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?"

FP

[zelphior]

Could it be?

Anyways, I'm in the same boat. I havnt had any luck finding a good motherboard that supports my ram (184 pin RIMM).

extras

[prurientknave]

Yea that zemtobit internet is such superfluous addition.

YES

[TechnologyX]

Awesome story, again! Google gets DNS jacked and we get to help this fucknut find a motherboard, and it will probably be posted 4 more times this week by timothy and CowboyNeal HOORAY OFR /.

Finally...

[Kr3m3Puff]

After my Windows box recently lost its life...

Thank god... one less Windows user out there now. I am sorry to inform you that they no longer make motherboards for Windows as you might as well install Linux or buy a Mac...

Re:Better to get the loaded MB & disable funct

[WidescreenFreak]

But considering that even good motherboards that are loaded can be found for roughly the same price as loaded motherboards

So much for my proofreading skills. Oh, well. You know what I meant.

Are You Sure?

[the eric conspiracy]

After my Windows box recently lost its life in a puff of awful smelling smoke,

Next time be sure to clean out the registry on a regular schedule.

buy a mac

[Anonymous Coward]

sell the parts at a swap meet.

Re:As long as you arent addicted to sucky x86, YES

[raehl]

Unless you consider USB a frill...

Real men get their USB on a PCI expansion card.

Can of Smoke

[malarkey]

It's so often you let the smoke out of something and it doesn't work anymore. It's too bad you can't just buy a can of smoke, and refill the motherboard.

Re:Just buy a new motherboard and STFU

[Sponge Bath]

Just buy a new motherboard and STFU

Isn't that Abit's new marketing slogan?

Re:YES

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard the aliens were pretty pissed.

Re:YES

[sketerpot]

So that's what happened to Google. I tried to search for news that might tell me why Google was down, but then I realized that Google was down. :-(

Buy this board

[gukin]

I realize that ponying up the extra $16 bucks to get a $56 dollar motherboard from your typical $40 dollar motherboard is quite a strech but if you get this [newegg.com] board, you'll be able to play virtually every game made before 2003 and, if your patient, some stuff afterwards.

Not to sound like a snot, but if you become a u83r 1337 g4m3r, you can always give the system to your sister.

Re:Can of Smoke

[srhuston]

Actually, I did.

Someone borrowed a Netgear switch from me, and said he had a power supply for it already. Silly me thought he knew what he was doing, and didn't first demand to see the PSU. Whaddya know, a Netgear switch prefers to have 7.5VDC@1A, not 15VAC@.3A

He came back to my office in a panic, because I didn't have any other switches to lend out. Said he let out the magic smoke, something he'd heard me say about hardware before. I went down to the electronics lab with the switch and user in tow, found a 'lytic cap the same as the one that blew, and said "No problem, I'll just put in a new can of smoke. Gimme 15 minutes." Handed him a working switch (with the correct PSU) and I swear he thinks that little canister literally holds smoke inside it.

Re:YES

[plover]

Slashdot is a bit of an old news / duped news / anti-SCO site than a technical support site.

What, Slashdot stopped being an anti-Microsoft site? When did that happen? I didn't get the memo! I'm not getting my memos!

Re:You'll end up paying more

[Anonymous Coward]

one is a monopoly and the other not, that's the difference.

Re:Big-name computers and motherboards

[kettch]

Dell makes their own floppy drives and internal bays, which have their own proprietary screw arangement.

Several companies sell products specifically geared toward fixing this problem.

Here [dewalt.com] is one of my favorites. There have also been certain times when exreme measures [dewalt.com] have been needed.

Re:Are You Sure?

[Epsillon]

Next time be sure to clean out the registry on a regular schedule.

Yes, specifically HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Hardware\Capacitors\Self_Destru ct\Lifetime.

Re:Welcome to 1999

[Reziac]

I've got a crappy old IBM P2 that I dragged to the local old-games meeting and we hooked it to the LAN... and it instantly turned everything connected into 386s. Its onboard Intel NIC apparently is not only chatty but downright verbose.

Needless to say, said machine is now in the barn awaiting a ripe moment to gut it for parts.

Re:On-board ain't that bad these days

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the parent post was referring to hardware accelerated 3D audio. Although onboard audio typically supports hardware mixing of 32 or 64 streams, the positional 3D audio is done in software and the CPU hit is significant.

In many cases, you can get a bigger bump in frame rate (5-10%) from adding an audio card with hardware 3D than from moving to the next higher graphics card.