Ok guys I have $200 for a board and proc, what to get?

[Renob]

What would give me the most bang for the buck?

 

[Duvie]

What kind of memory do you already have...DDR or DDR2? Do have AGP or PCI-e?

 

[o1die]

Fry's combo deals are pretty good, if you have one nearby. They have a dual core am2 3800+ with ecs board for $140 or a single core 3200 with board for $90. These specials vary week to week. They also have an ecs board with various pentium or core2 duo cpus that can use ddr or ddr2, but is agp only. Newegg is also offering combo deals on socket 939 and possibly am2 cpus. 939 uses ddr only, while am2 uses ddr2 only.

 

[rxblitzrx]

How good are ECS boards? Actually, I guess anything will work if you're not overclocking.

 

[magreen]

There's a great combo on Newegg now for an Athlon 64 X2 AM2 3600+ with motherboard.
There's a couple motherboard options for $150 total.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

ECS boards tend to be tolerable at best. If you dont overclock, they can still give you problems on some of the not-so-good models.

 

[nanaki333]

i've never had an issue with an ECS board i've owned. as stated though, they're not strong overclockers, so don't expect too much out of it. cheap, stable board that's great for the money.

 

[mroverclocker]

Get the fry's special $149 e4300 and ecs mobo. Thats if you have a local fry's. Best bang for buck 50bucks get yourself a artic cooler 775. Then upgrade the mobo if you need to later.

 

[o1die]

Skip the Fry's e4300 ecs combo unless you can get customer service to flash the bios for you. Chances are it won't post right out of the box. Fry's bought these boards up to a year ago, so without the latest bios, you're out of luck.

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

Originally posted by: o1die
Skip the Fry's e4300 ecs combo unless you can get customer service to flash the bios for you. Chances are it won't post right out of the box. Fry's bought these boards up to a year ago, so without the latest bios, you're out of luck.

Or get it and sell the board and pick up the cheapest P965 board you can find and be really close to the budget and be pretty well setup.


I now have a C2D rig and, in all honesty, it doesn't feel any different from my previous 939 rig. Must be the integrated memory controller in the AMD or the lower latency memory or something. So feel free to save some money and grab a 3800+ and A8N5X and don't feel like you'll be missing out on anything.

 

[betasub]

Originally posted by: Duvie
What kind of memory do you already have...DDR or DDR2? Do have AGP or PCI-e?

Still no reply from OP.

Answer Duvie's questions for more specific help.