$100 Budget for amd board

K

kdfresh09

New Member
so i am thinking of getting a different board cause the one i have is a POS Emachines. ill be using an athlon II x4 630 (am3) chip. i will also be using an xfx 4890 and 4gigs of ddr3 1066 ram. i would like to be able to overclock a little although im not sure how far this chip will go, but im aiming for at least 3.2 over the stock 2.8. it can be micro or standard atx form, but would rather it be standard, and if possible 2 pci express slots for adding an additional card, and hopefully no more than $100 including shipping, lower would be better. im used to getting boards for intel chips so getting one for amd i really dont know what to look for. so any suggestions would be great. newegg by the way....thanks
 
K

kdfresh09

New Member
anyone else?...so i think that ill just stick with a single pci e slot, so i f that will open my options up a little then that would be great. please anyone with some suggestions would be great
 
bomberboysk

bomberboysk

Active Member
Drenlin said:
As far as I know, this is the cheapest board that will do x8/x8 and not be crappy, though it does only support 8GB of RAM....
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130249


There's also this, if you don't mind open box. It's a bit better.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131402R
Click to expand...

Open box motheboards dont usually include anything with them, that means no cables, no rear i/o plate, etc.

This is a pretty nice board, its ECS which is generally recognized as budget but ive recently purchased a similar board for a rig for my dad and im pretty impressed with the quality so far:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135241

Some other options as well:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128411
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128419 (single pcie, but USB 3.0, sata 3.0, etc)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130249
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131627 ($120+ shipping, but does crossfire, and supports sata 3.0 and usb 3.0)


As far as emachines...is it an emachines computer? If so i hope you arent using the stock power supply...
 
Drenlin

Drenlin

Active Member
bomberboysk said:
This is a pretty nice board, its ECS which is generally recognized as budget but ive recently purchased a similar board for a rig for my dad and im pretty impressed with the quality so far:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135241
Click to expand...

+1 to that. I don't have one, but you can just look at the thing and tell it's a good board. Ample cooling, all-solid caps, intelligent hardware placement, and even an LED readout. That's one of the best deals on a 785G board on the market right now.
 
bomberboysk

bomberboysk

Active Member
Drenlin said:
+1 to that. I don't have one, but you can just look at the thing and tell it's a good board. Ample cooling, all-solid caps, intelligent hardware placement, and even an LED readout. That's one of the best deals on a 785G board on the market right now.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the all solid japanese caps and pwm cooling were what prompted me to test out a new ECS board in the first place(board i picked up for my dad was one step down, the matx model), compared to gigabyte and asus boards in the same budget had very little pwm cooling as well as alot of electrolytic caps.
 
Drenlin

Drenlin

Active Member
^ Wha? I know Asus has some low end boards, but I didn't think Gigabyte made any with electrolytic caps. Cheapest AM3 board I see is this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128397
All solid caps, and 2 PWM plugs. No cooling on the power section though...

How is the BIOS on the ECS board, btw? Some of the reviews said it had a beta version or something. Have they fixed that? If so, I might just add this into my build instead of the Gigabyte I was looking at.
 
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K

kdfresh09

New Member
alright what do you all think. i can go to a local computer shop and get either this:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131595&cm_re=m4a785-_-13-131-595-_-Product for $95, or get this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131619&cm_re=m4a78lt-_-13-131-619-_-Product for $90. if not then i was thinking i would go with this if i ordered on line http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128419

i know the one online is good for the price, but will it future proof me for when usb 3 and sata 3 become mainstream?...and what are your opinions about the boards from the local shop? i could get it today and if something goes wrong i dont have to mess with an rma or shipping. i dont know im a bit lost as to what to do...
 
StrangleHold

StrangleHold

Moderator
Staff member
Well the first board is just a AM2+ board. The second one is AM3 but doesnt have USB 3.0 or SATA 6/0. The last board is the better one. Better power phase setup, better mosfets, USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB. I would go for the last one.
 
bomberboysk

bomberboysk

Active Member
kdfresh09 said:
alright what do you all think. i can go to a local computer shop and get either this:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131595&cm_re=m4a785-_-13-131-595-_-Product for $95, or get this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131619&cm_re=m4a78lt-_-13-131-619-_-Product for $90. if not then i was thinking i would go with this if i ordered on line http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128419

i know the one online is good for the price, but will it future proof me for when usb 3 and sata 3 become mainstream?...and what are your opinions about the boards from the local shop? i could get it today and if something goes wrong i dont have to mess with an rma or shipping. i dont know im a bit lost as to what to do...
Click to expand...
Rule of thumb, never purchase from a "local shop", only places i would buy from locally are microcenter and frys, and thats only a few specific things.
 
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