Looking to buy a new motherboard and processor


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I bought my current motherboard and processor around six years ago and in the intervening six years I haven't kept up with the hardware side of things.

I think my motherboard is on it's way out and want to replace it.

I'm looking for recommendations for motherboards and processors to buy.

My current motherboard is an Asus M2N32 sli deluxe with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ 2.6 GHz processor.

Looking to spend at the most ?150

I'd ideally like it to have as many sata ports as possible and be able to use my existing memory and power supply.

No modern motherboard sockets still support DDRII, it's all DDRIII now, your best bet is to sell your DDRII and buy some DDRIII, it's surprisingly cheap (the 8 gig kit I have cost under ?40 and it's pretty quick).

The cheapest board and CPU I could find in your price range were:

CPU

Board

Unfortunately I couldn't find any board in your price range that has more than 6 SATA sockets, if you want an 8 socket board you'll probably have to spend a bit more money. The kit I added was just over ?150, if you go any cheaper on the motherboard most usually have 4 slots

Damn, I have been out the game to long. Thanks Javik, I'll have a look and save some more pennies up then.

My current mobo has six so if it's got at least six I'm cool with that.

Damn, I have been out the game to long. Thanks Javik, I'll have a look and save some more pennies up then.

My current mobo has six so if it's got at least six I'm cool with that.

Then you should be OK with the parts I picked, they came to ?162 but they're pretty good components for that price, and what's more the ivy bridge i3 should be pretty efficient meaning your current PSU will have enough grunt. If you sell your current memory you'll probably only have a shortfall of around ?10 to make up, if you don't need an 8 gig kit however, this 4 GB kit represents excellent value

View

My dollars to pounds sense isn't too great, but I'm thinking for that price a Pentium G2120, or the low end Ivy Bridge Core i3 and a decent Ivy Bridge motherboard. The B75 series motherboards are reasonably priced, and pretty solid compared to the low end Sandy Bridge boards.

Assuming your needs are being met with a six year old CPU now, you don't need anything high end, and with a 1155 board, you could upgrade the CPU to an i7 down the line once they're old hat.

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