Integrated components

[ScarFaceL4]

I am trying to order some parts for a friend, nad he want a mobo with integrated everything. It needs to support a 1.2 thunderbird thats it. He is building it for someone to use for office programs and net surfing. I have beenlooking at the nforce 420 chipset mobo's but I washoping to fing something cheaper.

 

[arynn]

You can get the Abit NV7M at Newegg for about $90 - it comes with integrated video, sound and LAN. (The only drawback I can see with this as opposed to the MSI and Asus boards are that it only has 3 PCI slots - not too big a deal with all of the integrated components.

There is an Asus 220D motherboard that is cheaper (not sure where I saw it), but I'm not sure how the performance compares.

You could possibly go a little cheaper getting a SIS chipset board with integrated audio or integrated audio & video.

There are also integrated motherboards with Via chipsets (I believe the KM266) but they have very old integrated video solutions.

It probably isn't worth it to consider SDRAM based chipsets since the prices of SDRAM and DDR SDRAM seem to be comparable again and the performance hit for using SDRAM is rather steep.

If I were trying to build the lowest cost quality computer with a resonable upgrade path, I'd go with an nForce. It has by far the best integrated components and is a well performing (comparable to KT266A), stable platform.

 

[Athlon4all]

There is an Asus 220D motherboard that is cheaper (not sure where I saw it), but I'm not sure how the performance compares.

Yes, A7N266-VM is a 220D board and it can be had for as low as $70 I believe, however, the video on it when compared to a NV7m using Twinbank, will be pretty much 20-30% slower. To be honest, I'd take the NV7m

 

[ScarFaceL4]

This info will be helpful. Thanks

 

[Peter]

Try the ECS K7SOM, K7LOM or M841LR boards. You get SiS 740 chipset, DDR or SDRAM support, 4-channel sound, LAN, and the latter board even includes a V.90 modem card. Any of these runs any Athlon or Duron.

regards, Peter