Widescreen Gaming Forum

One other thing about choosing a mobo.. opinions never end.

I've also had two DFI mobos and I loved them both. one is still running my HTPC - they never gave me andy grief.

I've had three ASUS boards; one crapped out, one was sold, and one, which is now 11 years old dis till running my moms' old desktop.

Though i have a friend that went through two MSI boards inside of two months.

I have zero experience withe ASrock, but I've always taken a good look at them when i shop on a tight budget, because I've always read good things.

Most manufacturers seem good, for the most part.But they all have particular models that are cunty.

Decide what you require from a board, what you do not, find problems in reviews (i use NCIX/newegg/Amazon user, and "professional" reviews), and also check out any BIOS updates once you marrow your list down. And try to get oen that supports future CPUs. Not having to upgrade mobo and ram when you want a new CPU is nice.

For the record, I'm super-duper happy with my current Gigabyte P67A-Ud5-B3. It was a little pricey, but it has all that i need. My secodn choice was the ASUS P675A-somethign-Pro

One other thing about choosing a mobo.. opinions never end.

Ne'er a truer word spoken.

Decide what you require from a board, what you do not, find problems in reviews (i use NCIX/newegg/Amazon user, and "professional" reviews), and also check out any BIOS updates once you marrow your list down. And try to get oen that supports future CPUs. Not having to upgrade mobo and ram when you want a new CPU is nice.

Easier said than done. Intel have been fans of requiring platform shifts to upgrade for years and years. It's only really since AM2 that AMD have moved away from that model, but even they occasionally require it.

Slot position/design is also a major pain in the rear for me too. I've seen some that has a PCI Express x1 slot above the x16 slot while others don't. Having one just above the x16 leaves room for other things like sound card or a TV Tuner. The worst ones are the designs where you have a x16 slot, a PCI slot, and another x16 slot. I mean, come ON.

Seems like the general consensus like Gigabyte boards. I've owned a couple of ASUS boards in the past. Yeah, they were very solid boards. Can't find anything wrong with them. But today... well, I dunno. There's something odd about a board that is giving people problems when ASUS should be up there in terms of high quality standards. And I have always associated ASUS as being the luxury brand for motherboards. They are expensive as heck but their quality should be top notch.

I'm now leaning towards the GA-Z68XP-UD3P linked above. I think Gigabyte needs to redesign their website to make a comparison chart of their motherboards. The boards using the Z68 chipset lists several models and all of them are either one or two letter different. It makes choosing one difficult as you can't get a sense of "scale" like the ASUS line-up. But oh well... Anyway, that's what I'm leaning towards.

Hopefully, when I finally decide on a board, Newegg will have it in stock...

side note: Newegg has a LGA1155 mounting bracket for my heatsink, w00t! That saved me 90 bucks as I was going to get a Noctua NH-C14.

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t3h bl0g | Old Warriors Soceity | my BFBC2 stats

When it comes to mounting systems LGA1155 = LGA1156. They're physically the same dimensions. Check Intels design documents if you don't believe me. ;)

The PCI-E slot thing drives me insane.

My EX58-UD5 has a PCI-E x4 slot above the first x16 slot. "Great!" I thought, "I can put my shiny new USB3 card in that slot, rather than put it in one of the x16 slots and have a GPU cooking itself due to lack of airflow!"

Except you do that and it disables the third PCI-E x16 slot (which only runs at x8 anyway) where my second GPU is so that GPU1 doesn't quick-roast by being backed right up to the rear of GPU2 - in my tests, GPU1 was hitting 98*C when butted up against GPU2, as against ~75*C when I put GPU2 in the third slot.

Not.

Happy.

...

I'm running a Noctua C14P in a low-power system at the minute. It's total overkill for the CPU I've got it cooling, but it means that delta between idle and load is next to non-existent, and it's next to silent. In fact, the loudest part of the system is the PSU fan. :D I can't hear the system at all unless I get really close to try.

Love Noctua products now, ever since I got my first fan from them. Any future heatsink and/or case I get has to have Noctua fans in it. No compromises!

Okay, so I spent a good hour or so looking at Gigabyte's motherboard spec pages comparing two boards -- the GA-Z68XP-UD3P and the GA-Z68XP-UD3R. The "P" model is the one I mentioned and linked to earlier. And I spent that much time trying to figure out just what the stupid difference was between the two. Gigabyte's printed specs are identical. And I do mean identical. Every single I/O features on both boards are exactly the same. And it was only after I started looking at the motherboard pictures to try to see if there's any differences that I noticed it -- the power delivery. The "P" model is a 12 phase power design. The "R" is not. That's all. FUCK!

Yeah, Gigabyte is nice and all for having options. But dammit, a billion boards with minor differences means fragmented market on where you can get that one specific board that you laid your eyes on! At least the P model I'm aiming for is a 12 phase. *sigh* Aggravating research...

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t3h bl0g | Old Warriors Soceity | my BFBC2 stats