Cheap motherboard options

Hesky82

Hesky82

Hesky82

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Joined
8 Jan 2005
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Worcestershire
Hi guys, what's the cheapest mb that supports 45nm c2d processors and has 4 dimm slots? so I can populate it with 4 sticks of 1gb double sided ram.

The MSI P43 Neo-F and BIOSTAR P43-A7 come in at around £50~ but are there cheaper items out there??

This is for an uber budget build for a mate.

Cheers :)
 
You can't advertise competitors.
Take it off before you get a ban.
If OCUK are making a forum for their customers, its only nice not to advise competitors websites :)
 
sorry, wasn't looking for retailer product links, only product models.

I worked out that certain p31/g31 boards actually come with 4 dimm slots but due to chipset limitations I wouldn't be able to run the 4 sticks of double sided ram.
As most ram is double sided the board would be no more use than another with only 2 slots, I guess thats why most P31/G31 only have 2 slots.

I think the MSI and BIOSTAR are my only options.

Cheers:)
 
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Hesky82 said:
This is for an uber budget build for a mate.

I think the MSI and BIOSTAR are my only options.
Click to expand...
Hey Hesky82! :D

As your finding life in Intel Budget-Land is pretty sucky, I've been down that path and didn't enjoy it v much!

May I suggest a rethink of your killer budget build to incorporate an AMD processor and a DDR2 based 785G motherboard! . . . I'm not sure if you been reading up on the recent developements but AMD have some juicy 45nm Dual/Tri core chips for sale (£55), smack one of those in a 785G along with your DDR2 and your mate will praise you no end, there excellent value for money really! :cool:
 
Big.Wayne said:
Hey Hesky82! :D

As your finding life in Intel Budget-Land is pretty sucky, I've been down that path and didn't enjoy it v much!

May I suggest a rethink of your killer budget build to incorporate an AMD processor and a DDR2 based 785G motherboard! . . . I'm not sure if you been reading up on the recent developements but AMD have some juicy 45nm Dual/Tri core chips for sale (£55), smack one of those in a 785G along with your DDR2 and your mate will praise you no end, there excellent value for money really! :cool:
Click to expand...

+1

If your friend doesn't already have the 45nm Intel CPU - then I suggest going AMD. Also, the 785G boards are excellent and the onboard HD 4200 is enough to power Full-HD video and modern games on low settings.

Does your friend already have the RAM or are you looking for new stuff? If new then probably best to go with DDR3, its faster and now its actually cheaper than DDR2.
 
Thanks for the posts chaps, Big Wayne! hows it going?

Well the system will ideally consist of my old hand me down components which will be my old 8800GTS 512mb, 4 sticks of ballistix 1gb PC2-1066 and my backup e5200 or e3200 processor.

Its basically going to be a bang for the buck gaming rig that can play current games well at lower resolutions.

I fancy building a new HTPC based around the 785g chipset and an Athlon 2 240 processor to replace my old much-loved MoDT C2D system. with the introduction of 45nm AMD chips building a media pc around an AMD cpu has become far more tempting :)

But atm for low cost overclocking potential and just raw power its going to take a hell of a lot to tear me away from these cheap c2d based processors which I use to build budget gaming and number crunching machines.
 
Hesky82 said:
sorry, wasn't looking for retailer product links, only product models.

I worked out that certain p31/g31 boards actually come with 4 dimm slots but due to chipset limitations I wouldn't be able to run the 4 sticks of double sided ram.
As most ram is double sided the board would be no more use than another with only 2 slots, I guess thats why most P31/G31 only have 2 slots.

I think the MSI and BIOSTAR are my only options.

Cheers:)
Click to expand...

Are g41 boards the same deal? There seem to be plenty of them about for around £40 notes.
 
I dont think so, there are a few g41 boards that have 4 dimm slots and the spec on them quote the capability of running 8g of ram max, so one would assume they could take 4 double sided sticks. where as some p31/g31 boards that have 4 slots only seem to be able to take a max of 4gb, donating they are limited by the chipset to single sided ram only if you want 4 slots populated.

G41,G43, P43 and the older P35 boards seemed like my only cheap option. Although I found a surprising cheap DFI P45 board I really fancied for myself while hunting around :D

Anyway I ended up getting a dirt cheap Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L board in the end as OCUK managed to sort me out with 2x2gb sticks of ocz gold for just the price of there value stuff. So I'll end up getting more back for the 4 sticks of crucial ballistix ram now.
So no fartin around with 4 sticks of double sided ram now, cheers OCUK :cool:
 
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