Which is the cheapest mainboard for Coffee Lake?

[flapjack]

I want to make A new hackintosh with i3 8100 cpu and ddr4 ram. Can you recommend A cheapest mainboard for this System? Thank you very much.

 

[trs96]

Here's the best low cost choice to combine with an i3-8100.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BQ9XQPP/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

Has onboard DP output if you ever want to upgrade to a 4K monitor in the future. I also like that you get an Intel GbE LAN and dual M.2 for an NVME boot drive. All for $84.99 ? That's an incredible deal. If you use Mac Mini 8,1 SysDef it should be fairly easy to get everything working quite well.

Compares quite favorably to an 8,1 2018 Mac Mini base model. About 1/2 the price if you already have a case and PSU. $377 for a new highly compatible with macOS, 8th Gen system, what's not to like about that ? The only two things you won't get is 4 TH3 ports and the ultra small Aluminum Mac Mini case in Space Grey.

 

[Bafonso]

I'm about to put a GPU box together based on a i3 8100 and was thinking of this board. But now I'm wondering what would be the alternative mobo for TB support? I actually don't have any devices using thunderbolt (except some external HDDs but those also have usb3) but part of me is wondering about future proofing...

 

[trs96]

I'm about to put a GPU box together based on a i3 8100 and was thinking of this board. But now I'm wondering what would be the alternative mobo for TB support? I actually don't have any devices using thunderbolt (except some external HDDs but those also have usb3) but part of me is wondering about future proofing...

If you've gotten along fine without Thunderbolt in the past why worry about having it ? There are always other options to use. Besides TH3 doesn't work all that well on a hackintosh. I'm not sure what you mean by a GPU box ? With an mATX case you can simply use the gfx card internally and not need an external GPU at all. TH3 makes sense on a Mac mini because you can't add anything else internally. It will also work perfectly with full support from Apple. On a hack, it's a mixed bag. It also gets very expensive to buy everything you'd need to use it fully.

 

[Bafonso]

Thank you so much, this is very valuable. My interest in TB would be for a potential sound card such as UAD Apollo but I don't think I will get one anytime soon. My current sound card uses ethernet connection so hopefully it will work fine

The background about GPU box is that I'm setting up this machine mainly as a linux machine learning box with my 980gtx but I'd also like to run hackintosh on it as my MacBook Pro is getting old for many things.

 

[flapjack]

Here's the best low cost choice to combine with an i3-8100.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BQ9XQPP/?tag=tonymacx86com-20

Has onboard DP output if you ever want to upgrade to a 4K monitor in the future. I also like that you get an Intel GbE LAN and dual M.2 for an NVME boot drive. All for $84.99 ? That's an incredible deal. If you use Mac Mini 8,1 SysDef it should be fairly easy to get everything working quite well.

View attachment 363106

Compares quite favorably to an 8,1 2018 Mac Mini base model. About 1/2 the price if you already have a case and PSU. $377 for a new highly compatible with macOS, 8th Gen system, what's not to like about that ? The only two things you won't get is 4 TH3 ports and the ultra small Aluminum Mac Mini case in Space Grey.

View attachment 363107

Thank you very much