Quote:You could also try this:
ECS
Celeron D
Combined total: $106.90 (including shipping - may be less due to combined ship). Gets you a decent mobo and a decent CPU. Better mobo, IMHO. You lose RAID, but gain more RAM, PCI slots, etc. A worthy tradeoff, if you ask me. A little bit more money, but money well spent.
Good luck in whatever you choose.
How does ECS compare to Bioware as companies? I know you said earlier "ECS is low-end quality, but not terrible." so what is Bioware in comparison? Since the current board in the computer with the problems is an ECS it makes me a little hesitant about them, thats probably not a good basis though.
I do like that the ECS board isn't a micro board. The graphics card I'll probably use has a fan on it that on a micro board pretty much gets covered by the nearest PCI card. Always kind of disliked that. With a non-micro board there should be more space between them and so more room to breathe. Some people in the comments for the ECS board complained that the USb wasn't inherently 2.0, but that they had to d/l some driver from a site to make it so. I don't know how I feel about that. I mean..if its 2.0 then its 2.0 right? Even if it does require a driver d/l to function as such. I also like that the ECS board uses an Intel chipset while the Bioware one uses a VIA chipset. I've seen VIA chipsets alot and so a change might be good, but that doesn't mean Intel will be any better or any worse.
I don't know. I feel like the ECS board is the better board, but that I'm leaning against it because its ECS and the processor is a tiny bit slower. I'll have to give things more thought.