Hey,
This is my first post at the TR forums, but I have been lurking around here for a while. My ECS k7s5a board is dying and now sound doesn't work. First it was the sound blaster live card that stopped working and now it's also the onboard sound. Whenever I try to put a soundcard or enable the onboard sound I get crashes booting windows because of some IRQ conflicts, and the same for linux. Anyway, don't want to bother too much with the details, but I would like some advice about a couple of issues:
1. should I get a socket A board with PATA raid so that I could raid my WD 80GB drives. I found something on newegg for $58. Or I could go with the cheapest on newegg, which is a pcchips board at $28 or so (no PATA raid).
2. my system (Athlon 1800+) is getting old anyway, should I not bother with even the replacement board and just update to a new system instead?
3. I don't play games, so the A1800+ is fine for my purposes (a little slow when I do programming), but the main problem is the heat it generates. It really makes a huge difference in my small room. So if I want to upgrade, what's a nice cool processor that I can use? From what I understand, the P4's are out of question. Are the mobile xp's okay, and what about the p-m's? Or are the A64 venice cores good if I'm not overclocking?
Thanks for the help.