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Mikhailtech has posted their recommendations for this month's sub-$400 basic PC that does a little bit of everything, gaming included.



With a good Socket 754 motherboard still out of our budget by $20 or more we're left with a Socket A solution. NVIDIA's nForce chipset still reigns supreme on the AMD platform. This month we decided to spend an extra $4 and opt for a much more potent nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset which supports dual channel memory (our previous pick was the non-Pro, non-Ultra version of the board). The added memory bandwidth accounts for a significant performance boost. While primarily an OEM builder and not big on enthusiast-herding features, Biostar makes rock solid boards that do have some overclocking settings. The M7NCD Pro has 3x DIMM slots for up to 3GB of memory (though we only recommend populating 2 banks for dual channel support), 2x UltraDMA 133 channels for up to 4 devices, an 8x/4x AGP slot, 5x PCI slots, 2x onboard USB2.0 ports (with support or
6), integrated Realtek 8201BL 10/100M LAN, and integrated Realtek ALC650 6-channel AC97 audio.
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