The last 4 systems I have built have been using Soyo combos from Outpost.com. The first two, AMD Duron 1.0 and 1.2, using the SY-K7VEMPRO were immaculate. The third setup I ordered was a P4 1.8, PS-4YIS2 combo and was a disaster. No post, ordered another P4 1.6 just to make sure the 1.8 was not the problem, still no post, storefront would not exchange the board, in fact wanted $24.95 to check it out. “Thanks, I already know it doesn’t work.”…returned entire combo and processor for credit.
Three days ago, ordered another Soyo SY-K7VEMPRO combo with AthlonXP1700 from the same vendor (I know, I know, keep it to yourself please). Saturday evening around 6pm, opened the system up to find no heatsink and no fan. OK, I say, I will drive the 2 hour round trip to buy a heat sink and fan. Anyway, here it is about midnight, and the system posts, but nothing else. No lights on the floppy drive, lights on bootup with the keyboard…but no keys work–watching “Press Delete to enter setup”, and wanting to pound the delete key right off of the keyboard.
I am thinking, “Sally forth and throw this would-be system into the fireplace”, but, alas, it is not winter here yet.
Any ideas (other than not ordering any more Soyo products…figured that one out myself thank you very much)? Any recommendations on a good, solid, basic, mid-range AMD Duron or Athlon board with graphics on-board to replace some old E-Machines 333 running some fairly complex Excel spreadsheets?
Gigabyte boards. I am also against boards with built in video and in every case have problems when someone installed “Ages of Empires” or the such on these machines. If you are using a business class machine though Gigabyte has been stable on the last several PIII 933’s I built (yes Intel and major budget business systems for a client).
