great. Do you get the surround sound with just the two speakers that I currently have?

I was going to try to install this board and processor myself, but a book I looked at said I would probably want to let someone else intall the processor. Why?

Thanks,
P

Originally posted by Cyberbrett:
The Soyo K7V is an excellent choice. I have owned a couple Soyo's and have built systems for friends with them also. The K7V has onboard audio (that sucks) which can easily be disabled in the BIOS, and then you can use a conventional PCI sound card. As far as sound cards go, use the Guillemont "Muse". It has 4 channel surround sound and is only $30 at BestBuy. Not too bad.

[Cyberbrett]

If you already have a nice Sound Blaster sound card, I wouldn't bother with buying something else. Hopefully you have one the the SB Live! type cards. If you have one of the cheaper Ensoniq things you may want to go with the Muse. The Muse has 4 channel audio with means it has jacks on it for sepperate front and rear speakers. I'm currently running a SoundBlaster Live X-Gammer with 2 speakers and a sub in the front and 2 speakers behind me plugged into the rear speaker jack on the sound card. It's pretty awsome. I can hear where things and other players are in my games (sweet).

You can disable the onboard sound in the BIOS. You can access the BIOS by holding down the Delete key when it says to during startup. The Soyo motherboard book can guide you the rest of the way. It's not too difficult. As far as installing the Processor yourself, this should not be a problem. If you've never done this before, I would suggest reading Sharkey's guide to installing your AMD CPU. Installing the CPU on the motherboard is not rocket science but it can be a little tricky if you've never done it before, so take the time and read Sharkey's article. It may save you from damaging your new processor...that would suck. If you never built a computer before, I would suggest finding a someone that has and have them help you get things up and running. Hope this helps.

Originally posted by Pekoe:
Cool, thanks! I ordered the 950 MHz. How do you disable the sound card in the BIOS? (Sorry for the dumb question.) I currently have Sound Blaster but for $30 bucks "Muse" sounds great. Do you get the surround sound with just the two speakers that I currently have?

I was going to try to install this board and processor myself, but a book I looked at said I would probably want to let someone else intall the processor. Why?

Thanks,
P