Cheap conroe mobo with onboard VGA?

[fishboy25uk]

I'm planning to build a 6300 system on a budget motherboard, used for lots of office work and the internet, with onboard VGA to save dosh.

I know Asrock do some decent ones but even after searching the forums I couldn't find a recommended one (that supports conroe). There are lots of 945 chipset ones with onboard VGA from MSI, Asus etc but few online reviews.

Anyone got any suggestions?

[DratUK]

Go with the Asrock, I have built a fair few with asrock boards for customers budgets. Last one was the one linked below with a E6400. Rock solid and he's been running it for 3 months and no problems. Similar usage as you intend for yours. Easy to set up as well. Only one note BIOS is set to ACHI by default so it needs changing to IDE.
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=443860
Motherboard I used.

[fishboy25uk]

Go with the Asrock, I have built a fair few with asrock boards for customers budgets. Last one was the one linked below with a E6400. Rock solid and he's been running it for 3 months and no problems. Similar usage as you intend for yours. Easy to set up as well. Only one note BIOS is set to ACHI by default so it needs changing to IDE.
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=443860
Motherboard I used.

Cool, that's the one I had my eye on anyway. Cheers.

[kalniel]

Seconded. Never had to change the BIOS on ours though.

[DratUK]

Seconded. Never had to change the BIOS on ours though.

Hmm guess i was unlucky. Certainly on the AMD versions I didnt but the last 2 945p's I did. Guess it was just coincidence.

[fishboy25uk]

Thinking about this a little more, I could get a board with RAID because the person I'm building for is paranoid about his hard drive going. At the moment, he backs up onto second drive, but if I created a RAID 1 config then his backup would be done automatically.

How about this one?

Foxconn 945GZ7MC-RS2H

[kalniel]

Doesn't support core 2 duo.

This ASRock supports RAID though:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=443861

[arthurleung]

Why not just get a cheap Core2Duo Laptop?

There is not really much point of getting a desktop if you are only doing office work and not play games.

My T7200 C2D is on par with my Pentium D @ 4Ghz at 1/5 the power consumption of a desktop.

RAID1 IS NOT A BACKUP. It only protect you from mechanical failure BUT not protect against human error and viruses.

[DratUK]

Specs look all right. I cant really comment as I have never used a foxconn.

http://www.foxconnchannel.com/Produc...D=en-us0000201
Says it supports Core 2