Which motherboard to get

Boohoo

I have £220 in Amazon gift certificates to use up by the end of this month before i lose them.
As the money is with Amazon i can not use any other sellers on their site.
I want to get a new barebone computer or a motherboard,cpu and memory as i have O/S,graphics card and a 160gb sata hard drive.
I use the computer for downloading and converting avi files to dvd as i dont have dvd player that will play avi files,general internet use and sometimes watching football over the internet.
My current setup is Athlon sempron 2800+,160gb hard drive,broadband,1.5gb of memory and Windows 7 which i know realy needs 2gb.
Any help/advice will be of great help.

pcombo

What type is your graphics card PCI/AGP/PCI-E ??

By the looks of things it seems like an AGP and you would probably need to buy a new one.


"downloading and converting avi files to dvd"

Probably shouldn't have posted this bit as most people will think its some sort of illegal activity like download films then convert.

Boohoo

Hello.

I have an AGP card but i dont mind getting another one.
As for the converting bit i download a lot of tv progs soap and whatnot and as i the dvd player i have connected to the main tv doesnt play avi's thats why have to convert to dvd format. I will eventually upgrade it but thats not for another few months.
Vince

bengalknights

Gigabyte AM2+/AM3 motherboard (either with built in graphics ATI 3870) or standalone will do you a very good job and provide you with a easy upgrade path

puppet1984

you could use vouchers to get a dvd player that plays avis would save time

Boohoo

Thank you for the replies.
As in my earlier post about dvd player not playing avi.s i will be upgrading that and other gear at the end of the year so i will not be buying one now.
I am after a motherboard,cpu and memory for about £220 and i can only buy them from amazon.
I was looking on this site about people having the vouchers debited from the balance after they had expiered and it made me check mine as i was going to wait till lxmas.

bengalknights

you should easily be able to get a phenom 2 processor am3 mobo and the necessary ram for less tham £200

tomsolomon

The trouble with buying any computer equipment is the depretiation due to new products continuously flooding the market.

I had some money last year to upgrade my pc, but instead of trying to buy everything in one go, I blew the entire lot on a MOBO, CPU and memory, and made do for the time being with my existing SATA HDD's dual layer DVD rewriter and PSU, the MOBO came with onboard graphics which was a big plus, it also has full 1080p HD video and HD audio, with an HDMI connector on the back to plug into the tele.

The toal cost was around £180 as far as I remember, but it got me a very good half decent system that is more than upgradable, and should last me 3-5 years at least

The trick is to try and avoid low end or cheap components, and go for the best your money can get. That way it will last longer before you have to upgrade again.

As for prebuilt systems, well tbh I haven't ever bought one. My first PC was built for me by a friend, and I have been building and upgrading my own computers ever since.

Prebuilt tend to be over priced and can be self built for a fraction of the price normaly. It depends how confident you are at putting the thing together, and more importantly, following instructions.
If neither of these is you, get one built or buy one prebuilt.

P.S. I try and steer clear of bundles also. All of my components are carefully select on their individual merit, features and the amount of money I have budgeted for them....

turbobob

Depends how you want to allocate your budget. As memory is quite expensive at the moment, going with a single 2gb module for now will give you a wider range of options for processor and motherboard. You will also need some sort of graphics card as AGP motherboards are obsolete.

Some idea's -

Athlon II X3 435 2.9ghz triple core
Asrock M3A785GMH/128M motherboard (includes Radeon HD3200 on board graphics)

Intel Core i3 530 (this CPU has built in graphics processor, which is usable when combined with a H55 based motherboard)
Gigabyte GA-H55M-S2H motherboard

You can substitute the X3 for a quad core Athlon II X4 630 2.8ghz for a little extra. Things like video encoding generally benefits from more cores, although it depends on the exact software. The i3 is going to be faster in most circumstances except possibly in apps that really benefit from the extra cores. I think they are all decent though.

Something I noticed was that Amazon seems to have some pricing anomalies. If you search for "DDR3 4gb" there is a Corsair kit for about £70 which is cheap by current standards, as most 4gb DDR3 kits are over £100.