£80-£120 motherboard and CPU

[trif]

please could you reccomend a good mobo and cpu combo in the above price bracket

(ddr2 ram, PCIe x16, onboard sound+lan etc)

prefered site www.******.com

 

[Phatzy]

AMD Athlon II X2 Dual Core 240 2.80GHz (Socket AM3) - OEM.
Asus M2N68-AM SE2 GeForce 7025 (Socket AM2+) PCI-Express DDR2.
Corsair 2GB (2 X 1GB) DDR2 XMS2-5400C4 TwinX.

Total : £113.30

your not gunna get much for £120, but this will play games if you get a decent graphics card.

 

[Pulseammo]

Don't think he wanted ram as well, just just wants the board to support DDR2.

 

[trif]

yea, i have 2gb of ddr2, just wanted to make sure i got a board which was compatable

btw does Intel or AMD win in this price bracket?

edit: how does an e7400 core 2 duo compare to an E5400 pentium dual core? (i know its a similar chip inside)

also i've been looking around and whats with the iG31 boards and only having 2 ram slots?

 

[dmxdex2020]

AMD Athlon II X2 Dual Core 240 2.80GHz (Socket AM3) - OEM.
Asus M2N68-AM SE2 GeForce 7025 (Socket AM2+) PCI-Express DDR2.
Corsair 2GB (2 X 1GB) DDR2 XMS2-5400C4 TwinX.

Total : £113.30

your not gunna get much for £120, but this will play games if you get a decent graphics card.

I got a core i7 with 6 gigs of DDR 3 ram for 120

 

[bifday2k]

yea, i have 2gb of ddr2, just wanted to make sure i got a board which was compatable

btw does Intel or AMD win in this price bracket?

edit: how does an e7400 core 2 duo compare to an E5400 pentium dual core? (i know its a similar chip inside)

also i've been looking around and whats with the iG31 boards and only having 2 ram slots?

The IG31 boards are all mainly matx form factor so all will have 2 ram slots, as the mobo is a lot smaller then atx, rare to see 4 slots on them unless there top end mobo's. That and its getting to be really old tech, id stear cleay and aim for something in the 40's range like P43/p45.

Id go for something like this really

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-217-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1485

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-216-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1485

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-273-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=793

The only difference between the E5's and E7's is 1mb more cache on E7 and 1066 fsb, but its like £40 more, honestly E5's are good, and clock very well too, can't be beaten for £50 in my opinion.

 

[Big.Wayne]

does Intel or AMD win in this price bracket?

If buying new I think AMD win in terms of technology offered for the money!

I just built a system based on this kit below (just under £100) and I'm pleased with the results, does everything I need it too, overclocks, undervolts, decent onboard GPU, PCI-E 2.0 x16 slot, RAID etc

• AMD Athlon II X3 Tri Core 425 2.70GHz (Socket AM3)
  
• Asus M4A785D-M Pro AMD 785G (Socket AM3) DDR2 Motherboard

 

[G_Wizz]

For £120 you can get an Athlon X2 550 and a Gigabyte M720-US3, pretty good chance of it unlocking to a quad core and even if it doesn't you will be able to achieve a decent overclock, personally I think this would be the best bang for buck at that price by a long way.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?p=3884909

If you want to cut the price down to £90 you could replace the CPU with the one in this thread;

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18068218

Of course you could go the Intel way with an E5200/5300 and a budget MB such as the ones pointed out by bifday2k which when overclocked would give a decent system but the chance of a "free" quad core would swing it for me.