Help me pick a cheap crappy MB

[jyjjy777]

Alright, the system in question currently has a 754 socket board and I'm doing a rebuild up to AM2 with a very limited budget. I'm recycling the case and the drives so essentially I need a CPU, MB and RAM. After the RAM I have about $100 to spend on CPU/MB
After looking around newegg the best processor for the money on the low end is the AthlonX2 BE-2400 for $40. I need an acceptable MB to pair with it. There's a combo deal with it for $10 off this board;
ASUS M2A-VM AM2 AMD 690G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Basically that's pushing it budgetwise and the highest I can spend. Is this the board I should go for or does anyone see anything comparable or better at an equal or better price on newegg?

 

[humanure]

I've built a couple of budget systems with this ASrock board recently. I've been happy with it, runs stable, no issues with it, good value.

 

[jyjjy777]

Hmm, the chipset on that board seems pretty old. I've been looking at the cheap Foxconn boards with AMD 700 series chipsets but I've never really heard of Foxconn.

 

[o1die]

I would look at the ecs gf8200a for it's 4 dimm slots and hdmi support. It's only $7 more than the asus.

 

[jyjjy777]

Actually it's $17 dollars more because the Asus(which does have 4 dimm slots) is $10 off through the combo like I said. I plan on throwing a real video card in this thing so the IGPs features aren't really an issue.
That board is ATX anyway and I need a microATX for this case. Would've said that before but everything in the price range I stated was micro so I didn't bother.

 

[tcsenter]

I would avoid the AMD 690G now that 740G is available for the same or less. 740G is essentially a die-shrink of the 690G and can be found paired with the much improved SB700. While I personally have not used the 690G, I have followed several discussions here and on ASUS Forums which seem to suggest this chipset has its share of glitches. e.g.

<a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=29&threadid=2106008">AMD 690G does not support Vista 64-bit with 4gb ram?
</a>

I have used two ECS 740G boards now and am very satisfied with them. Not much in the way of overclocking but few boards in this price range do, nor is it a priority for me.

The AMD 780V version from ECS is not much more after rebates, offers two more DIMM slots and slightly better IGP (which you stated is not important).

Don't worry about Foxconn. Foxconn manufactures Intel's motherboards, previously manufactured Leadtek's WinFast line before Leadtek got out of the mobo business and sold the WinFast name to Foxconn, and supplies OEM boards to nearly all the big OEMs. Foxconn has been big in electronics manufacturing for a long time now, only recently started to market products under its own label.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Why waste money on inferior chipsets. Spend the $67 for a Foxconn 780G mobo and be done with it. That's what I did, I got that mobo and a BE-2400 combo deal for $99.