Where can I buy a Socket 939 motherboard?

[NeilBlanchard]

Greetings,

Where can I buy a Socket 939 motherboard? NewEgg lists just one from ECS -- and it is out of stock...Google is yielding virtually nothing -- lots of S939 CPU's, but no motherboards to put them in.

[CA_Steve]

A few popped up when I did a search for "939 motherboard" on Pricegrabber. Oh, the irony.

[NeilBlanchard]

Hmmm,

Okay, NewEgg did have one Socket 939 mobo in stock -- it is an Asus "server" mobo, and that's why it (somehow) didn't come up on my search. It was $90, and has a NB fan and only two USB ports -- so I also had to get the Zalman NB heatsink and a Rosewill PCI USB card that also has an internal USB header, so I can use the front USB ports on my Evercase 4252...it all came to just under $120 shipped.

This was by far the least expensive one listed on PriceGrabber, and the others were from sellers that I have not heard of before...

Oh, the mobo comes with a metal backplate, so I'll be able to use my Ninja (since the Ninja's backplate is stuck on the back of the current Gigabyte mobo.

[CA_Steve]

For the same price, you could have replaced the mobo and processor with an AM2+ solution and had an upgrade path...

[autoboy]

eBay

[dougz]

Greetings,

Where can I buy a Socket 939 motherboard? NewEgg lists just one from ECS -- and it is out of stock...Google is yielding virtually nothing -- lots of S939 CPU's, but no motherboards to put them in.

I did a search with --

http://www.google.com/products?q=mother ... =storesugg

and got a fair number of hits, well organized. When I followed the links, I found that not every hit was a currently available product. Some were no longer in stock, out of stock, etc. Some vendors organized inventory by socket type and they did have other socket 939 product in stock.

My feeling is that, with a bit of hunting, there is still inventory to be had.

I've always had good luck with geeks.com and they have four socket 939 mobo models in stock --
http://www.geeks.com/products_sc.asp?cat=473

motherboardsdirect.com has one in stock -

http://www.motherboardsdirect.com/categ ... 0)&count=1

tigerdirect.com is not my favorite, but they have a high-end mobo -

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... therboards

Could not do hypertext link for the last two...

[merlin]

Ya I agree, the cheapest path is really the frys combos for $70-80 which include mobo and cpu. Far better than rebuilding a 939 system most of the time. Even 1gb of ram is only $15-20.

[dougz]

Ya I agree, the cheapest path is really the frys combos for $70-80 which include mobo and cpu.

These deals only apply if you live near a Fry's store and are able to be a "walk in" customer. The Fry's website never has the sorts of deals I saw in the Fry's ads in the SJ Mercury News.

Looks like it is still true. E.g., combo offer --
http://newspaperads.mercurynews.com/ROP ... 3404&type=
from the current Fry's ad in the M-N --
http://newspaperads.mercurynews.com/ROP ... id=6377412
does not appear to be available from frys.com

Great stores for those who know what they are doing. Just don't expect much help from the associates.

I miss living near Fry's, Original Joe's, and Super Taqueria, but don't miss the SJ traffic and housing prices.

BTW, is California going bankrupt this year or next? Jobs keep leaving, spending keeps going up...

[NeilBlanchard]

Hello,

I ended up getting the Asus K8N-LR which is a server motherboard. It doesn't have sound, and while the Ninja fits, I cannot put a video card in the PCIe slot. The onboard video is going to have to do, I guess.

OTOH, it supports 4GB of RAM and it can run it at 400mHZ at low latency.

I swapped out the NB HSF for a passive Zalman.

[~El~Jefe~]

For the same price, you could have replaced the mobo and processor with an AM2+ solution and had an upgrade path...

people say this not realizing that people like me bought fairly expensive ram and spent a lot on a 939 chip. 2 gigs for xp is optimal still. Mine are the best Patriot had at the time with super tight timings. 2.2ghz 939 dual core chip was not cheap.

getting ram, motherboard, chip.... ehh... theres then no reason to get AM2 and one should save their pennies for a Wolfdale Intel and ddr2 and mobo. This would be 10x easier to keep cold and silent yet be a clear performance beast.

I wish there was a low power but strong performing am2+ chip. There just is not

wheres the low power 3.2 ghz 45 nm amd's??

[QuietOC]

I wish there was a low power but strong performing am2+ chip. There just is not

45W Athlon 64 LE-1640 2.6GHz 1MB $48
45W Athlon X2 4850e 2.5Ghz 2x512kB $87
65W Athlon 64 5600+ 2.9GHz 2x512kB $103

All that said the 45nm Core 2 Duos are pretty phenominal. At least all the above are cheaper than my $135 "65W" Core 2 Duo E7200. Too bad LGA775 motherboards tend to be overpriced/overheated junk. Also TDP numbers are increasingly meaningless.

[CA_Steve]

For the same price, you could have replaced the mobo and processor with an AM2+ solution and had an upgrade path...

people say this not realizing that people like me bought fairly expensive ram and spent a lot on a 939 chip. 2 gigs for xp is optimal still. Mine are the best Patriot had at the time with super tight timings. 2.2ghz 939 dual core chip was not cheap.

getting ram, motherboard, chip.... ehh... theres then no reason to get AM2 and one should save their pennies for a Wolfdale Intel and ddr2 and mobo. This would be 10x easier to keep cold and silent yet be a clear performance beast.

I wish there was a low power but strong performing am2+ chip. There just is not

wheres the low power 3.2 ghz 45 nm amd's??

Sunk cost is sunk cost. Either you can reuse the components later or not. <shrugs>

[~El~Jefe~]

I wish there was a low power but strong performing am2+ chip. There just is not

45W Athlon 64 LE-1640 2.6GHz 1MB $48
45W Athlon X2 4850e 2.5Ghz 2x512kB $87
65W Athlon 64 5600+ 2.9GHz 2x512kB $103

All that said the 45nm Core 2 Duos are pretty phenominal. At least all the above are cheaper than my $135 "65W" Core 2 Duo E7200. Too bad LGA775 motherboards tend to be overpriced/overheated junk. Also TDP numbers are increasingly meaningless.

I was noticing how the majority of intel boards are rediculously priced and offer very little.

[NeilBlanchard]

Hello,

I owned 4GB (4X 1GB) of DDR-400 RAM for my system, and today I managed to get a 6600GT video card to fit. I had to rework the heat sink on the card by flipping the two heatpipes so both heatsink are on the front of the card. Then I had to bend the mounting tabs on the original Ninja -- and I had to trim off ~1/4" from the lower fins on one side. And I also had to cut the tops off of the Zalman NB heatsink so the heat pipes would clear...whew!

It all works, though, and I have all three OS's running, with only a few kinks in Ubuntu left to iron out....

[cjstepp]

I just picked up a Foxconn 6100 board at ewiz. Currently they have the 6100K8MA-ERS for $41.26 + shipping. I think the 6100K8MA-RS has also popped up this week at a couple vendors for ~$60...it's the same without firewire, I believe. They must have found some in a warehouse corner somewhere.

The 6100 boards only have 2 SATA ports, but they do have 2 IDE/Ultra ATA ports, so that's a plus if you have older drives around. I'd rather have a DVI port onboard, too, but not bad for the price. They are purported to be decent overclockers, too.

On the Intel front, the Gigabyte GA-EG31M-S2 looks intriguing for less than $60. It looks to have good power circuitry for such an affordable board. Since the G31 is matched up with the ICH7, the ATA controller should be native rather than a tacked on JM Micro. Decent sound and ethernet chips, too. The onboard video is presumably lacking when compared to the current Nvidia and AMD/Ati boards available for the AM2+ CPUs, though.