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Ollie

mATX Motherboards?

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What's the best one? I have a good selection of components left over from my PC upgrade and want to put them into a small case. Does anyone have any experience with these?

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I dooooo! I have an asus pk5-vm!

 

Its just as good as a normal motherboard, except perhaps less pci slots. One thing to watch tho, AIRFLOW. If you don't watch, you can cook all of your components. Just make sure none of your components are really extreme speeds - especially graphics.

 

It is not practical to have a gaming pc in a little box. I used to have a cube boxy thing, and while it was pretty awesome, it was always hot if i left it on for long periods of time, or did any gaming.

 

Basically in terms of good makes, go with the good makes for normal boards. Personally I recommend asus if you can get one, and tbh, go with a slightly dearer one if your budget allows. The features are definitely worth it.

 

If you see one in particular you like, post it here and/or check reviews. Thats usually a good way to gauge if its a good job or not =)

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I dooooo! I have an asus pk5-vm!

 

Thats a great mATX board. Unfortunately, i'm an old age huge fuck off board kinda guy but yeah the PK5-VM is a good choice.

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Thats a great mATX board. Unfortunately, i'm an old age huge fuck off board kinda guy but yeah the PK5-VM is a good choice.

 

It really is awesome, I think I paid a good £60 for it at the time. Its a great clocker. I think people underestimate the power of a really good motherboard, its generally forgotten about when pricing a pc :( I tend to weigh more money towards the motherboard and the PSU when I price up a PC.

 

I did love having a small boxy thing, but the motherboard is now in my antec nine hundred case with buckets of airflow :D weeeeeeee.

 

I have a e6750 (overclocked ofc) and a 7950gt (fanless) which produced an enormous amount of heat, and had to unfortunately rehome it!

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The best is any one with the AMD 780G chipset, it's got an integrated GPU that makes it a home theater PC out of the box. Really great stuff.

 

If you have an Intel CPU though, I can't say.

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The best is any one with the AMD 780G chipset, it's got an integrated GPU that makes it a home theater PC out of the box. Really great stuff.

 

If you have an Intel CPU though, I can't say.

 

Yeah this seems like sounds advice.

 

 

What components do you have Ollie?

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Thanks for the advice so far guys, these are what I took out of my old box:

 

AMD AM2 Dual Core 3000 (I think, it's currently got dried thermal paste on it).

4Gb 667 RAM (in 4 x 1Gig dimms)

nVidia 7600GT

80Gb WD Sata drive (intend to get another one for Raid 0)

 

So I need to buy a case, mobo and PSU. I'm thinking of this case. Apparently it is actually quite big and seems to have lots of cooling potential.

 

I have had Abit boards in the past and have an Asus board now, both of which have been amazing tbh.

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Great, you've got an AM2 processor.

 

You should definitely get a 780G mATX board (any Asus or Gigabyte should do fine) and a nice case and PSU, and then simply connect it to your TV for a very capable media center. You wouldn't even need your graphics card as the board has one itself (not quite as good for gaming but far better when decoding video).

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