Hi peeps, I'm a bit of a n00b at modern pc building, well I've built a few, but a long time ago the days of the pentium II etc I'm building my new desktop and so far have a Pentium Dual Core E2200, 4GB Ram, 1TB HD and now I'm looking at motherboards and graphics cards, which has stumped me a bit. What do you think are the best motherboard and graphics cards for around £45 each? I don't need to play Crysis at a massive frame rate/resolution, but maybe play some 1080 HD videos, the occasional game of COD and some 720 video editing for home movies etc. Your help would be great! Thanks
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/DFI-...CI-E-(x16)-DDR2-667-800-SATA-II-SATA-RAID-ATX I have this board in one of my systems at the moment. Ignore the fact its a P35 chip and not a P43 or P45 chip as its a fantastic board and a great overclocker if you desire it. I easily got an E8400 to 4ghz with little fuss. At £45 its a steal. As for a graphics card, if £45 is your budget your probably looking at an ATI 4650 or a Nvidia 9500GT. As you said, your not an extreme gamer but if you did want something a bit more powerful then I did find this in your price range: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-197-AS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=356 It only uses DDR2 memory compared to GDDR3 of some 9600 GSO and GT's but at £45 its worth thinking about.
Hi Ady! Thanks for the quick reply! I'm not looking to over clock anything and a few reviews I read on this board said it needs lots of tinkering to setup right and get the best from it. Any other thoughts on something I can just run out of the box? Thanks
When I got the motherboard it worked straight out of the box with no trouble at all and no tinkering was required. I just built my system and everything was straightforward. You would have to do some adjusting if you overclocked but for a normal build you would be fine.
Sweet thanks! If I wanted this to be more of a media pc (doesn't have to be a small one) what MB would you suggest? (sorry to be a pain!) Thanks!
I have to agree with my esteemed colleague on this. I know its not a micro ATX board, but as you said that doesn't bother you. If it was essential for you to have a micro ATX motherboard then your budget (£45) is not going to go too far, probably an Intel G31 chip board. At the end of the day its your cash and we'll try to give the best advice we can.
