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Thread: Best Mobo/CPU combo for circa £120

  1. #1
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    Best Mobo/CPU combo for circa £120

    Alright people. Friend of mine has asked me to massacre his ancient DELL and put him together a frankenstein system on a horribly tight budget, cough £150 cough, cough.

    I know I should probably put some of it towards a PSU but at this sort of price range I think for now he'll have to make do with the incumbant dell one unitl he can scratch some more pennies together. Obviously he's got case, optical drive and a hard drive already so the main bits I'm going to focus on for now are the CPU/Mobo/Ram

    I'm going to whack in 4GB if this stuff Crucial 1333mhz DDR3, cos its cheap £36 for 4GB!

    That only leaves me with about £120 to play with for MOBO/RAM but I know there are aplethora of decent budget options out there, from Phenom X2s to the new Athlons to i3 etc. and I'm really not sure which way to go so am open to any and all suggestions...

    Main use for the PC is producing music using Reason and obviously browsing word processing etc.

    Any thoughts? Cheers in advance

  2. #2
    Not a good person scaryjim's Avatar
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    Re: Best Mobo/CPU combo for circa £120

    Athlon II X3 (£58.40) + 880G mobo (£55.99).

    I believe most audio programs are reasonably multithreaded these days, so a fast triple core seems the way to go to me. That 880G mobo has 4 DIMM slots so the memory would be upgradable in the future. £114.39, job done

  3. #3
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    • Nobull's system
      • Motherboard:
      • MSI H67MA-E45
      • CPU:
      • Intel i5 2400
      • Memory:
      • 4GB Corsair Value Select 1333mhz
      • Storage:
      • Corsair F60 SSD + 2.5TB
      • Graphics card(s):
      • HD6950 2GB
      • PSU:
      • CM Silent Pro Gold 600W
      • Case:
      • CM Elite 370
      • Operating System:
      • Windows 7 Pro
      • Monitor(s):
      • Samsung Syncmaster P2450

    Re: Best Mobo/CPU combo for circa £120

    Looks a good bet. Cheers for the heads up Scaryjim. Does that triple core have chance of being unlocked to 4?

    Any competing opinions about this one?

  4. #4
    Not a good person scaryjim's Avatar
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    • scaryjim's system
      • Motherboard:
      • Dell Inspiron
      • CPU:
      • Core i5 8250U
      • Memory:
      • 2x 4GB DDR4 2666
      • Storage:
      • 128GB M.2 SSD + 1TB HDD
      • Graphics card(s):
      • Radeon R5 230
      • PSU:
      • Battery/Dell brick
      • Case:
      • Dell Inspiron 5570
      • Operating System:
      • Windows 10
      • Monitor(s):
      • 15" 1080p laptop panel

    Re: Best Mobo/CPU combo for circa £120

    Quote Originally Posted by Nobull View Post
    Does that triple core have chance of being unlocked to 4?
    AFAIK, yes. IIRC nibbler got an Athlon II X3 that unlocked to a fully fledged Phenom II X4, with all 6MB of cache - but it wasn't 100% stable under stress testing unforunately (I'm sure he'll come and let us know if I've got that wrong though ). Unlockable AMD CPUs are a bit of a lottery, really. For my money, however, it's by far the best bang for buck in the budget end due to the combination of multiple cores and high(ish) clock speed. Should be a good all-rounder.

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    Re: Best Mobo/CPU combo for circa £120

    or save you self a few extra £ and get this

    http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-...-micro-atx-vga

    £45, free delivery

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    Moosing about! CAT-THE-FIFTH's Avatar
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    Re: Best Mobo/CPU combo for circa £120

    This motherboard is worth considering:

    http://www.ebuyer.com/product/205849...edium=products

    It has USB3.0 and SATA3.0 but is ATX and lacks an IGP.

  7. #7
    Senior Member
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    • Nobull's system
      • Motherboard:
      • MSI H67MA-E45
      • CPU:
      • Intel i5 2400
      • Memory:
      • 4GB Corsair Value Select 1333mhz
      • Storage:
      • Corsair F60 SSD + 2.5TB
      • Graphics card(s):
      • HD6950 2GB
      • PSU:
      • CM Silent Pro Gold 600W
      • Case:
      • CM Elite 370
      • Operating System:
      • Windows 7 Pro
      • Monitor(s):
      • Samsung Syncmaster P2450

    Re: Best Mobo/CPU combo for circa £120

    Quote Originally Posted by cigbunt View Post
    or save you self a few extra £ and get this

    http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-...-micro-atx-vga

    £45, free delivery
    Like the idea of saving a few pennies on the motherboard, might even be enough to get me a budget PSU, like an Antec Basiq or similar, maybe even push him to spend a tenner more for the corsair £30 one...Seen some even cheaper DDr3 the other day so that's another fiver saved!

    Cheers for advice guys

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