I got my cpu...need a mobo and psu

[wormy]

I have 150-200 bucks left to spend and with all the different PSUs and Mobos I thought it would be easier to just ask some experts on what I should go with.

My CPU is gonna be an AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego
Hard Drive 120 gig Western Digital
6600 GT PCI-Express
1 gig pc3200 corsair (2x512)
I need some onboard sound and Lan
If you could come up with a Mobo with onboard Vid that would be great too because my last card died and I was without a comp for 4 months.

 

[mdd1963]

Just about any NF4 board will have 8 ch sound, and 1 or 2 ea Gigabit ports, 2-6 SATA ports, etc....

The very best seem to be the Asus and DFI SLI boards, pushing $200-$220; a recent MSI board (reviewed a THG) even has onboard Audigy 2 sound...

You can pick up a non-SLI board for around $90, go with just about any Asus, DFI, Gigabyte, MSI NF4 variant, and you should be set...

(I'd forego the integrated video, if you vid card dies in the future you could stick in a cheap PCI variant just to ge the comp back "up and running" for $10 or less while awaiting a replacement)

 

[o1die]

For non sli, newegg carries the chaintech vnf4 for only $52.00 plus shipping. For power supplies, the antec truepower 550 is a pretty good choice, and it's on sale at newegg for $89.95.

 

[sepuko]

NF4 Ultra

 

[apesoccer]

Cheap SLI version: MSI SLI-f $100

Nforce 4 Ultra version: Epox Nforce 4 Ultra $85

Nforce 4 v.: MSI Nforce $80

Nforce 4 boards go as cheap as $50ish...but i wouldn't go much lower then $70ish (on newegg anyway) for quality purposes (in regards to nforce 4 boards only). There's a reason some boards are sold cheaper then others.

PSU:

FSP Sparkle power supplies are the way to go (FSP is the man., Sparkle buys FSP parts for the most part). For your system you could get by with 350w, but i'd go with a 400w. Remember to get a 24-pin one. However, if you go with an nforce 4 sli motherboard, you need to get a psu that has min 450w, prefably 500+ and you typically want it SLI certified. SLI certification, is kinda a joke though. I have two sli certified psu's...One of them won't support even one of my two 6800gt's on it, and they(psu's) are both rated over 530w. My sparkle 530w ah heck takes both 6800's oc'd, and my 3800+ oc'd as well as all my other crap without issue.

 

[o1die]

Sparkle makes excellent power supplies with steady rails. But I would go for the fortron fsp label instead, as their ps tend to be newer designs with more connection adapters for stuff like sli.