Decent Low Price AMD Motherboard?

[Uncl30w3n]

Im building a gaming/media pc with an athlon ii 640 or a phenom ii 945. Whats a decent low price motherboard, and do i need atx or is micro-atx fine?

 

[Maziar]

ATX/m-ATX depends on the case you are using and your personal preferences.ATX boards usually have more ports/slots along with better OC'ng support;whereas,
m-ATX boards have less features.

 

[jj463rd]

You would be surprised but here is a $30 AM3 motherboard after rebate ($40 before).It won't take CPU's above 95 watts TDP but you will be fine.
Can't crossfire or SLI on it though because there is only one slot for a graphics card.
I myself have an earlier AM2+ variation of this board.Surprisingly I am quite pleased with it.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138180

There is even a combo deal with a graphics card with it at the bottom of the page
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.575455

For $50 after rebates that's an excellent deal (getting a decent graphics card and a working AM3 motherboard)

Here is the graphics card on Tom's Hardware hierarchy chart.
Look's pretty decent.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-recommendation-upgrade,2803-7.html

 

[swifty_morgan]

What kind of GAMES will you be playing ?.............. and, that mother board posted above, 1) the 6150 chip set gets very hot.. 2) not very good for gaming. Didn't look but if it only supports 95watt processors you'll be limited. Also, what other hardware will you be using... anything left over from another build ?... memory, etc.

 

[jj463rd]

You are absolutely correct the Nvidia 6150 is a lousy IGP especially lousy for gaming.
That's why most people will not use the on board IGP and why I mentioned the combo deal with the discrete graphics card.Yes it has a 95 watt CPU TDP limitation probably not good either for over clocking either.But in it's defense it's dirt cheap (practically free) especially with that graphics card which is a decent budget card above the HD 4650 in hierarchy and on par with the HD 4670.A AMD 785G chipset also gets quite hot as well when used for the IGP.

To the OP why not opt for a Athlon II X3 445 or 450 CPU instead.
Here is an article for you.Especially look at the gaming benchmarks

How Many CPU Cores Do You Need?
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/multi-core-cpu,2280.html


Part 2 How Many CPU Cores Do You Need?
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-cores-performance,2373.html

Also see the System Builder Marathon, December 2010: $500 PC
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-a-pc-overclock-athlon-ii-x3,2811.html
They used a AMD Athlon II X3 445 in that build.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I'd take the ASRock M3A770DE from newegg but the site is down so I can't give you a link.

 

[Uncl30w3n]

Im buying an ati/amd 5830 or a 6850, so igp isnt really a selling point. in my area of the world, gigabyte and asus motherboards tend to make up the majority of motherboard sales so those would be the boards i would be looking at.

Regarding cores, im buying 4 cores for the 'future', just so the pc it lasts a bit longer without being upgraded.

As far as games, crysis 2, metro 2033, dirt 2 etc.

 

[Maziar]

ASUS M4A89GTD PRO is a good choice.It also has a USB 3.0 version which is $10 more.

 

[swifty_morgan]

Get a processor with L3 cache on it. Your games will love you for it.