Replacement for Asus CUSL2

[cranberry]

Hi,

Yesterday I went and did. I bought a Golden Orb heatsink for my MB, and in the course of trying to remove the old Intel heatsink, slipped with my screwdriver, and ruined my brand new Asus CUSL2. To make matters worse, the Golden Orb won't even fit the board because there are a couple of capacitors in the way.

This leads to the question: what should I buy as a replacement? I liked the CUSL2, but I wasn't overwhelmed by it, and there was an incompatibility with the hardware monitoring and my SuperMicro power supply.

I've heard that the Abit BX133 Raid motherboards are fast - can anyone tell me if they will be faster then an Intel 815e based system? and will the fact that they don't support AGP4x impact graphics performance? Any recommendations for other boards?

I'm looking for performance and stability first, then features, and finally overclockability.

I use the machine primarily for games - the set up is as follows:

PIII 800MHz
256MB RAM
Creative Anihilator Geforce DDR
Adaptec 2940U2W

Oh, and if the Golden Orb will fit, then that would be a bonus :-$

[Jeffy]

Sorry to hear your CUSL2 getting damaged, it is one hella of a mobo and I love my CUSL2. The hardware monitoring is a #@!*# thought. I dropped a screw on a A7V and I think that's probably why it kept freezing.
The BX133 is a great mobo, unleashes the best in the 440Bx chipset. AGP4x has no improvement over agp 2x yet. The only thing you should worry is the agp bus divider cause most vga cards can't handle 89Mhz agp bus on 133Mhz system bus. But if your using nvidia graphics cards, you shold have no problems and instead improved performance from the higher agp bus speeds! You can't go wrong with the bx133 raid. But you should know that the microstar bx master has a little better performance and stability is cheaper and, but's a slot 1.

[Jeffy]

I also forgot to say the bx will beat the i815e anyday, but not by much and the i815e will beat the bx in overclockability.

[cranberry]

Thanks for the reply Jeffy.


I decided to go with another CUSL2, because I have a weekend of QIII planned, and the CUSL2 will be the easiest replacement (Win 98 and W2K are already configured for this board), I know that it works with the rest of my components, and I don't get home till after 8pm on a Friday. Shame that I won't get to use the Golden Orb, but I'm sure I'll find a use for it somehow. My brother has already started asking if he can have it.


Cranberry

[This message has been edited by cranberry (edited 10-05-2000).]

[cranberry]

Thanks for the reply Jeffy.

I decided to go with another CUSL2, because I have a weekend of QIII planned, and the CUSL2 will be the easist replacement (Win 98 and W2K are already configured for this board), I know that it works with the rest of my components, and I don't get home till after 8pm on a Friday. Shame that I won't get to use the Golden Orb, but I'm sure I'll find a use for it somehow. My brother has already started asking if he can have it.

Cranberry