Anyone use a PCChips m/b?

The particular one I'm looking at is PCChips "M811LU" which is a KT266A board (newegg). The reason I'm looking at it is b/c it's cheap. I mean $30 cheap. I'm just throwing a duron 900 in it and it'll be a file server in its final life (though it'll live as a HTPC for a bit before that). Performance isn't really a concern at all. All it's gotta do is spit files over my home network quick enough to stream media.

Anyone have any experience with a PCChips motherboard before? I'm sure I could get something better, but I really don't need it and don't want to spend the extra money if this thing isn't horribly slow or utterly unreliable.

Note-To-Self: Reviews at newegg and ebuyer

No personal experience, but I've heard bad things about them on other boards (unreliable). Of course, you never know till you get one, yours it might work for you for 10 years. Be sure you have warranty info though

Hmm...sounds like it might be worth my extra $25-50 to get something I've heard of. I was planning on getting an abit board to replace my current desktop and its motherboard would go to this file server, but the board is now shot. This is the second time this Soyo has pissed me off due to hardware failure, I don't reccomend. Maybe I'll just get a pair of KT600's, they're just under $70 now.

Don't suppose you know of a place that sells cheap RAID cards? The old Soyo had onboard PATA RAID (only 0,1) which I was going to use as normal IDE connectors and do some software RAID 5. Well, from what I can tell, the only motherboards out there with > 4 PATA connectors are the Soyo ones, which aren't cheap, beside the fact I'll never again buy one. So I'm looking at doing the RAID in hardware.

I think my ideal card is Promise's SX6000, but it goes for just over $250. There's been a little ebay action with it, one I missed tuesday by 10 minutes that went for $150, and one out there now from a guy with no feedback.

The alternative is a 3Ware 5800, which doesn't do hardware RAID 5, but does have 8 connections so I could do it in software (and it only costs about $40). In six months or so, the box'll run FreeBSD and I'll have another one hooked up to the TV, but while it's there, it'll run Linux instead so I can use Freevo. Linux and FreeBSD don't exactly have compatible software RAID, so doing it in hardware would save me a data migration.

Decisions, decisions...
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I have actually had a PCChips motherboard in the past. I really wasn't too pleased with it, but that was also some time ago. My recommendation would be to go and get yourself an ASUS or Abit board

I know its old, but... /me agrees w/ abit suggestion. Inexpensive, fast, good. Nuff said.

>> Anyone use a PCChips m/b?

PCChips = ECS, the 2nd worst brand for m/b on earth, and Matsonic, being the no.1 worst brand on earth. They sux not because of lack of features but lack of stability, can't take generic RAMs and the like.

I went with two Abit KV7's, cost $69/ea. Nice boards. I got one of those Zalman "flower" heatsinks on one, and the ATX power connector is right beside the CPU socket in the direction that the fins go out, so that's a bit of a tight fit (and I have a piece of plastic between the heatsink and the wires, for I'd hate to scrape the insulation and ground a 12V line to the heatsink).

$30 for a m/b just didn't sound like a good idea, and I might have tried it if I had one satisfied customer respond. More likely, I'd get what I paid for: something less than half as good as the KV7.

Thanks for the responses.