November Value Gaming PC Buyer's Guide - Page 3

Motherboard

Even when assembling a value gaming configuration, buying a high-quality motherboard is still the best route to take. The motherboard provides the base for your entire computer and will either aid or impede your overall performance. It is important that the motherboard combine high performance, stability, features, expandability and overclocking, all with a price that won't break the bank.

This month also marks the beginning of out DDR transition for the AMD value gaming system. Now that the VIA KT266A boards are finally being released, we now have a powerful, fully-featured AMD DDR platform that won't break the bank.

AMD Motherboard: EPoX EP-8KHA+ - $102

One of the main benefits of the VIA KT266A is not only do we have an affordable, high-performance DDR setup for AMD processors, but prices are also incredibly low. In fact, many of these KT266A boards can be found at a lower price than competing KT133A products. This is good news all around, with the only negative being a relatively sparse selection of available motherboards. This time out, we're going with the EPoX EP-8KHA+, a product that seems to fit with our value gaming requirements quite well. Other than a small BIOS problem with the initial run (which has been quickly fixed by EPoX and doesn't affect later runs) this board looks to the front-runner in the KT266A race, and at $102, you couldn't ask for a lower price.

Pentium 4 Motherboard: Pentium 4 Motherboard: MSI 845 Pro - $105

Fitting a Pentium-1.5 GHz into our value gaming rig isn't as easy as it sounds, even with the low-cost i845 chipset and SDRAM memory. Many i845 boards are still relatively pricey, and even finding a nice board supporting the older Socket 423 architecture can be difficult. But once again MSI came to the rescue. Their i845 Pro has all the performance and features a hardcore gamer could want and checks in with a very low $105 price tag. This is actually cheaper than many Pentium III motherboards and represents an incredible deal for the budget-minded gamer.