Making a high spec rig with a low budget motherboard?

[MarcusKalman]

Hi,

im just wondering if it was possible to make a gaming pc with high spec pc parts (16gb ddr4 ram, nvidia gtx 1070ti, reasonably high power source, 250gb ssd, etc)  but with an old, low budget motherboard ($30 or under)?

[themctipers]

$30 motherboard no, not without it being a used one, or a new old stock LGA 775 motherboard I guess

 

$100 ish motherboard with b350, sure. 

 

but, yes, you can.. it just won't be that good..

[Mira Yurizaki]

"old" board seems to be a weird qualifier, so I'm just going to ignore it.

 

Is it possible to use high-end components using say an H310? Yes. RAM speed largely doesn't matter in Intel platforms so whether the board supports faster RAM speeds is irrelevant. You can find boards with NVMe M.2 slots if storage speed is desired. The only real issue is if you care about the other peripherals like audio, USB port count, and such.

[Mooshi]

Would you make a gourmet dinner with a dollar store steak? Motherboard is the core component that keeps everything else connected.

[jiyeon]

Having bought pretty neat parts for my PC, and chose a cheap, garbage motherboard to go with them... Well, you could, but it's not a fun time especially in overclocking.

[LogicalDrm]

Its not the most expensive part of build anyway. You spend most on CPU, GPU and RAM with current pricing. As someone who has bought cheap PSU, cheap mobo and cheap case, cheap case is the one thing I could get again. Cheap PSU is timebomb. If it doesn't blow in first 3 weeks (giving another reason to dislike anything Antec), it just might right after warranty ends. Cheap mobo is all good if you don't plan to do anything special and don't really upgrade so often. They are cramped, lack features, lack OC capability (even when its supported) etc. Cheap case only really has poor materials and usually poor thermals.

 

Parts which I would be cheap with:

• CPU. You can always upgrade later if you are smart with mobo choice.
• RAM. Non-heatspreader sticks are as good as those fancy RGB ones.
• GPU. You might get bit higher temps and more noise, but performance is mostly same whether you get Asus or Club3D.
• Cooler. You don't even need this if you go with budget CPU. And if you do get something more, there are ton of cheap air coolers to choose from. Just do your research about CPU and cooler beforehand (current gen i7s have cooling issues etc.).