Budget Motherboard for a Home Office PC?

[james.daly91]

My parents PC is unbearably slow after not having any TLC for over 3 years and I'm looking at upgrading some of the components to make it smoother running (faster booting and general loading speeds). I've already got an SSD for them but figured the motherboard is likely quite ancient by now as well (the computer crashes occasionally when attempting to load pages on the internet (says graphics drive failure, but the drivers should be up to date)) so I wanted to invest in a new motherboard, ideally with semi-decent integrated graphics for them. The PC is only really being used for typing documents, checking emails and general internet browsing (no gaming as I've moved out and my brother has built his own gaming PC), so the motherboard doesn't need to be anything too fancy.

Could anyone offer any advice on budget motherboards? Ideally wouldn't want to spend more than £50 on it, but could stretch depending on what is available. My mother has also mentioned possibly wanting to upgrade to windows 8.1 so this could be an influencing factor (I'll be doing a complete reinstall when I upgrade the motherboard/SSD so would put the new OS on it at the same time).

Thanks

Other info that might be useful....
Processor is Pentium Dual core E5800 @ 3.2ghz and 4gb RAM with a 32 bit OS (running windows 7 home premium), and under graphics on system information it just says it has "Intel G41 Express Chipset" with 1.51gb RAM.

[kompukare]

G41 is about as good as you are going to get for Socket 775. In theory there used to be Nvidia nFarce 7150 boards but I have seen so many of those go bad due to the infamous Nvidia solder defect and besides I doubt you'd find any new one of those.

If the graphics are causing a problem (although why, up until recently I had a G41 board and it's graphics drivers were fine: certainly for desktop use), your only option would be to get a low end PCIe one. Something like a HD6450 or similar.

[Bonebreaker777]

Processor is Pentium Dual core E5800 @ 3.2ghz and 4gb RAM with a 32 bit OS (running windows 7 home premium), and under graphics on system information it just says it has "Intel G41 Express Chipset" with 1.51gb RAM.

Isn't that too much memory allocated from the system to the integrated graphics? Also I don't suspect you will be upgrading the RAM before the machine dies, you might as well install the 64bit OS next time you are making any changes for your parents. Those 750MB of RAM are better to be available for the system that rather not due to software limitations.


Also if you would be willing to spend up to £50, and let say your current memory modules are DDR3, might as well go and change to socket 1155? I would happen a B75 mATX mobo (£20+£5 p&p) plus an s1155 dual core CPU on eBay is easy to get(Pentium G620 or Celeron G1620 costs £20-25 inc p&p). And these newer that E5800 CPUs would be better from both performance and consumption point of view. The IGP in the CPUs would be again better that anything integrated on those MoBos from back then.

[hesham1516]

See if you can get hold of a GPU to put into their machine. Doesn't have to be powerful or a permanent solution, just enough to see if it resolves the problem. Buying cheap GPU is alot easier than getting hold of a 775 motherboard, and it will free up that memory.

[james.daly91]

Thanks guys.

I would prefer to get a new mobo because I'm going to be installing the SSD as well, and there isn't really any need for them to have a dedicated GPU. Does the processor they currently have installed need upgrading do you think?

[Bonebreaker777]

Thanks guys.

I would prefer to get a new mobo because I'm going to be installing the SSD as well, and there isn't really any need for them to have a dedicated GPU. Does the processor they currently have installed need upgrading do you think?

Maybe doesn't need a upgrade yet, but might as well. If you are going to have a SSD, might as well get a MoBo with a SATA 6Gbps port (not like it would matter much against as SATA II port but why not take full advantage especially considering the price). The CPU is not the newest nor the fastest any more, for the measly price I am pretty sure a socket 1155 MoBo plus a dual core CPU (from either Ivy Bridge or Sandy Bridge family) full have more long term advantages such as SATA 3.0 port, USB 3.0 plus reduced consumption for the CPU, integrated and efficient IGP, etc.

To put it simply you were ready to spend up to £50 for a replacement s775 mobo, for which you can have a relatively modern Mobo and CPU. I would say. Just make sure your current memory modules are DDR3 (means you can fully utilize them), if not, the additional investment would make the change a lot less attractive (from the financial point of view).

As for the SSD, have you chosen yet?

[DanceswithUnix]

... and there isn't really any need for them to have a dedicated GPU. Does the processor they currently have installed need upgrading do you think?

Crashing drivers has always been my reason for a dedicated GPU on an Intel system.

Firstly, your 32 bit Windows 7 license should work fine with a Win 7 64 bit install disk. Have done that myself on my laptop that came with 3GB of ram and 32 bit win7, though I did have to do the phoning Microsoft thing to activate but that is probably because the laptop had not long activated as 32 bit. That lappy now runs 64 bit Windows with 6GB of ram.

Looks to me like the existing CPU should be fine. A 64 bit Windows will allow you to plug any old graphics card in and not worry about losing available memory.

If the system seems slow, check the heatsink and fan. Quite often on a machine of around that age, the heatsink under the fan is clogged with dust so no air gets though. Sometimes the fan is burnt out and hardly spinning or stopped.

Oh, is this a shop bought PC? Have a really good look inside, some don't have a PCIe graphics slot on the motherboard to make sure the user doesn't plug a graphics card in, because the PSU is too cheap to cope with it.

But overall, I would expect a cleaned up or replaced fan, a £30 graphics card (avoid a £20 one with a tiny fan as they make such an annoying noise) and a re-install with a 64 bit version of Windows will make the machine sparkle again.

[scaryjim]

I would prefer to get a new mobo because I'm going to be installing the SSD as well ...

tbh, you won't lose anything noticable running an SSD at SATA 2 instead of SATA 3. Sure you can measure the difference with a benchmark, but in actual day-to-day usage, particular if this is a web & email machine for your parents, you won't get any noticable benefit.

An E5800, 4GB of RAM and an SSD should be more than good enough for your purposes once you get a nice clean install of Windows on there; it's almost identical to my work laptop (1.3GHz Core 2 Pentium, 4GB of RAM, 120GB Kingston HyperX 3k, GS45 chipset & graphics) which has given me no trouble at all since I put the SSD in it. It gets used for office, email, web browsing, and occasionally even web development. if my laptop with a 1.3GHz dual core can handle that, your parent's desktop with a 3.2Ghz dual core really shouldn't be having a problem.

[micre23]

If you have DDR3 memory, I'd say a good choice would be to get a Celeron G1620(£25) and a H61MU3B (about £35).
That would put you £10 over but you would they would be on a newer platform and have USB3.