Mon May 02, 2011 10:28 pm
Welcome to the Tech Report!
Have you considered
Fusion E350? It's very energy efficient and
reasonably inexpensive.
If that lacks enough processing oomph for you, an affordable Socket-AM3 solution with integrated graphics should suffice, though it will use a bit more power.
Here are some micro-ATX socket-AM3 motherboards with the 880G+SB850 chipset and USB3:
$95 MSI 880GMA-E45
$97½ MSI 880GMA-E35
$105 Gigabyte GA-880GMA-USB3
$105 Asus M4A88TD-M/USB3
$108 MSI 880GMA-E55
Stick a cheap
Athlon II X2 255 or
Athlon II X3 450 processor on there, add 2x2 or 2x4 GiB of
PC3-12800 or PC3-10600 memory, and you should be well on your way.
Sandy Bridge on LGA1155 would be more energy efficient, but it costs a lot more, too. Matching the
Core i3-2100T with the
P8H67-M PRO/CSM or a combination of
Core i3-2100 + H67 motherboard would be good examples.
You could also do well with an older Clarkdale processor on LGA1156. Pair up the
Core i3-550 with the
GA-H55M-USB3, for example, but it's not really any cheaper than the superior Sandy Bridge options.
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