sirrith

Distinguished
Nov 14, 2008
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18,510
Hi, my cousin's motherboard died not long ago, and he's building a new pc, re-using his old case, PSU and dvd drive. His old mobo was a ASRock P4I65G and the dimensions were: 24.4x19.8cm. From what he tells me, his case doesn't have enough space between the PSU and the DVD drive to install a 24.4x24.4cm mATX motherboard.

Does anyone here know of any decent (sub $100) mATX motherboards that are smaller than 24.4x22.9? (thats the smallest I could find, Asus p5ql-cm) These are what he needs in the specs:
sub $100
PCI-e x16 slot
smaller than 24.4x22.9cm
socket LGA 775 or whichever socket can fit an AMD phenom x3 (I'm not familiar with AMD sockets) he doesn't mind which brand, Intel or AMD as long as it lets him play games

Also... are there any that match those specs without integrated graphics, and if they do include IG, would he have to disable it in the BIOS when installing a graphics card (9600GT)? The ones I found all include IG.
Thanks for your help.
 
The smallest micro atx I've seen is my hp board, made by msi. So, I would check newegg for a similar board. I sometimes use open box boards, and request a backplate from the manufacturer. Some will mail them to you for free (biostar, for one). For graphics, try uninstalling the graphics driver, turn off the system, and install the new graphics card. The system will ask for the new driver when you turn it back on. I usually download the latest nvidia driver in advance of a card change, and place the driver in my documents file.