CentOS - Dec 2008 - OT: (a) Biostar or MSI mainboard? (b) all Celeron CPU's OK?

(a) Mark (mhr) suggested I buy a bare bones box, when I reported the
problem with the mainboard in this Dell Dimension 2400 box. Possibly I
can have the mainboard repaired (and the PSU, if it is also having
problems), and if so, I will give this one to my Stepson and go the
bare bones box route and have a more powerful box for myself. I looked
at two (2) very low end Desktop mainboards in the store. The one that
seems the most interesting is the Biostar P4M890-M7 TE (a Socket LGA
775 board). If possible, I would like to verify that CentOS 5 (32 bit)
will work properly, out of the box, or with very simple changes. The
Chipset is shown as VIA P4M890/VT8237A.  The Graphic chip is shown as
Unichrome Pro I GP. The NIC chip shown as Realtek RTL8201CL PHY and
the Sound Codec is ALC662. It has two (2) PCI slots and I have NICs
and Sound Cards I can install, if the onboard stuff doesn't work on
Linux. The Graphic is something that must work, out of the box.
Searching on CentOS.org I saw things about Realtek NIC chips, but
sounds like they can be made to work. Comments on the probability of
this mainboard working OK, or not, are most welcome! I have downloaded
the Biostar documentation for this mainboard. This mainboard has
support for EIDE, which I need for my HD, DVD-ROM and CD-RW drive. (it
has IDE & SATA controllers).

The other mainboard is the MSI P6NGM-L (MS-7366 Ver. 1.0). This one
has NVIDIA GeForce7050 / nForce610i. Video is the NVIDIA GeForce 7050.
I am not sure if it has support for EIDE. For Storage Devices, they
show PATA and SATA. Will either of those support EIDE? I have much
less information about this mainboard. Audio chip is Realtek ALC888.
LAN chip is Realtek 8201CL.

Both of these mainboards are available locally, and I will not need to
order from the states. I am leaning very strongly to the Biostar, and
very interested in comments from anyone with experience with these
boards, which will be much appreciated.

(b) Planning to use a Celeron 2.0 GHz (Retail) CPU. Will CentOS 5 (32
bit) run on all Celeron's? This Dell Dimension 2400 has a 2.6 GHz
Celeron and ran well, until the mainboard problem.....

TIA & Happy New Year to everyone on this wonderful mailing list!

Lanny Marcus wrote:
> (a) Mark (mhr) suggested I buy a bare bones box, when I reported the
> problem with the mainboard in this Dell Dimension 2400 box. ... The one
that
> seems the most interesting is the Biostar P4M890-M7 TE (a Socket LGA
> 775 board). ...
>
> The other mainboard is the MSI P6NGM-L (MS-7366 Ver. 1.0)....
>   
the PSU in your Dimension 2400 (a celeron system with the i845gv 
chipset) may not work with a PCI-Express motherboard as they've changed 
hte PSU spec to require significantly more +12V than in older ATX 
designs.   Also, Dell is fairly notorious for using PSUs that are just 
barely adequate for the system as originally configured.

if you are going to try to upgrade/replace parts in that system, I'd 
consider getting a g33 based motherboard (intel dg33tl or equivalent) 
with a low end core2 chip such as the e2200, along with 2x1GB ddr2 533 
or whatever.     this would give you a system many times faster than the 
celeron 2.4ghz of the original, faster but similar onboard video, etc.   
you may end up needing a new PSU for this, but this combination would 
work with a very modest pci-express compatible PSU

fwiw, my current main desktop system is a DG33TL mobo + e8500 cpu + 
2x2GB ddr2 800mhz, and its a seriously fast and stable system