Choosing a motherboard

[tomtomhoch]

Hi there,

I am looking to get a new motherboard and wounded if there was a good website that lets you configure your needs to tell you which one is best??

If not then does anyone know if there is a motherboard under £60 which has:

At least 2 PCI slots (TV Tuner and sound card)
At least 1 PCIe x16 slot (graphics card)
At least 1 PCIe x1 slot (wireless card)
And an LGA1155 socket (Intel Core i5 2500)

My budget is very strict as I'm only 14!!


Thanks
Thomas

 

[zander1983]

Bad news, you won't get a decent board with all those slots for under 60 pounds.

I'd suggest to have a look at one of the following boards around the 100 pound mark.

ASUS P8Z77-V LX

Asrock Extreme 4

 

[dudewitbow]

ill note that the reason why this is extremely hard to fit in a budget, is because of the fact that unless your gpu is a single slot gpu, it WILL cover one of the other PCI lanes, in which at your budget, almost all the choices are Micro ATX, and you want to use all 4 PCI lanes.

strict budget wise, one of the earliest non micro atx mobo that I know would fit the need is an asrock z68 pro3

which is past budget though

 

[coper210]

Here is a great motherboard

http://www.amazon.com/ASRock-Z68-PRO3-GEN3-Intel/dp/B005N5Q2MW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345103423&sr=8-1&keywords=ASRock+Z68+PRO3+GEN3

10 dollars over your budget but it is a great motherboard for a great price.

 

[smorizio]

hello tom and welcome the the boards. I not found a web page that will pull up muilt mb and let you look at what installed on them. most time people here use new egg to look at the mb. with intel cpu there two mb chipset out there. the overclocking chipsets (z68 and z77) the last one was built for ib. and the locked chipset (h and b chipsets). if you think you never overclock or buy an over clocked chip you can save a few pounds by buying the b or h mb.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130651
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130621
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130614
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135307
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128550
the last one might be the best one for the price or the msi ones. you have to see if the msi one or ones with the pci slit next to the video card will be blocked if you use a larger video card.

 

[tomtomhoch]

I could definitely stretch to the £70 motherboard which looks fine! What about a motherboard with this configuration?

At least 1 PCI (TV Tuner or Sound Card)
At least 1 PCIe x16 (Graphics Card)
At least 2 PCIe x1 (Wireless card and TV Tuner or Sound)
LGA1155

And I would get a TV Tuner or Sound card which takes PCIe x1 instead of PCI??


Thanks for your help
Thomas

*EDIT - if it helps the GPU I am using is a Radeon 6870 although I may switch to a GTX 560 Ti

Also, can I use my graphics card (or a 560 Ti) in a PCIe 3.0 x16 or does it have to be in a 2.0??

Thanks again!

 

[smorizio]

pcie 3.0 is backwards for all older video cards. to get pci 3.0 you have to have the correct chipset and cpu and a pci 3.0 video card. people with the older sb cpu if they toss in a 3.0 gpu it run at 2.0 speed. to save you a slot on your mb have you thought about using a usb wifi stick??

 

[tomtomhoch]

So I will have to use my GPU with the 2.0 slot? Also I don't really like having things sticking out so I'd rather have an internal wireless card (and it's more expense)

Thanks
Thomas

 

[smorizio]

no tom with today mb the pci 3.0 is a new standard. it not on all mb and cpu yet. only the newer chipset and some of the newer cpu have it. if you dont have the right cpu or chipset the mb and video cards will drop back to the older pci 2.0 bus speed. also right now there no video cards that can max out the pci 2.0 bus yet. maby the 8000/700 line of cards can but not any card on the market today.

 

[tomtomhoch]

Ok so I can use the PCI 3.0 but it will use 2.0 speed (a bit like using USB 2.0 in a USB 3.0 socket?)


Thanks
Thomas

 

[smorizio]

you got it tom

 

[tomtomhoch]

Ok thanks a lot for your help

Thanks
Thomas