Our price limit for the motherboards was $145. Also, we wanted it to work with Intel's 45-nm generation of processors, expected to be released next year. Thus, the boards need to support these CPUs out of the box. That narrowed down our choice to the P35 chipset, since these boards are quite affordable and also use the ICH9, which is currently Intel's fastest Southbridge. Additionally, the chipset works with DDR2 memory. Memory prices being as low as they are, this lets you build a very affordable system.
Gigabyte and MSI offer two very attractive lines of boards, namely the GA-P35-DS3 line and the P35 Neo2 family, respectively.
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Motherboards
Board
Price
Firewire
RAID
SATA
IDE
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L
$119
Yes
Yes
4
1
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3
$125
Yes
No
6
1
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R
$136
Yes
Yes
8
1
MSI P35 Neo2-FR
$135
No
Yes
7
1
MSI P35 Neo2-FIR
$144
Yes
Yes
7
1
These boards are available with different feature sets. We chose the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3 and the MSI P35 Neo2-FIR. The feature set has no impact on performance or overclocking potential, so you can choose any board from these families depending on your needs.
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3
MSI P35 Neo2-FIR
Sadly, we weren't able to include an affordable board from motherboard maker Asus. Our request for a board was declined on the grounds that only expensive high-end models are sent out as review samples. Cheaper boards, on the other hand, are not included in the press portfolio. Apparently, Asus is not interested in having its less-expensive boards reviewed.
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