Best Mobo/CPU combo under $100 shipped?

[glassvial]

I've hit Tiger, mwave, the egg, chiefvalue, and zzf (and others) trying to put together a good combo, and the best I've been able to come up with is ordering from multiple sites. I'm seriously leaning toward a Celeron 420/430 (retail, assuming the retail fan is QUIET, anyone know?) and some sort of $40-ish range MSI board that has 2 IDE ports (P4M900M2-L for example), and micro-atx so I don't have to buy a video card. This is going to be a non-HD pvr box, so it has to be quiet as possible. I have a case, PSU, optical drive, and 160gb hdd all kicking around.

I'm open to suggestions if someone knows some sites I'm missing to snag this stuff any cheaper...oh and I've tried building an AMD combo (non sempron) and it's not coming out much cheaper, if at all, to justify it vs. the above mentioned setup.

Thanks.

 

[o1die]

Mwave has a good price on the celeron, and some refurbished boards to go with it. Newegg has a foxconn nforce4 board with socket 939 3500 for $60 if you have any left over pc2700 or pc3200.

 

[glassvial]

I didn't even notice mwave had refurb boards, unfortunately it looks like they're just bare boards which would mean no backplate or any of that (the rest of it I could care less about, but the backplate is a must). And the newegg deal looks good, I do have some DDR1 and DDR2 sticks around, so I could go either way. The biggest problem with most of those foxconn boards is the chipset fan would definitely be detrimental to the noise factor

 

[o1die]

Newegg also has a foxconn socket 754 nforce4 board with pci-e video card for $29.95 plus shipping. Computer geeks has a new socket 754 3200 for $30 (without heatsink). Another cheap setup.

 

[glassvial]

754, wow that's really scraping the bottom of the barrel I figure if I'm going to spend $60+ I might as well make it worthwhile and get something that at least has a little bit of a future ahead of it, that's why I was thinking the Celeron 420/430 with a cheap mobo. 939 is still a possibility, at least that's not AS dead as 754 is. Just trying to put together the best bang for the buck.

 

[o1die]

If you get an asrock refurb board, I've been able to order backplates twice from asrock america for $5 shipped. Last time I told them I had 2 of their boards, so they sent me 2 at no extra charge. I got a spare for free. I like having an identical backup board; makes perfect sense since they're hard to find after a couple of years.

 

[jjmIII]

Just grab a S775 board and throw a Celeron in there.

 

[BladeVenom]

I'd get a AM2 board, and an X2 3800+. It may be a little over a $100, but it's the best bang for the buck, and offer good upgrade potential. If you buy anything cheaper you're just going to have to upgrade sooner, hence spending more money in the long run.

DDR2 is cheaper than DDR so a 939 or 754 shouldn't even be considered unless you already have plenty of DDR laying around. And even then it might be better to sell it and get an AM2 board and some cheap DDR2.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'd go with a S775 micro-atx board, and a Celeron C2D. At least then, you have an upgrade path, and DDR2 is cheap right now.

 

[glassvial]

Thanks for the additional suggestions, yes the future upgrade path is something I'm thinking about in this project (hence shying away from, say, a 754 setup for example) even though I hopefully won't have to upgrade this box anytime soon it'll be nice to know the potential is there, so, SATA, DDR2, a "non-dead" socket/architecture, PCIe instead of AGP, etc., are all factoring into my decision on this. Like I said in my original post, I'm leaning toward the 775/celeron 420 or 430 setup, I think that'll be more than fine until HD comes along (then it'll be time for new tuner cards anyhow!) just wanted to see who had what else to say. I think I'm gonna snag a mobo from newegg then just wait for clubit to get the 430 in stock.

This will be rather odd for me, because I don't recall buying a celeron since the old 300A@450 days (which I'm sure some of us remember quite fondly, that chip/mobo lasted a LONG time for me!) Now, like I said before, does anyone know if Intel's retail fan on these is quiet or not? If they are, great, if not, I'll go OEM with an aftermarket HSF if I have to.

 

[o1die]

The 430 celerons run pretty cool, so the retail heatsink is actually smaller. But I would still go retail for the 3 year warranty. I used mine once, and Intel got me a new cpu in about 6 days. They shipped it immediately as soon as the rma was approved.

 

[glassvial]

Well here's what I'm doing. One of these Celeron 430's from ClubIT, and one of these MSI mobos from newegg. Grand total, $99.82.

I was tempted to pickup this bundle from tiger, but by the time you add on a HSF and S/H, it pushes the total over $100.

I think this is the best bang for the buck for under $100, for those of us without the luxury of a Fry's B&M around that gets those great cpu/mobo combos all the time!