What's a decent, cheap, AMD-based mobo nowadays?

[Harrison]

I was surprised not to find any "motherboard roundup" articles in the motherboard section -- lots of single-board articles and reviews of some new SFF things (what the heck is an "Ion", anyway?), but nothing where the author is comparing twenty motherboards to each other. Is that a thing of the past now?

I'd like to pick up one of the new AMD six-core CPUs, 4GB of memory, and two 1TB hard drives to do RAID-10. Onboard video and audio, preferably onboard RAID, naturally onboard ethernet. Don't need or want wifi.

I'm looking for a decent mobo for under $100, high quality manufacturer, doesn't need to be a fantastic mobo though. I'm not doing high-end gaming. I'll be loading a couple of CAD/CAM packages (SolidWorks and AutoCAD Inventor) on the machine and learning how to use them (I'm a student). Speed isn't going to be a killer, since the designs I'll be doing are going to be fairly basic. Other than that, it'll mostly be word processing. Win7, just because the CAD packages require it. Linux (probably from a Debian-based liveCD) whenever I can get away with it.

I was originally going to buy the ASUS "ASUS M4A785T-M/CSM AM3 AMD 785G HDMI Micro ATX" board (CSM == "corporate stable model") from Newegg, but the reviews have me wondering if that's such a good idea now. Lots of complaints about that board not supporting the memory that ASUS claims. It's also a lot more expensive than the previous corporate stable model, which I almost bought a couple of years ago (never quite pulled the trigger).

I was thinking MSI until I looked through the reviews and saw complaints that their boards consistently ran hot.

Gigabyte is out -- had too many problems with them in the past.

Is ABIT gone?

Any recommendations?

Thanks,

Harry

 

[nerp]

Biostar is doing great with AMD boards. Look at the 785g chipset.

 

[Absolution75]

MSI/BIOSTAR/ASUS/Maybe Foxxcon

'Board runs hot' is rather meh con. It could be that it is just more efficient at expelling heat.

 

[lopri]

Even though there isn't a big difference I'd opt for a new 8 series board (e.g. 880G). Though I've used that ASUS board (but DDR2 version, M4A785-M) and it's a very nice board.

 

[kornphlake]

If you go by the reviews on Newegg you're rolling the dice on any of them, none have a perfect record. I'm not sure if it's because the reviews are voluntary and the pissed off customer is more likely to write a negative review and the happy customer is less likely to write a positive review or if it's because there are people who buy hardware willy-nilly and assume the mobo is garbage because it doesn't work with the garbage components they put on it.

I've had good luck with Asus, bad luck with Biostar (although it may have been memory or the video card, not the mobo) So far so good with Gigabyte. As long as you're careful I think it's much less likely you'll have problems with any top tier MOBO.

Good luck running SW on an IGP, most people who tell you it won't work have never tried, I did install it on a laptop with Intel integrated graphics and it did run, but it was pretty slow, and it crashed often, or functions didn't work the way they were supposed to. In the past that was par for SW, but the newer versions don't have these kinds of problems when running on approved hardware. SW 2010 is the only version that will run in Win 7 and only Pro and Ultimate versions are supported. Hope that helps.

 

[crazylegs]

Early days, but i'm very happy with my new ASrock 785g MB - used in a HTPC

 

[SamTBear]

I got a MSI 890GXM G65 in a bundle from frys a while back and used the board before I went back to a larger board. Overclocked well and was very solid! I've seen people selling them ~$100 shipped new (parting out that bundle).