Basic i3/i5 motherboard... with IDE?

esuhl

Can anyone recommend a good value motherboard for an i3/i5 chip... that has two IDE ports? And ideally without on-board graphics (since I won't use 'em!).

I'm just thinking of using a few spare components to build a second PC...

banger9365

sorry to say no to ide and no the onboard gpu thats built in to the cpu

aerostar

There are SATA to IDE adapter boards available quite cheaply.

Cycrow

Its unlikly u'll find a motherboard with any IDE slots on now. It would be cheaper to just get the cheapest sutible motherboard and add in an IDE card.

i would look for the IDE card first so you know what slot you need on the motherboard (most tend to be pci)

almillar

Please tell me you're not looking for IDE for a DVD drive or something - you can have a SATA DVD burner for £15.
You don't really pay extra for on board graphics (and as above the CPU has to have graphics too) and in fact if you go looking for boards without, you'll end up with the high end ones that are designed to take graphics cards and i7 processors. You might also be surprised at how decent the integrated graphics are now, especially if we're talking about a second PC. If you're installing an old graphics card, you might find that it's just hotter and noisier, and actually not faster, than integrated would be!

esuhl

banger9365 wrote: »

sorry to say no to ide

What? Not at all on any motherboards? That's a pity -- my main Core i7 PC has a motherboard with 2 IDE channels. I sort-of assumed that there must be some decent boards out there still that supported IDE...?

almillar wrote: »

Please tell me you're not looking for IDE for a DVD drive or something - you can have a SATA DVD burner for £15.

It'll be for an IDE hard drive and CD burner. If I could find a motherboard with an IDE interface, it'd save me from buying adapters or new drives...

I guess I wouldn't mind doing without an optical drive, if I could find a motherboard with one IDE channel for the hard disk. It just seems so wasteful to throw old stuff away and buy new...

almillar wrote: »

You don't really pay extra for on board graphics (and as above the CPU has to have graphics too) and in fact if you go looking for boards without, you'll end up with the high end ones that are designed to take graphics cards and i7 processors. You might also be surprised at how decent the integrated graphics are now, especially if we're talking about a second PC. If you're installing an old graphics card, you might find that it's just hotter and noisier, and actually not faster, than integrated would be!

Yeah -- I read a few things yesterday that seemed to suggest that the graphics adapter was built into the CPU itself on the Intel Core range... Again, I couldn't quite believe it! That's crazy!!!

My Core i7 PC doesn't have on-chip graphics (as far as I know -- there's no motherboard support anyway) -- is it just the i3/i5 chips?

Anyway, I have a 1GB nVidia GTS 250 (PCIe) card spare. It does what I need it to do, so I don't need onboard graphics even if they are better. Seems a shame to waste it -- I just assumed that I could save some cash there too. :-/

Ah well... Maybe I should go for something like this:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Intel-Core-I3-4130-3-4Ghz-Asus-H81M-PLUS-Motherboard-Cooler-Pc-Bundle-/141237164840?pt=UK_Motherboards_CPUs&hash=item20e2641b28
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/INTEL-Core-i3-4130-3-4Ghz-ASUS-H81M-PLUS-Motherboard-CPU-Bundle-/121180333748?pt=UK_Motherboards_CPUs&hash=item1c36e926b4
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ASRock-H81M-Socket-1150-Motherboard-and-Intel-Core-i3-3-40GHz-Dual-Core-CPU-/271425610764?pt=UK_Motherboards_CPUs&hash=item3f323a240c

aerostar

Sata-Ide-Sata adapters cheap as chips ! have a couple of these myself.

eBay item number:
290923489174

Nilrem

Given the likely age of any ide HDD or optical drive (I think they finally stopped selling IDE optical drives about 4 years ago), and the cost of an adaptor* vs the cost of a new optical drive I think I'd go for a new drive.

Seriously if you're still running an IDE drive consider putting it in an external housing for low use, as it will be nearing the point where it will die on you.

IIRC you won't get a I3/5/7 motherboard with ide as standard now, as it's pretty much dead and will be supported by a third party add on chip by the manufacturer, which will be a feature you pay for (usually a model or two above the base version of the board).

*£3-5 vs about a tenner for a cheap optical drive (you can get external optical drives for £15-20).

I_have_spoken

Yep, don't compromise new gear with clapped out kit. Most peeps want an SSD boot-drive now, and a 2Tb drive for media.

esuhl

Nilrem wrote: »

Seriously if you're still running an IDE drive consider putting it in an external housing for low use, as it will be nearing the point where it will die on you.

I don't really need another external drive, though... and I have a few spare IDE drives, so even if one dies, I can just whack in another one. I just need to remember to make a drive image once the OS is installed.

I_have_spoken wrote: »

Yep, don't compromise new gear with clapped out kit. Most peeps want an SSD boot-drive now, and a 2Tb drive for media.

Well... I'm not most people! A single 80GB IDE drive will be fine.

I can't really see how the old drive would compromise new components. I've never heard of any damage being caused by old drives...

And with plenty of RAM, the hard drive won't be constantly paging memory to/from disk once everything has booted up & loaded.

I don't need the fastest PC ever, just a decent web/media terminal. I could just get a "disposable" computer -- a small-form-factor Dell or something and throw it out once it gets too slow...

But I thought, with the components I already have, for the same money, I could invest in a nice fast i3/i5 board that would be usable for longer and be better value-for-money in the long-run.

I guess I'll do without an optical drive and get one of those IDE/SATA adapters for the old HDD I have...

Cheers for all the ideas, everyone :beer:

Nilrem

The problem is that your drive (especially if it's 80gb) is likely to be 5-10 years old, and will have been running for a lot of that time.

It's going to be near the end of it's life and certainly not something I would put into a new build, it's also going to be a LOT slower than any modern drive (from memory the 80gb era drives tended to max out at about 50-60MB/s transfer rate at best, a modern 500gb SATA drive sill likely reach 120MB/s with ease).

I tend to try to retire drives to secondary use (additional storage/temporary storage) after about 3-4 years as they become a ticking time bomb, and not something I would want to use for a boot drive.

Also depending on your chosen OS you could easily end up with 40gb+ being used by the OS and essential apps (a 120gb SSD can be had for around £50 and will likely be 3-5 times as fast, and a lot more reliable).