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Well, the subject line says it all. I'm building a budget gaming PC, and I don't mind if I'm a little behind the bleeding edge. What do you guys recommend for around $100? I'll be adding a seperate video card, but I don't care if the sound is integrated. It'll be an AMD build as well. So far, all I have is the case (Antec Three Hundred), and I'll be buying parts slowly but surely over the next couple months, starting with the MB.

Thanks!

It's best to wait until you can buy all of the pieces at once. You should at least buy enough pieces together so that you can immediately use whatever you buy.
Almost nothing depreciates as quickly as computer parts that you've purchased but not yet installed.

Do you have any existing components that you intend to re-use? What are you currently using?

Right now I'm using a circa 2003 laptop, and my wife's Dell laptop (from around '08)...I've got nothing worth reusing from my last build (2001) except keyboard and mouse. Oh and a DVD/CD-RW drive. The laptop has served me very well, but I've been bitten by the urge to build a computer again and enjoy some newer gaming.

The reason I bought the case was I saw a good deal on it. I am saving to buy as much in a chunk as possible - it just might be a while. I've been following the TR summer 2011 budget build guide - I like the MB they recommend but just wondering if anyone had an opinion on a good one for around $100.

What do you intend to do with this computer? If you don't intend to play 3D games, then integrated graphics would suffice.

How did you decide that you would use an AMD processor, and do you mean a socket-FM1 (Llano) or socket-AM3+ (Deneb, Thuban or eventually Bulldozer) processor?

Here's a socket-FM1 motherboard with a combination deal on a matching Llano processor. You still need some DDR3 memory to make it work.
Asus F1A75-M + AMD A8-3850

Here's a socket-AM3+ motherboard that would work with Deneb, Thuban or Bulldozer:
Gigabyte GA-880GMA-USB3

Here's an LGA1155 motherboard with a combination deal on a matching Sandy Bridge processor. You would still need DDR3.
Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 + Intel Core i3-2105

JustAnEngineer wrote:

What do you intend to do with this computer? If you don't intend to play 3D games, then integrated graphics would suffice.

Umm...

Klanky wrote:

I'm building a budget gaming PC,

Anyhow... my recommendation would be any AM3/AM3+ mobo from Asus that fits your price range that has an AMD chipset and 4 DIMM slots. Asus's low and mid range AMD motherboards are reliable workhorses; I've had very good luck with them over the past ~5 years.

Up to you whether AM3+ compatibility matters to you; you'll have a wider selection if you're willing to consider the slightly older AM3 ones as well.

It's going to be a gaming PC. Playing through a bunch of my old games from the early 2000s got me interested in it again. A couple months of reading and following Tech Report, and I'm ready to go for it. Like I said, I have no problem being behind the tech curve a little to save on costs. Once I get the system built, upgrading down the road shouldn't be a problem, it's just the first investment of buying practically everything that is a little steep right now.

I made the mistake of leaving my first build with my parents when I moved out and just using a laptop. If I had taken the build with me, I could have upgraded it piece-by-piece as the years went by (heck, it's an ATX case, albeit an ugly beige one, so I could even still be using it now).

And now I feel like an idiot. I just realized that the TR Summer 2011 budget build recommends a MB for around $100. For some reason in my head I thought they were recommending a $179 one or something. Bah!

Heres a cheap MB cpu combo 79$ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813138323 only thing i could find quickly You say you have a cd/dvd drive allready and this board does have a IDE drive socket,a single pcie 16 slot,but this is bottom of the barrel starter set, not a whole lot of upgradability beside the graphics card and cpu.If i was you i would wait to get a am3plus board and at least a dual core,since bulldozer is around the corner at least be able to upgrade to it or even start with a cheap model if you cant get the cpu for a couple months.......save money and do it right,Just make sure you futureproof yourself as much as possible,so if you get back into it bigtime you can build on what you have allready.

I would avoid that motherboard with the NVidia chipset. If you're looking for a bargain basement socket-AM3 motherboard, how about this ASRock 880GM-LE for $60? It has only two memory slots and it uses the older SB710 southbridge, but it supports 125-watt Deneb and Thuban processors. Equip it with a processor and a pair of DDR3 DIMMs and you could use the on-board graphics with DVI output until you could afford to add a capable 3D gaming graphics card like a Radeon HD6850 ($160 -20MIR) or HD6870 ($175 -20MIR) or a GeForce GTX560 ($185 -30MIR).

If you save up until you can afford a PCIe graphics card at the same time as the motherboard, processor and memory, this socket-AM3+ Gigabyte GA-970A-D3 for $88 -10MIR could be a good choice.

JAE's suggestions look reasonable.

If you're willing to spend closer to your $100 limit, my recommendations would be:

1. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131660 - Has SATA 6Gb and USB3, and onboard graphics that doesn't totally suck if you want to build incrementally and wait a bit on the video card.

2. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131651 - Better southbridge than #1, no integrated graphics, more expansion slots (since it is full-size ATX instead of micro-ATX).

3. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131734 - Similar to #2 but with AM3+ compatibility (if you want an upgrade path to the upcoming Bulldozer core CPUs).

Thanks for all the suggestions - I think I'm going to go with the ASUS M5A88-V EVO from the TR build guide. Looks like it has everything I need, with the Socket AM3+ so I can continue to upgrade the processor in the future. Oh and I can use the cheapy onboard video until I get a decent, dedicated video card.