Maximum PC

viewtopic.php?f=36&t=117999

Present system specs:

Biostar K8M800 Micro AM2 mobo
Athlon 64 X2 4200+
2GB Kingston DDR2 667 RAM
1 160GB WD SATA hard drive (boot drive) (Drive 0)
1 1TB Seagate SATA HD (Drive 1)
1 320GB Seagate IDE HD (Drive 2)
XP Home SP3 fully updated
Antec EarthWatts 430D

After a couple of fresh BSODs pointing to BIOS issues, a couple of cold boots where the BIOS had reset itself to default settings even after battery replacements, and my SATA hard drives suddenly being no longer recognized during web surfing and only being re-recognized after disconnecting the cables and reconnecting them, I'm finally confident enough to point to a corrupted BIOS on my present board.
Apparently my PSU failure in April did the damage.

I put together a tight budget build.
Budget amount is as low as I can get away with yet buy decent quality parts.
I wanted an AMD board from Gigabyte, ASUS, or ASRock.
I need a minimum of one IDE port, so that ruled out affordable (to me) Gigabyte and ASUS boards.
My intended use is 24/7 CPU folding, but also video and audio transcoding, and watching DVD video.
I'm not really interested in OCing.
Unless onboard video's much improved since 2006, I need a cheap and fanless video card.
I would like to re-use my DDR2 667 RAM. I will re-use my monitor, keyboard, SATA HD's, Diamond PCI soundcard, Pioneer IDE DVD burners, case, mouse, and XP OS.
With only one IDE port, I'll have to give up my Seagate 320GB IDE HD.


ASRock M68C-S UCC AM3/AM2+/AM2 uATX mobo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813157204

AMD Athlon II X3 445 Rana 3.1GHz three-core proc
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819103872

ASUS EAH5450 SILENT/DI/512MD3(LP) Radeon HD 5450 512MB 64-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.1 x16 Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814121444

Total: $154.97.

Any criticisms? Lemme have 'em.

I can understand where you are coming from I have a X2 I have to rebuild myself and will probably go with a A8 but to give you a little more info unless you get another AM2 CPU or use the one you have you will need DDR3 memory
the X3 is a AM3 CPU.

To confirm: with an AM3 proc I need to use DDR3 memory? I can't use an AM3 with DDR2?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socket_AM3#Compatibility
http://www.computing.net/answers/cpus/w ... 15702.html

And how good is onboard video now? I've always had to use a card because onboard sucked ass... shimmering, blurred, RAM-eating, slow, and headache inducing. If that onboard video is okay, I could forgo the video card in favor of DDR3 RAM.

You don't have to use DDR3. The Athlon II's memory controller will run with DDR2 up to a speed of 1066Mhz...

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/ ... rison.aspx

On board graphics suck on that motherboard. To be honest, I don't really like the board itself either. I've had too many problems with platforms that attempt to support both DDR2 and DDR3. I understand the philosophy behind the idea, and why you might be leaning toward a "transition" motherboard, but don't be surprised if it's not the smoothest transition.

Ugh. Okay.
Back to shopping.
I do want an AM3 processor, but I see many AM3 boards do not have IDE ports. And I need at least one, as well as at least one PCI slot, as well as support for XP.
Thanks for the input so far, guys. It's really very helpful.

What's your budget? Would it be possible for you to swing a board with a Llano, RAM combo deal (little over $200)? If so, I'd look toward that option. Don't know if any of the boards are holding onto legacy I/O's (IDE), but the graphics solution is better than anything you're likely to find onboard in your price range. An older IDE HDD can be run externally through USB interface if you pick up a cheap enclosure.

if you want to settle for an am2 board here is one you can opt up to a quad core for 139.00 its a combo with 2 pci slots uses ddr2
http://www.portatech.com/catalog/viewitem.asp?ID=26841&O=26842%2C26825&r=p it has an nvidia 6150 onboard as well. this links to a base unit with a dual core processor, around 90.00

* deleted by OvenMaster *

Okay. Final build specs:

ASRock 880GM-LE mobo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813157199

2x2GB Kingston Value RAM (certified by ASRock for this board)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820134810

Athlon II X4 640 proc
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819103871

I'll give the onboard video a try. If it truly sucks, I'll get a cheap PCI-e card.
But until then, this will tip the scales at $181.97. $32 more than I'd budgeted for, but I won't have to wish for a quad-core in a few months.