Looking to get Asus P4C800 - But....

Everyone seems to be saying that they are dissapointed with the Asus boards this time around (ie from the latest canterwood boards which have been released) I dont mind buying the extras which come with the mobo packs, ie cables and back plates etc I just want a FAST board which will last me a little while..

I will be combining the above board with..

P4 3.0 (800)
1gig corsair xms 3500
ATCS-201B-SXK (possibly, as i dont understand all the variations on the case names etc, plus mesa in UK and cant find some of the ones mentioned on this site for sale)
1 x 80gig WD (JB 8meg cache) (already have 1 wanna try out raid)
Antec 430w
SLK-900 heatsink.
Geforce TI4400 gainward 128meg

So i guess what i am asking is, should i go for the Asus or be persuaded to go with other manuf which i would never have thought of going with in the past.. ie MSI :( Is the Asus let down in any other ways other than the package you get?

Look forward to some much needed help and guidance :)
Laters
Jon

im also thinking about going with this board since asus is a respectable company, the board has 800fsb, dual channel ram, and otehr goodies...i heard its not too good for cpu overclocking...

Asus is having BIOS issues with these boards...

Also, they are not as good Oc'ers for 533FSB cpu's, you cant oc above 165fsb to 199fsb.... That range is not achievable.

Id suggest an Abit IC7.. check out reviews... Tops out over the ASUS in most of em.

would they be okay for the 800fsb people?

i just read...

2 through 6 places for highest clocked cpu were using that board...

1st was the ic7

could be read about here ...their are links in tehre too

Cheers guys for the input much appreciated.. I am not really going to be overclocking from the start, my current machine is very loud and i wanna have a quiet PC for a while, plus going from a 1gig tbird to a 3gig P4 is going to be a bit of a boost anyway :) but i may well consider it when i get a little bored LOL :D

But from reading those comments people seemed quite happy with the board dont they? Is it just that Asus have been a little tight fisted with the additional goodies in the box that people are getting annoyed with them? Also 1FastMofo what bios issues are they? I had an A7V before and the number of bios updates i got was CRAZY but that said, at least they were releasing the updates to fix issues.. Swings and roundabouts there i guess..

From the reviews i have read tho the Asus board comes out on top of the Abit one dont it? It is pretty much Asus/msi/abit fighting for places tho, but the difference between then really is minimal isnt it?

Look forward to any more views.

Cheers
Jon

first and foremost, i love asus, i think thier stability and reliability are second to none. that being said, i am dissapointed with the p4c800 for the following reasons:

1, no native serial ata raid on the southbridge, not sure why asus went this route. they include a secondary SATA raid controller onboard the mobo, but this is limited by the PCI interface. 2 wd raptors in raid0 would be severely bottlenecked by the pci bus.

2, voltage increases only to 1.65 volts. it sayes 1.6 in bios but asus overvolts by .05 while this isnt as big a deal for me as the raid situation, its still dissapointing.

3, no CSA integrated lan on the northbridge. for a home network this isnt a big deal whatsoever, but it would be nice for the northbridge to take care of the network stress. every percent of processor usage saved by chipset optimizations is more power to my applications.

right now i am taking a long hard look at the abit ic7-g. i have no experience with abit boards, but i am willing to make a switch for the above features. the serial ata raid situation really pisses me off. who knows, maybe asus will come out with a springdale board with the raid option on the southbridge, but for right now, i feel let down by the p4c800.

The P4C800 is not worth the price they are charging for it... There are much better products on the market now :)

try out the MSI board, or the IC7-G, i'm pretty sure those are the best:)

I wouldnt get the MSI board... Its one of the worst Canterwood/Springdale boards out now :)

Anything is better then those MSI boards

I recommend the Abit IC7-G any day over ANY thing manufactured by MSI...You did state that you wanted a board that would last awhile.;)

many thanks to you all, this is exactly the information i wanted...

So it looks like i should be opting to put my money with Abit this time around does it not?

I am going to be buying my components this week and this is one of the the final things i wanted to check out before i did... So Abit (does the SLK-900 fit this?) i assume it does as it does with most P4 boards?

thanks again people, you have been very helpful indeed.

Cheers
Jon

It should fit... I was able to remove my plastic mounting around the P4 chip and just use the mounting holes... It is much better IMO then the clips.

cool cheers Colossus mesa guessing that the size of the slk900 is quite heavy and would be better with using the mounting holes instead anyways yes?

Cheers
Jon

Yes the mounting holes are what I recommend... I have seen the plastic stock holder break under the strain.. So using the 4 post mounting holes will offer a more stable enviroment and protection against moving the tower...