New motherboard recommendation?

[Paper Tiger]

Want to build a new PC, have a few components in mind already.

One thing is stumping me though... The motherboard...

What you guys recommend?

Cheers,

Gary.

[ez64]

I would go for the intel sockets these days AMD are in a world of problems but lets not get into that debate as I was a avid AMD fan.

whats your bugdet would be the main question and what expandibility are you looking for aka DDR3 support/dual pci-e 16x lanes for real SLI?>

[Paper Tiger]

Maybe DDR3, but I plan for SLI in this system.

Budget is whatever I feel like really... Max of £1000-£1200 really

[ez64]

ohhhh nice, Il just have a look around.

1. Quad cores are really really cheap so go for the cheaper ones and over clock it to get your money’s worth.
2.9800gt/8800gtx performance increase aren’t substantial enough to warrant the price difference so go for a 8800gtx
3. Get a motherboard that supports FULL two lane 16x pci-e lanes these will only be on the £100 boards or over and make sure they have at least four SATA2 ports.
4. PSU id say stay away from akasa and don’t cheap out on this option as bad capacitors and AC/DC converters ruin your system over a long time and tend not to like spikes, 750w is all you really need. Enermax are the best and I wouldn’t stop recommending them.
5. You could go for a blu-ray reader but I see them as a huge waste of money and just for e-peen, ps3 is the answer for those silly prices.
6. If you’re spending 1k-1.2k you want something you can aprreciate your system on, since the 24"'s are so cheap these days at around the £200 mark I would say go for that size.
7. Cases are more of a personal preference if you don’t need 39 HDD's.
8. HDD's go for a 150gb raptor to run your O/S and buy a 1tb Seagate barracuda for storage as there only around £138 now and 750's are at £117 so it’s a waste not going for a 1tb drive.
9. Mice and keyboard again are personal preference; MX518 mice have stood the test of time well more than anything else.
10. Go for everything sata including the DVDRW/CDRW drive try not to have IDE running on your system as you can turn a lot of crappy controllers off in your BIOS then.

This is just a quick summary and my speeeeling and grAm33r is awful but I hope it helps.

[Hardietbh]

Ill build one now xD

will edit in 10 minutes

EDIT: what do you think of this?

[Paper Tiger]

Can take off the 320gb...
Was looking at a quadcore... for less actually.. Clocked at 2.4GHz
The card.... Compared to the older series? What's the quality difference and is it worth the extra money?

Other than that... Nice.

[ez64]

The HDD is a very bad make the Ram is slow for a quadcore in overclocking ability terms.

A core2duo system for £1200 pff

The 9800 is only a few points better in 3d mark than the 8800 so wasted money there.

and a even worse 80gb drive

sorry to be so blunt

Ill make one in a sec.

Ok made it its a little over but this one includes a screen and everything you need to get your pc running, and of course you may just want a 22" not a 24".



and this beast can really handle overclocking the old 800mhz stuff cannot handle anything over.

[Hutch]

GO QUAD!!!!

9800x2 isnt anything new, its just 2 8 series cards glued together. Running 2 8800s in sli is better.

[Paper Tiger]

That's what I planned to do actually...

[Hardietbh]

tbh no point getting the Q6600 and the 8400 is alot better than it the RAM is decent in mine as it is 800mhz and it good for the price and the 9800x2 blows to 8800 anyday if you look at the benchmarks

[Hutch]

Q6600 g0 is overclockable to over 3GHz, its one of the best intel chips for ocing, and you get 4 cores as opposed to 2, its also alot cheaper.

[Chalex4]

I don't agree much with Hardie's suggestions, especially because the 9800GX2 is a complete waste of cash when the 9 series is just to bridge the gap between the 8 series and real next gen coming out later this year. A 850W PSU is complete overkill, and the RAM takes up so much space that you can only have 2 modules in at any one time.

Anyway, here are my suggestions:



The above system is very similar to my own, with the same CPU, heatsink & fan, GFX card, case, optical drive, and motherboard. You won't be disappointed if you overclock the hell out of the Q6600, mine got to 3.6GHz easily and heat was no issue at all. The motherboard is excellent, and perfect for overclocking. It does not support DDR3 or SLi, but to be honest, I feel that SLi is a complete waste of time anyway, when you might as well spend the money on a better single GFX card. The motherboard does support crossfire though, and CrossfireX when it is completed, which in my opinion looks to be better.

The RAM above is not the same as mine as I have the 8000 version, but I can definitely say that G.Skill are a good brand to go with in terms of performance memory. Make sure you go for a modular PSU by the way, makes cable tidying much easier . The GFX card is great, and is very easy to overclock to 775MHz like I have. I run everything on full graphics, with the only exception being Crysis, but then again noone can run that on full . Only things I haven't included are a sound card and operating system. I have the Creative soundblaster extreme gamer fatality and it is serving me well. Hope all that helps!

[Hardietbh]

Q6600 g0 is overclockable to over 3GHz, its one of the best intel chips for ocing, and you get 4 cores as opposed to 2, its also alot cheaper.

but would you use 4 cores no, the E8400 has been OC'd to 4.2ghz on Air so that it probably the better OCer

oh and gary you said you had a few components in your mind what are they?

and chalex's PC is good aswell, didint know you wanted a Screen aswell

[Chalex4]

Whether to get a dual or quad core entirely depends on what you are going to be doing. I do a lot of running servers (especially at LANs ), encoding, video editing etc so it is definitely worth it for me. If you are into gaming then getting a dual core is probably the best idea.

HOWEVER this all depends on whether you are going to be overclocking or not. If you are going to be overclocking a quad core like I have, then you will find that it is as good as, if not better, than a dual core when it comes to gaming. However, there are the cases where you may be able to overclock a dual core more than a quad simply because of the heat output, so you will be better in games....you can see how this goes in circles !!

[Hardietbh]

i think we need a bit more information on what you are going to do with the computer.

are you going to be gaming on it? if so are you looking to play the newer games that come out in the future or are you sticking with the games you have right now.