Question I can’t find a motherboard!

PowerPCFan

Prominent
Jan 24, 2023
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I have a really tight budget of around 200-300 dollars. I was following the 200 dollar pc build from Zac‘s tech turf on YouTube. I found all the parts he got for the same price except for the motherboard. He used a zotac a55 itx in his video. I couldn’t find any (not even that one) that were under $150. I checked eBay, Craigslist, Newegg, MicroCenter, Amazon, and more. No luck. Any recommendations on a really cheap motherboard? I will be putting a used intel i5 from 2019 in it. I can probably afford a more expensive one but why waste money on the expensive stuff when there’s a cheaper option? Highest price I will pay is $70 for a motherboard.

If you have any suggestions on where I should find a cheap mobo that’d be really helpful. It’s ok if it’s used! Just some links would be nice.
 
I5 is a family of cpu and can have a couple different socket types depending exactly on what generation of cpu. A date does not help that much because there is a lot of overlap.

The much worse issue is the motherboard you link is for a AMD cpu and a I5 is a intel. Zero chance of that working.
 
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DSzymborski

Titan
Moderator
Yeah, need to know exactly what i5 you have. The i5 CPUs released in 2019 are ninth-gen, but I can't make a recommendation based off of that; if you're unsure of the model, you'd necessarily be unsure of the release year, too.

An a55 motherboard is for very old AMD CPUs more than a decade ago. There's no i5 in existence that would work with this motherboard. If you do in fact have a ninth-gen i5, you wouldn't even be using the same RAM as that AMD motherboard.

There's a fundamental problem with your whole approach here. Videos of used, budget builds are not generally viable templates. The availability and price both will vary considerably; the components for builds like this aren't pre-selected and then purchased, they're purchased because the deal was out there. It's not like building a new PC; if you want your own very low-budget build, you need to find the deals first and then figure out the best way to build a coherent system out of some of the deals you find. You're putting the cart before the horse.
 

PowerPCFan

Prominent
Jan 24, 2023
33
5
545
I5 is a family of cpu and can have a couple different socket types depending exactly on what generation of cpu. A date does not help that much because there is a lot of overlap.

The much worse issue is the motherboard you link is for a AMD cpu and a I5 is a intel. Zero chance of that working.
If I bought that motherboard I would have used an amd cpu :)