I am building a budget system for a friend of mines dad. So far I have amd x2 3800+ (socket am2) for ram either -Patriot Signature DDR2 1GB CL5 PC2-5300 (667MHz) DIMM or -Mushkin EM2-5300 DDR2-667 1GB EM Series CAS 5-5-5-15 (991381 the mushkin is like $4 more still not sure if its worth it or not so let me know 80gig sata seagate drive I will sticking with onboard graphics for this since he has no intention of gaiming. For motherboards the main one i had in mind was the Asus M2A-VM It seems like it has great features but just hoping it will be a reliable board which lasts a long time. I know asus usually makes great boards but i am willing to take suggestions here and hear goods or bads on this or go with something different. Also stuck on whether to go with one of the cheap power supplys which come with the case or pick up a decent thermaltake 430w It seems a little overkill for this application but i just want to make sure something is reasonably reliable.
Most power supplies that come with a case are very unreliable, so I think you probably should go with a decent one. Do you plan on overclocking with the board?
No I will definately not be overclocking at all....the system will primarilly be used to check email and surf the internet. Also some spreadsheet work in exel but nothing intense. My main concern with building this system for him is reliability. His last computer was some cheaply built system which they got from some no name shop which has given them nothing but problems (mind you it did actually last a decent amount of time) I want to make sure he can leave it on or turn it on off alll the time and just use it without issues. That was my reason for picking a asus motherboard but if i am wrong correct me. Also i have read some pretty good reviews on the ATI 690G chipset but it is there first one.....does the chipset play a large role on the motherboard even if they are not overclocking or gaming? System will be running xp home most likely but i since this is aparently the best onboard graphics out right now and it has dvi on it i figured it would be better suited since it should be good for if they want to upgrade to vista in the future and get a dvi moniter. Thanks alot
The performance of entire system can vary with a chipset. A better chipset will give better overall performance. So yes the chipset does matter, but with the AM2 all of the chipsets will give you just about the same performance, so don't worry too much about that. What is the budget you are looking at? I mean how much on the motherboard. EDIT: BTW are you sure about the GFX card? The 7600 Gt is pretty cheap these days, so is a 8500 GT.
Well i would like to keep it as cheap as possible without sacrificing quality and reliability. This board will cost $70.99 canadian before tax So something in and around there should be fine another one i looked at which seems similar was the Asus M2N-MX I am really open to anything though I would prefer to try and keep a board which has 4 slots for ram for future upgrading The 2 places i will be purchasing most parts from will be www.tigerdirect.ca and www.canadacomputers.com Thank you very much for the help
No problem. I think the MX is probably better(well at least the on board video is!) than the Asus M2A-VM. You should probably consider what ports and other connectivity options you need. I'll will try to look into it some more but I gotta get some sleep for now. 2:15 is quite late for me lol
according to this review the x1250 is the best onboard graphics available right now http://www.motherboards.org/reviews/motherboards/1697_12.html Also the VM supports 8gig ram and the mx only supports 4gigs im stuck here and im not to familiar with any other motherboard brand but asus
If it's not for playing games, integrated graphics is fine, but the slowest Dedicated card is faster than the fastest integrated chipset, no matter what, they're all rubbish. However, if all you need is the desktop, there's no point in going dedicated.
Oh i know xp i think only makes use of 3gigs mx isnt it? I am only building the system with 1gig of ram....i was just thinking for the future since vista is a pretty big hog on ram if they ever upgraded. Also yea i know all integrated are junk compared to any dedicated but there will be no use for dedicated as they will not likely be playing any games. Unless its like poker or cards but integrated will do that fine. Basically i just want to make sure the board is reliable and stable to run winxp and hopefully stable in the future to run vista. The reason asus m2a-vm looked attractive was the fact that it had onboard DVI in case they upgraded to a moniter in the future which could support DVI If the amd 690 chipset is going to be horrible and unreliable though then i would give up those features if you guys thing something else would be better suited.
So would you use the asus m2a-vm or m2n-mx or something different all together in this situation? Has anyone here had any first hand experiance with the amd 690 chipset and are there any specific motherboard companyies i should steer clear of altogether?
Alright well it looks like im going to go with the asus M2A-VM because of the features on it and such. If anyone feels against this please let me know. Otherwise I will post up results once the build is done and i can test it out
