Motherboard + CPU for £100?

[serlex]

Hi

Need to build a PC for my brother and I have £100 to spend on a motherboard and CPU (rest I have)

What I have looked at:

• Intel Pentium Dual Core E5300 2.6GHz Socket 775
  
• Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L iG31 Socket 775

Gigabyte website says Dual Core is supported with Bios Version F5. is there any chance the mobo will come with latest bios? or I have to go through painful bios update on a fresh install?

Regards,
Serlex

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would get the AMD Athlon II X2 245 over the E5300 as it will be faster in most things!!

I would check this review out:

http://en.inpai.com.cn/doc/enshowcont.asp?id=6700

If you need integrated graphics get one of the following motherboards:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ASRoc...SATA-RAID-mATX

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Biost...Board-Graphics

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/MSI-7...Board-Graphics

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus-...-RAID-uATX-VGA

If you don't need integrated graphics get one of the following motherboards:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/MSI-7...-8ch-AUDIO-ATX

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Gigab...D3-Motherboard

[serlex]

Will these motherboards fit into my old ATX case? or do they require new type of cases?

[Pob255]

ATX is the standard, as long as your case is ATX they will fit.
The one thing you have to watch out for is mATX, it's shorter than ATX, an ATX case can take ether ATX or mATX motherboard, but a mATX case cannot fit an ATX motherboard in it.

mATX motherboard or case will only have 4 slots for expansion cards


ATX motherboard or case will have 7 slots

[kingpotnoodle]

Another vote here for Athlon II X2, or even X3...

Lot of good price motherboards around that will do the job with one of those, I've personally had good times with an Asus M3N78-VM, IIRC the model number.

[serlex]

Couple more questions:

1 - Asus M3N78-VM - what ram size is the 8300 onboard graphics card?
2 - Will the 8300 be better than x600 256MB?
3 - How noisy is this going to be? gona be using standard heatsink & fan with no more fans on the case, need a quite PC.

Regards,

[kingpotnoodle]

Couple more questions:

1 - Asus M3N78-VM - what ram size is the 8300 onboard graphics card?
2 - Will the 8300 be better than x600 256MB?
3 - How noisy is this going to be? gona be using standard heatsink & fan with no more fans on the case, need a quite PC.

Regards,

1. As with most IGP it uses the system RAM (AMD chipsets with SidePort memory the only exception I can think of), so it's adjustable in the BIOS up to 256MB.

There is an M4N78-VM now up to 512MB and it's actually a little cheaper on Scan.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus-...-RAID-uATX-VGA

2. According to futuremark ORB, 3DMark05 an X600 and 8200 are not far apart... IGP sucks!

AMD 785G and 780G motherboards much have faster graphics than NV 8200 series, the M4A785D-M PRO on Scan is a little pricier though...

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus-M4A785D-M-PRO

Looks nice if you want the extra graphics power.

3. Motherboard is passive... the AMD heatsink I don't know, I use a Sythe Ninja Mini on mine, which is quiet cos I run it passive next to the dual 120mm fans on an Antec Fusion...

[kingpotnoodle]

If you went cheap:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ASRoc...SATA-RAID-mATX

or http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ASRock-ASR-N68-S-MOBO

And the CPU:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/AMD-A...MHz-65W-Retail

Then cheap graphics would probably be faster than IGP:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512MB...Sub-DVI-I-HDMI


Only a little over £100... Just a thought :-)

[scaryjim]

When you say you "have the rest", what do you actually have? That might influence what recommendations we make For instance, if you have DDR2 RAM there's no point in us suggesting an AM3 motherboard!

For general use, an Athlon II X2 240 + This Biostar motherboard (AM2+, DDR2, 785G, 128MB Sideport RAM) would make a good combination for just a shade over £100. If you're willing to take a it of a flyer you could always get a Sempron 140 and a SB710 equipped motherboard and hope it unlocks to a dual-core (mine did ) - this MSI mobo would be a good choice. That's only £63 all told, leaving you just enough for a reasonable graphics card

Oh, and it would of course be rude of us not to mention the new 45nm Athlon X2 5000+ which reputedly can be unlocked to a full Phenom II X4 with 6MB of L3 cache!

[serlex]

I have:

1 x 2GB DDR2 corsair 6400
x600 256MB

The PC will be used to stream CCTV cameras. I don't know exatcly how much the CCTV cameras rely on graphics card, hoping either x600 or 8200 or 8300 will do the job.

Current PC has Celeron 2.4ghz, 256MB, old onboard graphics card, it works "ok" just needs something abit better.

[scaryjim]

Any idea what software the cameras run off?

I'd guess that you'd be better served getting an Athlon II X3 and the MSI board I linked to earlier (total £94): I strongly suspect that controlling all that CCTV input is more likely to tax the CPU than the graphics, tbh. I assume the X600 is PCIe, not AGP? It will be better than the graphics on the MSI mobo, certainly, and should be fine for CCTV images. If a 2.4GHz Celeron with 256MB and old onboard gfx is doing "ok", pretty much anything you replace it with should eat the job up for breakfast

[serlex]

OK the cameras run on MultiView Video Surveillance and GeoVision GV600.

Minimum requirements for GV600 ( x2)

• CPU Pentium 4-2.6 GHz with Hyper-threading
• RAM 2 x 1 GB Dual Channels
• HDD 160 GB
• VGAATI Radeon X600 orNVIDIA 6200
• DirectX 9.0c

[dreemteem]

Bump for AMD. Doing good at the low end, and pretty cheap.

[Pob255]

I think you best bet is one of the athlon x2 and a am2+ 785 chipset motherboard.
sounds like you need directx 9.0c, which means you probably need any graphics capable of shader model 3, but that's probably it as both the x600 and 6200 are the lowest cards to have that function.
A motherboard with display port memory would be a good step simply as that means your not losing system memory to the graphics.

I'd go with scaryjim's sugestion of Athlon II X2 240 + Biostar TA785GE motherboard
push the cpu up to the 245 or 250 if the budget can stretch that far.

[scaryjim]

If the software specifies HT as a requirement I'd guess it's designed to run multithreaded, so more cores *should* benefit it. In which case, I'd recommend the Athlon II X3, MSI 740G mobo and your existing X600. (note: that MSI mobo has the SB710 southbridge so *might* be able to unlock an Athlon II X3 to a quad core - depends on whether the settings are available in the BIOS or not...)

That said, the Athlon II X2 + Biostar 785G mobo combination would also be more than adequate.

[serlex]

Thanks guys

Don't want to sound like I ignored all your recommendations but this is what I bought:

ASUS M3N78-EM GeForce 8300 Socket AM2+ VGA DVI HDMI
AMD Athlon X2 240 2.8GHz Socket AM3 2MB Cache Retail Box Processor