My initial response is to go with the Asus.  FIC is a middle-of-the-road
board that does well, but is more likely to have problems.  Asus, in my
opinion, is a top-of-the-line board with excellent customer support (not
that FIC does bad in that area).  I do know that the FIC is a four layer
board, and I would "assume" that the Asus is a six layer board.  I am not
sure on the Asus, but I would trust it more.

As far as case and power supply go, it is my personal opinion that 250W
should be plenty for what you would need.  A 300W supply would be great, but
not terribly necessary.  The only reason I would want this hefty of a supply
is if I were planning on building a small server and loading it down with
hard drives.  That's my $.02 worth.  Hope this helps.

Kyle

From: "Frank R. Brown" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2000 2:59 PM
Subject: [PCBUILD] Asus vs. FIC Athlon motherboards


> My son and I are planning to assemble a
> computer.   At the moment we are intending
> to base it on the AMD Athlon chip.
>
> We've seen both the Asus-K7V and the
> FIC SD-11 mentioned a number of times
> as good candidates for the motherboard.
> The FIC seems to be consistently a little
> cheaper.
>
> Would people on this list have any preference
> for one vs. the other?  Would anyone know
> what we'd be giving up by going with the cheaper
> FIC?
>
> Also, we're looking at the following cases.
> casedepot carries two atx mid-tower cases
> with 300W power supplies: their 436 and 468.
> (The 436 is an In-Win A500.)
>
> Any recommendations (good or bad) about
> casedepot?  Any recommendation about a
> case?  We were thinking 300W for the Athlon,
> and to support some expandibility.  We were
> thinking mid-tower with decent accessibility,
> also to support expandibility, and in general,
> just to make messing around easier.  (After
> all, that's the whole point of this, isn't it?)
>
> Does this make sense?
>
> Thanks for sharing your experience with us.
>
>
>      Frank R.Brown

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