The End and the Beginning

It was a fine spring day.  The sun was shining all day.  The family got to spend a lot of time together.  The little one is now asleep and it’s time to unwind.  I grab myself a Dr. Pepper, and my wife and I sit down for a nice relaxing evening of tv shows.  I reach for the remote and press Watch TV.  Ah, the sound of the television as it turns on in all its glory.  Ooh, the ping of the receiver as it powers up its guts.  Mmm, the illumination of the power button as the frontend wakes up.  No wait…  That was just a momentary blink before the whole thing dies on me!  Again!  Aaarrrgh.  Not again!  I could swear this has happened before!  Push power button… LEDs light for half a second, fans start to spin and then…  nothing.   Could it be?  Yes, my motherboard has died again!   This is the third time !

I have decided that enough is enough.  I am not going to spend any more money getting this board repaired.  It has died on me for the last time and it is now time to move on to something even better.  This is where I’m looking for input.  I want to continue with onboard graphics because it has treated me very well so far.  And I still need to fit this in my Antec Fusion case, which has been working very well for me, so it needs to be MATX form factor.  The question is, do I go with something based on AMD 780G, Nvidia 8200 or wait for the next best thing?  I figure that as long as it’s broken and I need to replace it, I might as well do it with something that’ll give me a little more oomph.  It’s time for the old Heave Ho.  So if you have an opinion, please weigh in in our forums!