Straight to the point gaming MOBO

[Info Tech Geek]

I need some pointers on what you guys feel is a straight to the point motherboard and why. I would like one that is my main/portable the case has a handle. Some people say no onboard for home systems and others say all onboard for portable. The graphics card cannot be onboard in my situation.

[Tim_axe]

By motherboard...you mean pretty much the motherboard & case? Because I don't see very many motherboards with handles.

Any ideas on a budget? I'll see if I can price something fun in the $600 to $900 range and post back. I'll be focusing on portable and gaming. I'm going to leave out the monitor/LCD, because that really increases the price. Anyways...I'll reply again after I put something together...




Edit:
A computer (Shuttle Barebones + 120GB HDD + CPU + RAM) for ~$630 -- http://secure.newegg.com/app/WishR.asp?ID=928647

You'd need to get a CD-ROM drive, and video card. But basically everything else is covered pretty well. The A64 3000+ is pretty powerful in games although I couldn't find the 1MB L2 version for a decent price.

Don't know how well it would overclock though...

[Info Tech Geek]

no, the case I own has a handle. This is just the mobo

[Tim_axe]

What is the processor you have already? (Each family of processors needs a compatible motherboard, IE Intel P4 & AMD Athlon64 are not compatible) Or is this a Mobo + CPU combo?

Usually you can pick up a full featured motherboard for around $100. And most of the big/popular companies have a pretty good package in the $50 range too.

It really doesn't matter too much what motherboard you get. What matters is the chipset. For AMD, this is usually nForce2 chipset (VIA chipset is an option, but I don't know it well). For Intel, there is a lot of chipsets (SiS & VIA & Intel I think) that probably take some extra research before getting it right, because at least one of them supposedly have huge issues with math / FloatingPointUnit? (at least in laptops I think?).

[CXGJarrod]

If your looking for just motherboard then I recommend Gigabyte. I just bought this motherboard and it works great. No integrated video, support for SATA and IDE drives, hardware raid and all kinds of other goodies.

http://tw.giga-byte.com/Motherboard/...0V%20Pro2.htm#
Edit: Its for AMD processor, but they do have boards for Intel.

[SDK]

Before we suggest you a motherboard, you got to tell us

What processor and what socket?
What type of memory you want to put : DDR or DDR-2?
PCI-Express Video Card or AGP?
What type of speaker you have? (You can live with Onboard sound if you have 2 speaker but I recommand atleat a cheap SoundBlaster for 5.1 Speaker)
IDE or S-ATA hard drive?