Opinions Wanted: Soyo K7V Dragon KT-266 Mobo

I had this MOBO in my HTPC from December 2001 until last week - when I went to add a gigabit lan card. When I looked at the mobo it had all this junk on some of the caps. A search on the net revealed that lots of mobos have had issues with leaky caps.

I ended up having some other issues the mobo which may or may not be related with the caps, but I would stay away.

It's a couple of generations behind too, for the same money you should be able to get a more modern mobo.

That motherboard is pretty old, plus $100 is too expensive. I suggest looking into an nforce2-based motherboard; many/most models have spdif output.

Can you recommend a good mobo then for me? Right now I want to spend about $100 and will be using it with a 2100+; I want intergrated Spdif/Toslink and Built in Lan would be nice (No intergrated video needed, and I want plenty of PCI slots). This is not going to be a dedicated HTPC--I plain on using as my main system as well as an HTPC. Any suggestions?

Is this Caps issue just with the model of mobo? Would a KT-333 be equally as bad?

the cap issue was with a number of mobos, hopefully the industry has acknowledged it by now and newer mobos won't have this issue. I've switched over to Intel P4, so I can't give any recommendation for AMD based MBs, but I believe the nforce2 are supposed to be good. Check newegg, googlegear etc. for prices and tomshardware, anandtech etc. for reviews. I'm sure you'll find something suitable in the $100 range.

Definitely go with nForce2 board. I think TCWO.com or newegg are better than Tiger Direct. I have both Epox and Chaintech boards but I don't think either has S/PDIF. I forget to tell you the truth.

www.tomshardware.com has some good roundups of the nForce2 boards. That is the best way to compare a bunch of them to see which one has the features you require.