Price Guide, January 2006 - Motherboards

Introduction

Welcome to our latest motherboard price guide. We are seeing the newly released i975X chipset based motherboards have begun to slowly roll into the market, while we expect the i955X based boards to be gradually phased out. While some deals on certain pieces of hardware are made even sweeter by including mail-in rebates, there aren't too many available this week. We are also expecting the new 945GM based boards to be released some time during Q1 '06. These boards will support both the Yonah and Merom processors.

Please do remember to look into the RTPE for your computer hardware buying needs. Our RTPE lists motherboards, RAM, CPUs, video cards, sound cards, flash memory, hard drives, optical drives, and LCD panels. Don't forget that you can also search by category, brand, or a particular merchant. The RTPE also can show you the latest in pricing fluctuations, special prices on refurbished products and which specific goods that have rebates. As always, our RTPE database is constantly growing and should contain much of your hardware necessities. Check back often, and if it doesn't contain a certain piece of hardware in the specific categories we have covered, please feel free to contact us and let us know what is missing.

Athlon 64 - Socket 939

It appears as though that not too many of the nForce 4 SLI boards have had any significant price changes. We can see the MSI nForce4 SLI (939) K8N Neo4 SLI [RTPE: MS-7100-030] is up about $11 and is currently going for $141 shipped. The K8N Neo4 is a very popular choice which features 10 USB ports, 2 Ethernet ports, 7.1-channel Creative Sound Blaster Live 24-bit H/W audio, 3 IEEE1394 ports, and 4 SATA II ports with RAID 0/1 support. The DFI nForce4 SLI (939) Infinity [RTPE: DFI Infinity (SLI)] is also an exceptional choice, going for about $118 shipped.

At times, having to deal with mail-in rebates can be too much of a hassle, but at other times it's well worth the trouble. We have found that the Abit nForce4 SLI (939) KN8 SLI [RTPE: KN8 SLI] is on sale for just about $109 shipped after a $30 mail-in rebate. We'd like to point out that this rebate is valid until February 9, 2006 and must be postmarked within 30 days of purchase. If you're not afraid of purchasing a refurbished product, you can pick up the KN8 SLI for $78 shipped over at Newegg (sales tax may be applicable depending on your state of residence). Many times, a refurbished product can come with all the bells and whistles that usually come with it. There also may have been absolutely nothing wrong with the returned product and was only returned because the initial purchaser thought there was; although your mileage may vary.