it's cheap it's stable it's ok (PCChips 810LMR)

Member Name: waterboy67

Product:	PCChips 810LMR
Date:	09/04/03 (923 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: comprehensive, CHEAP!, stable

Disadvantages: not enough PCI slots, poor onboard sound, limited on board graphics

I bought a PC with this motherboard inside. I had read mixed reviews of it so was slightly concerned. I have now used it daily for several months so have a good idea of its good and bad points. It's useful that it comes with a modem,sound, LAN adapter and graphics on board....however the sound is quite bad...system noise is not suppressed, you will hear rumbles and pops and squeaks(!) generated by such things as your mouse, hard drive and optical drives....all these somehow transmit their mechanical noise and electrical interference through the onboard sound for your aural appreciation. Also the sound ouput is at a very low volume. All these problems disappear on the installation of a separate soundcard...cheap and simple...but remember you only have 2 PCI slots to play with...The graphics are fine for everything if you are not a big gamer. If gaming performance is very important to you then don't buy this board unless you are happy to also buy a graphics card(and use another PCI slot). OK thats enough negative stuff. Everything else is fine. I started running this with an Athlon XP1800, 512Mb RAM on Win 98SE and it stank...98SE that is....now have Windows XP and 1gb of quality RAM, 2 hard drives, 2 optical drives, floppy drive, firewire port for negative scanner, 4 USB 1 ports in use and it is totally stable, no problems at all. I really can't find a fault. I do a lot of l.a.m.e. MP3 encoding, use Photoshop 7 a lot, handle a lot of big multimedia files, run 2 antivirus programs(slight paranoia), watch DVDs, burn a lot of Cds, occasionally convert a DVD to DIVX, and use file sharing networks. All this goes without a hitch. Also occasionally use MS Office programs. NO SYSTEM CRASHES! To summarize, this motherboard is not suitable for gamers. For everyone else it is very good, you may want to upgrade the sound if this is important to you.

Summary: