I'm going to buy an ABIT BE6 II

[bugzapper]

I'm building a system as a learning project and have decided on the ABIT BE6II with a PII 400mhz cpu with Win 95. Is this a good choice? Any suggestions regarding type memory and hard drives that would work well with the BE6II? (I have a pretty tight budget). I intend to use the system for digital audio recording (Cakewalk professional 8).

[Ygor]

Abit makes some great boards, but... there's been some problems getting the High Point drivers installed correctly on the BE6-2. (Those enable the ata-66 drives.)

You might want to consider the BF6 and add the Promise ata 66 controller card later if you want the ata 66 ports for the hard drives.

If you don't overclock it, most any hard drive will be fine. Maxtor is good, as is Western Digital... most feel that IBM is top of the line, but they know it and they are usually the most expensive. Definitely look for a 2 MB cache.

It's possible to get a lemon in any brand. Look for the 3 year warranty in any case, the cheaper oem's may not have that.

Also, you may want the 7200 rpm variety, and an ata 66 drive will work on an ata 33 IDE. Don't expect to see a difference in performance, (66 vs 33) it's a maximum burst transfer that is usually measured in the lab, not noticeable in everyday use. The 7200 rpm speed may make a noticeable difference at bootup vs the 5400 speed.

[This message has been edited by Ygor (edited 03-11-2000).]

[Kruppt]

I have a BE6-II, with a WD 136BA HDD. If you buy one from Cantek, they can tell you how to set it up with no problems(or set it up for you) with the ATA66, they have a newsgroup server also where you can get directions to set it up yourself, you have to know the proper procedures is all and it works great. http://www.cantek.com/
news://216.242.22.54/

[AuraEdge]

I have a WD 205BA, GREAT GREAT drive! 7200RPM, ATA/66 (good w/ or w/o that), 2mb cache. The IBM GXP series has the same features. Any new WD drives are manufactured by IBM, but packaged differently, although I dont think it really makes a difference which one u get.

[disciple]

if your set on having ata66 onboard check out the soyo 6ba+iv very easy set up highpoint controller works great. www.bxboards.com (http://www.bxboards.com) has some reviews on both abit and soyo and others. i am running generic pc 100 ram in slot2/3/4 it was a bit picky about which stick went where but little movement solved the problem.

[bugzapper]

Thanks everyone for your help.