Suggestions for budget Socket A motherboard

[jeffgson]

I'm looking for a mobo under $70 that I can put a Athlon 2400+ Thoroughbred CPU in. An 8x AGP slot would be nice if it doesn't have good onboard video, because I have an extra GeForce4 MX440-SE card with 64 MB of DDR Ram, and I'd like to put a 512 MB and a 256 MB DDR RAM chip in, so I only need two DIMM slots. I don't know the difference between the different chipsets, or which manufacturers have the best quality and reliability. I'll probably hunt fot the best price on bizrate.com or pricegrabber.com, although I like Tiger Direct and Krex Computers looks like it has good prices. I am clearly budget minded, or I'd go for a Barton core processor and a full 1 GB of RAM. I'm open to suggestions, other than spending more money.

 

[Peter]

The usual budget suspect would be the ECS K7S5A, though if you have DDR RAM already you can step up a bit and use e.g. an L7S7A2 for chipset-embedded USB 2.0 and an overall more modern board.

 

[o1die]

The shuttle an35n and mn31n boards still have a $15 rebate through the end of the month. Newegg had them for $63-81 before rebate. These boards aren't loaded, but may have enough standard features for you. Both have the nforce2 chipset.

 

[NesuD]

Take a look at the Biostar M7NCD $52.99 free shipping at Newegg It is a no frills Nforce2 board and is dirt cheap. I recently built two systems using the M-ATX version with the integrated video and was impressed with how well it all worked for such a cheap board. I would definately opt for the Biostar over the ECS personally.

 

[colonel]

Biostar board are the best mATX out there, I tryed the other brand before.

 

[novice]

Another vote for the Shuttle AN35N Ultra board. I have had one running now since July, and I have been very impressed with how easy it was to set up and how stable it has been, even overclocked. I ran my XP1700+ T-Bred B at 12x166 for the first 4 months and then upgraded my ram to PC-3200 and am now running 10x200, solid as a rock. I have no direct experience with the Biostar Nforce 2 board, and my experience with them is limited to a Via Apollo Pro 133a board I used to build a system for my father in law. It was an okay board, but nowhere near as nice as the Shuttle boards I have seen. (including the similar AK31) I would suggest that you spring for the PC-3200 ram and suggest that you get good quality, since the Nforce 2 boards can be a little finicky when it comes to ram. I used a single 512 stick of Kingston Value Ram PC-2700 that came with winbond CH-6 chips, then upgraded to my 2 256 mb sticks of Buffalo Technology PC-3200 with the winbond CH-5 chips. Both worked great in my system.

 

[jeffgson]

At Newegg the Shuttle AN35N Ultra is $64.99 with a $15 rebate till the end of the month, so its $49.99. There deal on the AMD 2400+ CPU I want is good too, $81 with the fan included. Tiger Direct wanted $79.99 without the fan. And everything at Newegg is free shipping via Fed Ex, while Tiger Direct is about $10 shipping. New Egg has good prices on DDR RAM too, so I'll probably buy everything from them, unless bizrate.com shows me that I can save even more money elsewhere. But I doubt prices can get much lower than this on new products.

 

[brentkiosk]

Last month I made a system with an ECS L7S7A2, an old 4X video card, 512 + 256 of PC2100 DDR and a 2400 XP. So far, I have been happy with it - definitely got my money's worth, and I would do it again.