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Gigabyte GA-G31-ES2L vs. GA-E7AUM-DS2H for budget build

I

InfBlue

Junior Member
I'm doing a build for a friend, and haven't yet found a board that quite suits their purposes - it needs to handle Vista Aero and Windows 7's visual effects and run rock solid for 5+ years. I was wondering if you guys could give me a hand. This is how I see it now:

GA-G31-ES2L
Pros: very cheap ($67), relatively power efficient
Cons: outdated, graphics may not be enough, chipset heatsink possibly insufficient (cause for failure)

GA-E7AUM-DS2H
Pros: best integrated graphics
Cons: expensive ($151), nvidia chipset could cause problems?

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.



 
The Gigabyte boards with a "D" in their name, stands for durable. UD stands for ultra-durable. Those ones have all solid capacitors which should last longer. My old motherboards which have died, died because the capacitors eventually went bad.
 
Thanks. I have to say that I am more worried about something burning out because of their tiny heatsinks. Apparently there are reports of both boards having issues. Either way, it seems that nvidia based board is a better buy. It doesn't look like the GMA 3100 will be sufficient.
 
Originally posted by: InfBlue
It doesn't look like the GMA 3100 will be sufficient.
Click to expand...

How about the cheap G31 chipset board plus a cheap video card? There's more than $80 difference between the two, and I'm sure you can find a card cheaper than $80 that is better than the GF9400 IGP.

Note that the G31 chipset only supports 4GB RAM, so if your friend was hoping to eventually go 64 bit with tons of RAM...
 
You've come across two things that I didn't really explain enough. They want a simple, low-power build for environmental reasons, and I would like to switch them to Windows 7 64 bit with at least 8GB of RAM soon after it comes out. The first requirement is a lot easier without a graphics card. Thanks for bringing the RAM issue up, I must have missed that the chipset only supported 4 GB.
 
If you go with an AMD motherboard you'll have more choices. This is my pick:

GIGABYTE GA-MA78GPM-UD2H AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5050e Brisbane 2.6GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor - Retail

Total of $157.49

You get a motherboard with support for up to 16GB of ram. You also get all solid capacitors and great onboard video with DVI and HDMI outputs as well.

The processor is an energy efficient cpu with plenty of power to run Vista and Windows 7.

🙂
 
I was considering going AMD, but the three processors that gave me an equivalent bang-for-my-buck were a E5200, E8400 and Phenom 2 710. All three, plus the 5050e have similar idle draws, so the E8400 emerged as the winner. Using newegg.ca prices the cpu + motherboard prices are $240, $350, $330, and $200 respectively. I would have gone with the Phenom, except for AM3 motherboard prices.
 
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