Good cheep board

[Telicus]

Hi im looking for a good p3 board to build my bro I have $430 and im looking for a good board with a nice chipset mabe a cheep cpu combo I was looking for a p3 1gh but im open to anything I havent done any research latly so im just wondering what would be good this comp will be mainly a gameing comp for high end games. Thanks

"yes I know my enemy they are the teachers that taught me to hate me"

 

[camieabz]

The Abit BX133-R is a good choice if you're planning on a PIII GHz. The AGP multiplyer would have to set at 2/3, which would run your gfx card at 89MHz instead of it's usual 66MHz. If your going for a new gfx card, a DDR Radeon is pretty cool with this combo, and it will easily handle the 89MHz on AGP 2x.

If you want the option of AGP 4x @ 66MHz, you can go for the Abit ST6-R, but it's max memory is 512MB, and the gfx aperture max is 64Mb (The BX133 is 1GB & 256MB respectively I think.)

Both have IDE RAID onboard if you find you want to use it, or you can go for the non-RAID versions of these boards. The differences between AGP 2x 89MHz and AGP 4x 66MHz are negligible I'm told.

<b><font color=blue>~ Oh flower of Scotland...da da de de dum dum doo doo.~ </font color=blue></b>

 

[bluzbrother]

for $185 you can get an Athlon XP 1800+ and a Shuttle AK31A, 256mb DDR SDRAM for $70-$100. The shuttle board is the best "budget" board I've used. There are other boards that have more features but in terms of quality I highly recommend it. If you want the absolute most performance for your money I personally would buy an AMD cpu... KT266A, KT333, Nvidia Nforce 415D/420(video) are all top performing chipsets. I haven't used an Ali or SiS chipset. Either way some of my personal favorite mobo makers are:
Asus
MSI
Shuttle
but other good ones are Abit, Soyo, Gigabyte, Iwill, Epox.

AOL-For people who like to pay extra for their SPAM

 

[o1die]

Go to newegg.com and get a refurbished ak31a for only $45 shipped. You won't regret it.

 

[Strife]

AMD is definately the best way to go in terms of price and performace. If money where no object a $490 Pentium 4 2.4ghz or a $400 P4 2.2 might be the way to go, but except for the extreem high end, an AMD system will be both cheaper and faster!

Newegg is an excellent place to shop, thought you still might want to check pricewatch for the best deals.

Do not get cheap ram ( I recommend Corsair or Crucial) and visit AMD's web site to make sure that your heat sink and powersupply is approved for your processor.

Don't forget the thermal compound for your heatsink and if you are clumsy you might want to get a space/shim to protect your cpu from being crushed when you mount your heatsink.

When you think you know what you want post the configuration and I am sure you will get plenty of feed back.