The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

lol well depeend on the board. most nvidia chips = fail lol.

personally, for me, asus are the best, i cant stand this DFI board, which cant get my E5200 to 3GHz, and had faulty sata cables.

the one GB board i had was DOA, but everytime i see a review, i see a bios where the values are incremental, which is annoying.

then again i have had hardly any problem with vista 64, which everyone seems to hate aswell.

on a side note, i want to water cool again, but this time within my micro ATX Sugo SG-02 F case, which will be near impossible, but im up for modding. ill go with that new corsair watercooler all in one thing, where pump and CPU block are 1 and res is there aswell at a 120.1 res. but first i want a P55 mobo with i5/i7 and a MATX one via ASUS ROG boards.

 

Shaff,
Did you look over all three pages of the link I sent you for the motherboard statistics? You may not have noticed but there's statistics for CPUs and Memory as well. Just below the word Forum at the top there's a little arrow thing where it says Carte Meres. I missed it the first time I went there, the drop down arrow is so small! LOL!!

Russ

 

Every Asus board I've had for the record has had unclipped red standad S-ATA cables, which are prone to fail, I've had several go. The yellow clipped gigabyte ones however, so far so good, and I use a lot of them.
For the record, P35, X38 and X48 Gigabyte BIOSes have incremental voltages. The P45 boards have fully labeled BIOSes. I think the X58s are the same.
All nvidia chipsets are fail from the statistics.

 

lol love your last line. well till now, not a problem with my red ASUS sata cables, even with the ones that came with my P5N-E.

ahh and so x58 boards do have abslute values

 

Shaff,
Asrocks are OK, they just aren't very durable, and that's only if you don't overclock. I have to say that they were very good about exchanges and RMAs. Of course they are another company that's fairly close to where I live. Most computer and electronics places are in The City of Industry or Walnut, less than an hour away. The first one I ever saw belonged to my friend and former landlord Andrew. It was RMA'd twice in one year. They only list 19 motherboards on Newegg, and more than 25% of them are Open box! That should tell you something right there! LOL!!

EDIT: I forgot to include Intel boards. There are 49 total listed for Asrock! Sorry.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Not only that, they also eliminate Ctrl+F1 as well.

 

Sam,
I quite agree on the red Sata cables. I threw all I had away. It seems if you even look at them cross-eyed, they fail. I have some orange ones from BioStar that are just as bad. The yellow ones from GigaByte with the clips seem to work very well, but God what an ugly color! Baby Poop yellow! LOL!!

Russ

 

but they're UV reactive ;-)

 

GB sata > others mobo sata cables, they have the clips, but UV> all.

LOL @ the open box. how are asrock X58 boards? are they even OCable? or cheap? do ESC have X50 boards.

 

Hey, I like the Ctrl+F1. It keeps people who don't know what they are doing from mucking around with the important settings. My policy is to put a password in for the setup. I write it on the underside of the top with a permanent marker. I've had a couple of Genius kids get mad at me for that, because they can't get in it to "make it faster'! LOL!! I'll never understand why some people who don't know what they are doing wanting to play around with settings they don't even understand, and on someone else's computer to boot!

Russ

 

Are there even any ASRock X58 boards? I'm pretty sure they don't make any boards beyond £60, perhaps they'll come out of the woodwork when P55 arrives.
Russ: Ultimately, Ctrl+F1 doesn't stop people fiddling with voltages which are what cause the real agro, and there are plenty of 'not to be messed with' settings not hidden away with it. I'm not really sure what it was meant to achieve.

 

yeah they make X58 boards. i jsut wonder hwo they are. i mean whos buys X58 not to OC.

ebueyr have 2.

one for £160
and one for £235... LOOOOOOOOOOL who spends that much on an ASROCK?

 

And the Brainless Genius of the Year Award goes to:

Cons: I wanted to give this board a 5, BUT:
Died after running a test in which the CPU fan plug was removed at idle to test another CPU fan. Should this have caused harm?? Temps remained low for this brief period. Guessing it was the OC'ing attempts, or heavy use at 3.2Ghz? BIOS updated not long back, but ran fine for a while.

ROFLMSOAO!
Russ

 

Sam,
Hmm, on my 965P and P35-DS3R you could change the settings without hitting Ctrl+F1, and click save, but it wouldn't actually change or save them! I don't know about this board, as I've never tried it.

Russ

 

Sam,
The highest priced one they list at newegg is $285 or about 173 Pounds!

Russ

 

LOL I have a BIOS password too. One guy tried to access my BIOS on the Intel quad machine and got pissed. "I'm gonna overclock your CPU for you." I'm like "No you're not. I'll break your finger before it reaches the enter button." Kid's a know-it-all and doesn't give anyone credit for their own knowledge. I doubt he really knows anything about computers outside of changing the FSB. I mean I had to install his PSU for him... Meh I don't hang out with him much.

 

and i still havent seen any info??? is there any to be had?lol didnt mean to start the mobo war again....

 

Rob,
The problem is there isn't a definitive answer because each MB manufacturer uses the technology in their own way to their best advantage.

After doing a little research, your's is probably more advanced, as it can be used when overclocking, but only with 45nm CPUs to use the Gear 1. I've also read some very good things about it. I just wish they would all get together and come up with a name everyone could use. This one is a 6 Gear, which simply means 6 Phase! I was just reading about some tests of it the other night, and the 6 Gear put the hurt on Asus and MSI pretty good when it came to power savings. Their Gear 1 state is simply amazing!

Dynamic Energy Saver Advanced
GIGABYTE Dynamic Energy Saver Advanced provides better energy saving capabilities and enhanced system performance. GIGABYTE Dynamic Energy Saver Advanced is the world’s only motherboard energy saving technology with hardware-based Dynamic 6-Gear* Switching. With support for VRD 11.1, GIGABYTE’s DES Advanced allows the motherboard to switch to 1 Gear phase switching during idle, allowing for a dramatic increase in power savings.

GIGABYTE has also retooled Dynamic Energy Saver to allow overclockers to experience the benefits of multi-gear power phase switching while overclocking, providing ultra stable, ultra smooth overclocking performance.
* The 6-Gear feature may vary by model. Gear 1 phase switching requires 45nm processors with PSI signal enabled.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

i7 systems are getting pretty common as prebuilds now, I know a fair few people looking at buying not so much 'off the shelf' systems, but 'spec it out and we build it' sort of systems, most with i7s. I doubt they intend to overclock much.
Shaff: Exactly, £235 for how many months of use? I reckon my electricity bill is less than that.
Russ: I have never had that problem with a gigabyte board - Ctrl+F1 does not stop saving BIOS settings, it reveals options which are not normally displayed in the BIOS.

Rob: Is not the Ep45-UD3P the same as the UD3R but with an extra PCIe slot?

 

Sam,
Yours was a "C" model! The 965P-DS3R and the P35-DS3R would not save unless you hit Crtl+F1 at the main screen. The 965P drove me crazy because it wouldn't save. I didn't know about the Ctrl+F1 then because it was my first Gigabyte motherboard. I googled what I thought was a problem and read that I should press Ctrl+F1 and it saved fine after that. Perhaps it was my revision (1.33), as it was not a very common revision in North America! You couldn't even find it on GigaByte USA's website, you had to go to Gigabyte/tw. It was similar, but not the same as revision 3.33, that was sold in the states. Now that I think of it, I shouldn't have said that the P35-DS3R was the same way, because I've always done Ctrl+F1 ever since, so I can't say for sure that the 965P would't save! In fact I had to download the manual because the one that came with it was in an Oriental language! Great motherboard! Easiest build of my life!

Russ