Holiday Motherboard Guide

Budget Motherboards

For those with around $60~$75 looking for a solid SOHO board, we recommend the following products.

Intel

On the Intel side of the fence, one very interesting board is the ZOTAC NF630i ITX. Featuring the same GeForce 7100 chipset in our entry level selection, you also get two SATA 3Gb/s ports, a PCI-E x1 slot, 4GB memory support, 5.1 HD Audio, DVI/VGA output, and 8 USB ports. If you are looking for a basic ITX board, this one should be at the top of the list.

A couple of honorable mentions in this price range go to the XFX GeForce 7150 uATX board and the Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L. Both boards offered above average performance for the price range, a high degree of quality, and very good support.

AMD

The 780G chipset is one of the best budget IG designs we have worked with over the years. This is the chipset that made integrated graphics relevant again. One of the best boards in this price category is the ASRock A780FullDisplayPort (whew, long name) based on the 780G and SB700 chipsets for $70. ASRock throws in a DisplayPort card and a DVI to HDMI convertor besides loading the board out with six 3Gb/s SATA ports featuring RAID 0/1/10, 5.1 HD Audio, Gigabit LAN, one PCI-E x16 slot, one PCI-E x1 slot, two PCI slots, and support for 16GB of memory. This board has been rock solid for us and will be AM3 ready.

We also like the NVIDIA 720a based Foxconn 720MX board that features Gigabit LAN, 7.1 HD Audio, four 3Gb/s SATA ports with RAID 0/1/0+1/5, VGA/DVI-D output, one PCI-E x16 slot, one PCI-E x1 slot, two PCI slots, Hybrid SLI, and GeForce Boost technologies. This board has been very stable during testing and would make for a great SOHO system.

A couple of honorable mentions in this price range go to the MSI K9A2VM-FD, JetWay JXBlue-N78V, and ZOTAC GF8100. These boards offered good performance for the price range, a high degree of quality for the price, and very good feature sets.