Budget Mobo

Dogboy73

Dogboy73

Dogboy73

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A work colleague is in the market for a new mobo. He's not a gamer & just wants a reliable, affordable more up to date board than his current Socket A AMD mobo. I suggested a Socket 775/Core 2 Duo based board like my Gigabyte one. It cost me about £50-£60 if I recall. However when I looked at the available Socket 775 mobos currently on OCUK there wasn't anything in that price bracket. Can anyone recommend a similar alternative around the £50 mark? Cheers.
 
Only motherboard available on OcUK that is anywhere around the £50 mark is this one,

Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 Rev2 (Socket 775) PCI-Express/AGP DDR2 Motherboard.

I have the Rev 1 version of this board which I have used for over a year until I moved parts from it onto a new Gigabyte P45 chipset board (Odd mix of a Q6600, 2GB OCZ DDR2 and a 6800GT AGP). Its a very good transitional/stop-gap motherboard, but not exactly a great overlocker as it uses a VIA chipset. It does overclock well on budget CPUs like the E2000 or E5000 series though.

Limitations are a 4x PCIE graphics port (I tried a Sapphire ATi Radeon HD 4830 on it and it still works well even on lower bus speed), only up to 2GB DDR/DDR memory total, and for the Core 2 CPU support, mainly the 65nm ones i.e. Allendale/Conroe/Kentsfield. Although with the latest official BIOS, a few E5000 and E7000 45nm Wolfdale are supported. And with an unofficial BIOS, 4GB DDR2 support.

If you can stretch the budget further, then the cheaper P43 chipset or LGA775 micro-ATX motherboards are the only other option, unless you want to go down the AMD route.
 
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ASRock do several 775 boards around the £35 mark.

If he just wants something to run a C2D at stock without any bells or whistles then have a look around for a ASRock 4Core1600-D800.
 
Cheers for the replies guys.

But what happened to the cheaper Gigabyte mobos, or any manufacurer for that matter, such as the one I have (see sig)? I remember when I bought this one there were similar spec/priced boards from Asus & Abit etc.
 
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Well your motherboard is from the P35 generation (P35C-DS3R) which was around Summer 2007 and so its pretty much old tech now, hence the reason why there aren't a lot around. The Intel P45 chipset came out around Summer 2008 so it was about a year of difference.

Looking at what P35 motherboards are left, only two are available on OcUK.

You'd maybe have to look elsewhere, or otherwise, you could still go for the Micro-ATX boards that support Core 2 CPUs. They may be smaller but for the price, they can't go wrong. And seeing as you want to just look for a stable motherboard for your colleague, they are well adequate enough.
 
Sadly OCUK have neglected the budget buyer. Have a search around for a Gigabyte EP31 DS3L. They are an excellent board and can be had for £51. They even overclock very nicely too.
 
Dogboy73 said:
Cheers for the replies guys.

But what happened to the cheaper Gigabyte mobos, or any manufacurer for that matter, such as the one I have (see sig)? I remember when I bought this one there were similar spec/priced boards from Asus & Abit etc.
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Your board would have been over £70, and the value of the £ has dropped considerably against the Dollar and the Euro since you got it. Thus hardware is costing us more now.

But I do agree that OcUK are ignoring the lower end of the market. There's no real reason why they aren't stocking £35 boards designed for simple builds.
 
Cob said:
But I do agree that OcUK are ignoring the lower end of the market. There's no real reason why they aren't stocking £35 boards designed for simple builds.
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There's no profit in them, I reckon. Let's say the pre-VAT margin is 20% so you'd make about £5.50 from a £35 motherboard. It takes up the same space as a £250 X58 board, which you might make £40 on, it costs the same to RMA it, to post it FOC to forum members etc. £40 vs. £5.50 - what would you sell?
 
You're probably right.

But they'll be losing trade from those wishing to buy everything from one place.
 
WJA96 said:
There's no profit in them, I reckon. Let's say the pre-VAT margin is 20% so you'd make about £5.50 from a £35 motherboard. It takes up the same space as a £250 X58 board, which you might make £40 on, it costs the same to RMA it, to post it FOC to forum members etc. £40 vs. £5.50 - what would you sell?
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I reckon though for every £250 mobo they sell, they'd shift a further three budget ones at £50 a pop. I've used three gigabyte P31-DS3L mobos and all clocked really well up to around the 3ghz mark which is sufficient for a budget gaming pc. Really seems ocuk have forgotten the budget buyer, shame really.
 
pieman109 said:
I reckon though for every £250 mobo they sell, they'd shift a further three budget ones at £50 a pop. I've used three gigabyte P31-DS3L mobos and all clocked really well up to around the 3ghz mark which is sufficient for a budget gaming pc. Really seems ocuk have forgotten the budget buyer, shame really.
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I'm perferctly happy with my £70 Gigabyte mobo so I wouldn't really want to spend much more than that on any future upgrades. I certainly wouldn't be happy going over £100 when there are perfectly good mobos around for much less.

Anyway, back to my colleagues mobo. Would a micro ATX do the job. I assume it would go it a standard size ATX size case okay?
 
Yes pretty much every standard ATX cases should easily support Micro-ATX as it is just a smaller version of it. All the ports and such are the same, just obviously with less i.e. 1 or 2 PCI slots etc. Micro-ATX's are for SFF PCs, portable LAN, HTPC rigs etc.
 
I'll be picking up a gigabyte G31 (micro fromat) based mobo tomoz and I'm gonna see how well a an e4300 performs in it, hoping to get to at least 3ghz with it but it depends on the bios options I reckon, voltage/frequency adjustments, etc.:)
 
pieman109 said:
I'll be picking up a gigabyte G31 (micro fromat) based mobo tomoz and I'm gonna see how well a an e4300 performs in it, hoping to get to at least 3ghz with it but it depends on the bios options I reckon, voltage/frequency adjustments, etc.:)
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I'm sure it will do 3Ghz no problem seeing as the ASRock motherboard I mentioned way above can do it easily and that is using a crappy cheap VIA chipset. It really works well with the older budget E2000/E4000 series CPUs. If a Intel G31 chipset can't do it, then something is definately wrong :D.
 
Phatjayunoi said:
I'm sure it will do 3Ghz no problem seeing as the ASRock motherboard I mentioned way above can do it easily and that is using a crappy cheap VIA chipset. It really works well with the older budget E2000/E4000 series CPUs. If a Intel G31 chipset can't do it, then something is definately wrong :D.
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I'll let you know tomorrow:p
 
Dogboy73 said:
What's the news on that?
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It appears that mobo is aimed at higher speed cpus and memory. It'll run an e4300 with ddr 800 memory but the options are greyed out in the bios. the lowest memory divider is 2.66 believe it or not, so you're gonna need some pc8500 memory at least to get a reasonably high overclock. Saying that, I've got me e4300 @ 3ghz using some 1066 speed ram woth no voltage increases at all except for the Vdimm (+0.3v) which is normal. I reckon these mobos would make nice alternatives to the expensive mobos if you don't want very high overclocks (should be good for 3.6ghz I'd have thought with a cpu capable of that speed, I think an e5200 would make a nice partner for this mob) and wanna keep the cost down and thats taking into account the slight increase in cost for the 8500 memory.
 
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