Budget AMD AM3 Motherboards

Many people these days are looking for computers that are in a certain price range. If you are looking to build a PC in the budget range from around £200-£300 ($300-$500) then these motherboards will work very well for you. They are from good quality manufactures such as ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI and most feature Solid capacitors for better voltage regulation to the CPU.

MSI GF615M-P33

I am starting with the MSI as it was the cheapest AM3 motherboard that I could find from the more reputable and respected motherboard manufactures. It has a 4.5 star rating on the eBuyer website which is where I personally source my computer components from. It features an AMD socket AM3 and supports CPU's that are upto 125w. This means that this little Micro ATX budget motherboard can support many of the AMD 6 core CPU's upto the 1065T. This is very very good support for a motherboard that costs just over £34 ($54) It doesn't support any amazing features such as UEFI BIOS or onboard HD video but it will work for many users that only need a simple office computer. Technically with the PCI-E slot and the support for an AMD Hex Core cpu you may even be able to make a budget gaming computer out of it. I say well done MSI for providing such a great motherboard at such a competitive price.

ASUS M4N68T-M LE

ASUS have really managed a lot with such a small budget with this board. Getting one at such a good price is a bonus really. I found this board at the price of £35 ($56) The ASUS M4N68T-M LE has some pretty basic features if you compare it to high cost motherboards but it has all you need really if you are thinking of just building an office PC or even possibly a low cost gaming machine. It features 4 SATA ports which is enough for most people. It has a PCI-E slot so you can put any modern graphics card into it.
The main problem that I see with this board is the fact that it only has 2 DDR3 RAM slots. I suppose this can be expected on a board like this though. The audio is 8 channel HD but when you run in 8 channel you will loose the other two 3.5mm jacks as they turn into audio outputs for the different channels. The board supports CPU's upto the massive power house of the Phenom II x6 1100T. This means that is can power AMD's best AM3 offering. Overall ASUS have managed to make an amazingly cheap motherboard which can power the best CPU AMD offers on it's AM3 platform and also have basic things such as onboard video and 4 SATA ports. Great board.

Gigabyte GA-M68MT-S2

I am not sure what it is about Gigabyte but they always seem to have very neat looking boards. The look of good build quality and quality components. I think it may be the color scheme that makes it look neat and tidy but then again I am not sure. Anyway, This board is a great board. It costs just under £37 ($59) and it is build by one of the leading motherboard manufactures, Gigabyte. Recently some people have been saying that Gigabyte are better quality boards than ASUS but I personally think they are about level now.
This board has basically the same features as the ASUS board that we looked at above. It has 2 RAM slots which is usually sufficient now that you can easily get hold of 4GB memory modules. It has 4 SATA ports and features onboard VGA graphics. It also has the same 8-Channel HD audio that the ASUS has. This board however can only support up to the Phenom II x6 1090T not the full blown 1100T that the ASUS supports. The build of this board is the main feature really. It has solid capacitors in the CPU VRM's and also has Dual BIOS so that if one fails the other one can take over and repair the failed one.


MSI 760GM-E51

Having looked at a fair few full budget motherboards I decided to move up a few steps and show you a board that feature HDMI onboard. This tidy offering from MSI really looks pretty good. It costs a little over £44 ($70) It features 4 RAM slots and has 5 SATA ports (one of which is mounted as an E-SATA port on the back) The board looks like it has been built using good quality parts, The CPU VRM has fully solid capacitors and it also features solid coils which offer better voltage stability. This board also features the ability to unlock the hidden cores in AMD CPU's and also a flick switch overclock setting which increases the FSB automatically. It has built in 8-Channel audio and also has built in HDMI which makes this board great for using as a cinema system computer. Overall a great board by MSI for such a good price.

Thanks for reading everyone, I hope this has made your decision of budget AMD motherboards easier and better. Jack-O-Bytes

ASUS P8Z68-V Pro Z68 Chipset Motherboard Review

When Intel brought out the P67 and H67 chipsets, many enthusiasts complained that the features of one or the other were only available on one or the other, but not both. Intel has heard the community and is therefore launching the Z68 chipset. As usual ASUS is among the first board makers to offer a board featuring this latest chipset. The ASUS P8Z68-V Pro promises to be an interesting first look at this new chipset

Introduction

You’ve probably owned ASUS built products without even knowing it. It makes everything from motherboards to monitors, to consumer electronics, and more. Founded in 1986 ASUS has become one of the largest consumer electronics manufacturers in the world and is probably the largest motherboard manufacturer on the planet, surely when it comes to retail box packages.
The ASUS P8Z68-V Pro is based on Intel’s brand new Z68 Express chipset. Less than six months ago Intel launched two chipsets. P67 and H67.

The former was targeted towards mainstream and some enthusiast users. This chipset offered the ability to overclocked multiplier unlocked K series parts with impunity. At least, through turbo multipliers. The H67 chipset on the other hand featured support for Intel’s Integrated Graphics Processors, or IGPUs which are part of the Sandy Bridge core processors’ dies. Furthermore Intel’s quick sync feature was tied to H67 and anyone who might have wanted to take advantage of these features had to choose between using the IGPU’s and Quick Sync or overclocking. This didn’t sit well with many enthusiasts and of course, many people made their opinions on this well known. Well if Z68 proves anything, it’s that Intel has been listening. No longer must you choose between the feature sets of P67 and H67. You can now have both feature sets and more. And when we say "more" there is a LOT more.

Read More - http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/05/11/asus_p8z68v_pro_z68_chipset_motherboard_review

How To Build A Budget Cheap PC

This video will show you how that you can make the most of your money when you decide to build a computer.

 

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Foxconn A6VMX AM2+ Motherboard Review

I recently purchased a relitivly cheap Socket AM2 motherboard produced by Foxconn. It is the Foxconn A6VMX. This review is based upon using the motherboard for about 3 months getting to know it's features.
Firstly I would like to start of with the price. It is a fairly cheap motherboard priced around £31 ($47). At this price I was expecting a flimsy low feature motherboard with relitivly low quality capacitors and barely any external ports but I was wrong.

The motherboard has the following rear I/O connectors;

• 1 set 5.1 channel Audio jacks (3 jacks)
• 1x Parallel port
• 1x PS/2 keyboard port
• 1x PS/2 mouse port
• 1x VGA port
• 4x USB 2.0 ports
• 1x RJ45 LAN port

1x Serial port
This is enough for many people although lacking DVI and HDMI this is to be expected with a motherboard that costs this ammount. I am glad to see that this board comes with both PS/2 Keyboard and PS/2 Mouse which many motherboards are now leaving out to save space on the I/O plate. It also includes 5.1 audio which I have been very pleased with when playing music through my X-540 speakers. The sound quality is very good.
On the inside this motherboard offers plenty of connections for the PC builder to work with. The motherboard has the following ports for internal uses;

• 1x CD-in connector
  1x Front Audio header
  1x S/PDIF Out header
  1x IRDA
  1x TV Out header
  1x Floppy connector
  1x Front Panel connector
  2x USB 2.0 connectors support additional 4 ports
  1x Speaker
  4x SATA II connectors
  2x USB Power header
  1x IDE

I was amazed to see so many SATA ports on a motherboard of this price but it is very nice they have included so many. It also features a floppy connector and an IDE connector. These are great if you have either an old hard drive or old floppy disk that you would like to save the data from. IDE performance seems ok with it being able to run both of the disk drives at the same time. I am also sure that many people would be glad to see that they have included S/PDIF and TV out headers for use in a media computer setup.

The board has the following expansion slots;

• 1 x PCIe x16
• 1 x PCIe x1
• 2 x PCI

The small ammount of expansion slots is mainly down to the fact that this is a Micro ATX board. I have installed an Nvidia 9400GT 1GB edition with a double slot cooler which unfortunatly renders on of the PCI slots unusable and with only 2 on the board this could be a problem for some people. Another problem is that when you install a long graphics card such as a Radeon HD5770 you will loose 2 of the SATA ports behind the graphics card as they are not mounted horizonatly. Another small issue with the layout of this board is where the 24 Pin power plug is mounted. It is half way down the board on the right hand side which means you have the giant 24 wire cable running across the top of the RAM slots and CPU fan plug. This isn't too much of a problem but it does create a bad look and could impede cooling.

This board is relitivly cool running when paired with a Athlon 64 x2 and 2GB of RAM. The northbridge heatsink is slightly warm to the touch the same as the southbridge. When I turned the PC off after long use I found that the Capacitors and the VRM (Voltage Regulating modules) where also very cool. The board also seems to be build quite solid with the cpu heatsink mount being firmly attached and the heatsinks for the northbridge and southbridge being aligned and perfectly secure. On the other hand this board doesn't feature many solid capacitors which many people would want these days but I haven't had any issue with this as all the capacitors are good japanese brands on this motherboard.

With the Athlon 5600 installed I managed to overclock it from 2.9Ghz to a stable 3.15Ghz which is a fair improvement.

I do however have some very small issues with the software that was supplied. 

Included with the motherboard was;

• Motherboard Drivers
• Fox one overclocking utility
• Fox Logo
• Fox Live Update

I found that the programs were all a little glitchy apart from the overclocking utility. They do not seem to be fully matured just yet and may need to be updated to improve stability and features. The Overclocking utulity is great and I did managed to get a stable overclock. It also monitors temperatures and voltages which seem to be more reliable than other hardware monitoring tools. The fox logo on the other hand didn't seem to work and to me it is a little risky using it as it messes with theBIOS to change the boot photo. After an atempt to change mine it didn't do anything at all so I didn't touch it again. The Fox Update tool is OK but does have a few minor glitches. It does make updating the BIOS and Drivers easier but I wouldn't recomend updating the BIOS with it as it doesn't seem all that stable and messing with the bios is risky enough as it is.

Overall I have found this board to be stable, reliable, and fairly fast with a lot of features. I do however find that the software supplied isn't great. Maybe Foxconn will release a few updates to improve them but until now I have decided not to mess with them. (apart from a little bit of overclocking using Fox One)

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