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Best AM2 bang-for-buck?

S

Soul Colossus

Member
I'm building a sub $800 system and the X2 price cuts sound pretty good for that, plus I want to go with a platform that has an upgrade path.

I don't want to buy some cheap foxconn or asrock boards but one of the top tier brands (asus/abit/gigabyte/msi) but not their $200 top of the line board, just something really reliable as well as future proof with at least one PCIe 16x slot in case my friend wants to put something decent in there.

Looking on Newegg I see the Asus M2N-SLI looks really good and reliable based on reviews ( http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16813131013 ) but its about $50 more than what I want to spend. The M2N-E ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131022 ) looks a little better but might have heat issues with the NB and only one PATA slot is bad since my friend will probably be using his old two IDE drives + a optical drive.

A lot of the MSI boards seem to have issues with the BIOS and chipset cooling, as well. That's an issue I don't want my friend to have to deal with as ideally he wouldn't have to open the case for anything other than installing a drive.

I'd really like to have somethign with more than one PATA connector but it doesn't look like AM2 hardware is going to be that legacy. Any suggestions for something on sale on other sites would be good as well, but I prefero to stick to newegg since ordering from one place saves on shipping.

Lastly, any recommendations on a bang-for-buck videoc ard that's about $25-40? PCI-E of course.
 
Heh well it probably won't even be used for games... stuff like google earth and a decent LCD resolution at 32bit color. Maybe one of those motherboards integrated 6200s?
 
something with nVidia 6100/6150 chipset should do (e.g. ASUS M2NPV, Gigabyte GA M51GM or MSI K9NGM series).
That chipset also provide 2 xIDE sockets so 4 devices supported.
 
The gigabyte 6200tc is pretty good, among the cheapest pcie. And it has composite, svideo, component, dvi, vga outputs....


You might want to think about the Geforce 6100\6150 motherboards if he isnt going to be gaming, They are under 80 bucks and have onboard direct x 9 graphics.
 
My MSI K9N Platinum has ZERO problems, also OC's great. Yes, there are a lot of comments about the bad chipest cooling, but if your case has good airflow you won't have any problems. I haven't had any freezes or lock-ups yet, and I'm overclocked...
 
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