Old mini-itx motherboard suggestions

[gizmo1990]

I need to put a simple (Intel) mini-itx build together and thought I'd be able to do so reasonably cost effectively, by using old components.. say 4 years old or so. However, I think I may have been very wrong! I'm not bothered with speed, I'd just dump an old i3 and 4gb in it just for now. The main point would be that it could be upgradable.

My spec would be a fairly upgradable (any i3/i5/i7) mobo capable of holding 16gb, a proper video card PCIe connector and with a couple of USB3 ports. It seems though that mini-itx motherboards like that (especially with USB3) are either extremely rare or pricey. Tbh I thought I'd be able to get a bundle (mobo/i3/4gb) for around the £80 mark!

Could anyone tell me if that's a realistic ballpark or if I'm way off? I'd also really appreciate some mobo suggestions of the era to give me an idea what to look out for.

Any advice much appreciated.

 

[MarkAG]

I have been looking for similar myself, but as you say the prices of the good ones are silly money. I was looking at 1155 boards. There are new 1151 boards available new for £65. Did you say you have a processor or ram already? Big ask to get all 3 for less than £150 I would say.

 

[stree]

What socket are you looking for? assuming you already have the i3 and you are looking for an MB to suit...........
I have an itx with Asrock H97m and pentium G3258 with 16GB and it runs great ( for non gaming)
Prefer it in some ways to my Ryzen build

 

[D1craig]

can find 1155 socket boards fro less than £70 on the auction site. not new but if you need one might be worth trying and as we know they back the buyer if there is a problem so you will get your money back.

 

[ExoMale]

you can get cheap haswell/skylake itx boards used if you look hard enough and i dont mean from the bay or zon unless of course you need older which will be harder to source, i tried myself before i got my lenovo.

 

[McstylisT]

Personally I would say 1150 is probably the best bang for buck deals. You can get a basic cpu,ram,mobo for £120. Decent ones for under £200.

 

[thekarrari]

Gotta agree about the Haswell, had two builds with mini itx Haswell, one with a gigabyte h81m-p33, dirt cheap little thing around 30 squids on the bay, and ine with a h97m. As far as I can tell, with the same CPU, GPU, RAM etc these mobos would have similar performance, they definitely have the same level of hardware support, and the h97m is 3x the price cuz of the built in wifi and bluetooth.

 

[thekarrari]

Tl;dr P33 is great bang for your buck