The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

In my experience Gigabyte is the most reputable board manufacturer. I've been using them almost exclusively since I was wowed by the GA-965P-DS3. I have never been dissatisfied one bit with their quality or design. And the one board that did go south they replaced for free with an updated version!!

 

well im not trying to start a war between mobo manufactures,but i have had 3 different gigabyte boards and i have had nothing but trouble with all 3. gigabyte has replaced them with one that works and after i get the replacement they are fine. just something about haveing 3 different boards and all 3 of them have had northbridge problems. thats just my bad luck i guess. i know there are good reliable gigabyte boards.. myself have yet to have one. thats why in the near future i will be trying out a different manufacture. BioStar,ASUS are the top 2 that im looking at. with DFI a close 3rd.
if i stay with my E8400 i think i will go with the Biostar board, but if i do plan on getting the Q9550 i will get a ASUS or DFI board.

 

Well if it's for overclocking I'd definitely go with DFI. ASUS is slowly getting better but I still don't trust them. I've had 4 bad ASUS boards vs 1 bad Gigabyte and ZERO bad DFIs.

Also, ASUS board layout designs are absolute crap. They somehow always manage to make my case look messier than it needs to be. Most notably one ASUS with the damn mains connector right in the middle of the board directly below the CPU socket. I could have punched whoever thought that up...

Both Gigabyte and DFI facilitate for easy wire routing and a cleaner overall layout. Not to mention they don't have any boards that are famous for failing regularly *cough*P5N-E SLI*cough*.

 

these are the 3 im looking at. all 3 have main power,ide plugins in the same spot. all on the side and up front where they need to be. all have 6-8 sata plugins as well.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...136050&page=1&bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=True

same price for them also.

 

i really do not liek my DFI. yes it was £120 vs £150 of my old asus, but honestly, mort was right, once you have the OC ability with the sexiest of BIOS's going to another is hard! lol

i have had 1 GB and it was DOA. i have had to RMA both my ASUS' (well ihave had 3, but i returned that ASAP, when i realised my mobo was not a problem for me) and the second RMA was my fault for taking a screwdriver to a component, under the VRMs lol.

but then again, each to their own. i havent had a problem with the 2 foxconn boards i used when i was selling buitl to order systems on ebay.

 

Yeah IMO the DFI P45-T2RS is your best choice for price, performance, and features. Though I know a few people who love the P5Q and swear by it. The Biostar I also wouldn't personally vouch for but the reviews look good and I know plenty of people using Biostar boards problem-free. The connector layouts look fine on those boards as well. All three should be solid boards as they are Intel chipsets.

 

speaking of processes. toshiba have hit 16nm!

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2009/06/16/toshiba-claims-16nm-breakthrough/1?tcs=nl

 

I meant the bios of the asus ws sexy

 

Oh yeah ASUS BIOS are nice

 

16nm!!!! Thats friggin incredible! And most of the companies haven't even perfected 32nm. Looks to me like Toshiba could be in a very powerful position indeed.

 

Rob,
Read the name, "Heat Spreader"! LOL!! That's what it does. It keeps the heat even across the chips as well as increasing the surface area that the air contacts to help remove the heat!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

The high-end Gigabyte boards have proven a little soso to be honest, but Gigabyte are certainly the #1 manufacturer for low-midrange boards that work. DFI boards tend to have rather confusing BIOSes, and obviously, if you buy a microATX board you should expect less functionality, at least straight out of the box.
Cheap Asus and ASRock boards are pretty much guaranteed to fail in a short lifetime. The higher end ones aren't as bad, but agreed, their design leaves a lot to be desired.
The Asus BIOS does more than the Gigabyte, but ultimately is let down by the quality of the board itself. It offers several advanced config options that Gigabyte BIOSes don't offer outside P45, yet the maximum FSB of the chipset is so low (460) that none of them ever need to be used.
DFI boards are still very picky about certain hardware which makes them a big risk to use in a lot of systems. Biostar is the most attractive proposition at the moment, but of course they don't make X48 boards and their history of mediocre quality products is hard to ignore.

I tend to find heatspreaders on RAM only necessary when using four sticks together. Two sticks it doesn't seem to be necessary.

 

Agreed but that didn't stop me from popping the heatsinks off my mushkin and applying some ceramique

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820146793

Necessary or not, that's good RAM cooling. lol

 

Why do I like the sound of that LOL! Sounds to me like it has A LOT of features

 

Yeah the BIOS is confusing at first but if you spend some time exploring and reading all the options you can learn it fairly easily. DFI boards are made for overclocking.

 

true, but there are a lot of Yes/No options in there that have basically no bearing on how far you can overclock, but probably will cause problems.

 

Well I just don't mess with anything if I don't need it or I don't know what it does. It has very fine voltage adjustments though and a lot of options that DO affect OCing.

 

Hey estuansis,
is your current clock, stable in vista or windows 7? If so, I may just consider DFI for my next build

 

Yep fully Vista and 7 stable. The only reason I don't have it at 3.8 right now

 

Heck yah! So, XP will handle 3.8? But vista/7 wont?