what motherboard do u use

[Warhead]

im looking to build a new intel system. i havent made a lot of firm decisions on parts yet, but ive narrowed it down a bit. its going to be between a e8400/q6600 and likely will be a last second choice, the case and power supply are running my current system. im just stuck on the motherboard, which will determine the rest...

ive read the reviews, which im not putting much faith in, and it really seems to be a crap shoot. i have yet to see a mb that just screamed "buy me!", theres usually something i find that i would rather not have, or wish it did have. for every review that proclaims a great board, i can find two from a similar source calling it junk.

what are you guys actually running? im not really looking for suggestions, i just want to know what some of you decided to build on, and if you regret it.

[WalkinTarget]

I was set on buying an MSI 750 board to replace my current 650 series, but read some less than enthusiastic reviews on the board. So I then decided to check out alternatives, and even the guy that wanted to sell me his MSI 750 said I should look at the eVGA 750FTW board.
HardOCP reviewed it and had NOTHING but good things to say. If you find a bad word to say about the FTW, then you just aren't a fan of the Nvidia 7x0 series boards. There is a video corruption bug that is currently being actively discussed on the eVGA forums, but Nvidia claims to have a fix underway for this.

http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=253891

Keep in mind that ALL Nvidia boards, 750, 780 and the new 790, experience this issue, so I wouldn't say its a dealbreaker for me or you, but if it is fixed in a few weeks, I am BUYING that board.

[Duke{CLR}]

I am using an EVGA 780i MB and I have had no issues. I have also OCed my Q9450 to 3.4 Ghz with it.

[Warhead]

Keep in mind that ALL Nvidia boards, 750, 780 and the new 790, experience this issue, so I wouldn't say its a dealbreaker for me or you, but if it is fixed in a few weeks, I am BUYING that board.

i do a lot of video encoding on a regular basis, this bug would be a catastrophe for me. if they do fix it, i will be seriously considering that board, assuming i havent lost my patience and made an impulse purchase of something else.

i really like a lot of the nvidia based boards, but i had heard (from maximumpc iirc) that the 6xx and 7xx nvidia chips wouldnt reliably support the new quads (Q9xxx), considering dukes post i now assume that this was incorrect? i had dismissed all nvidia chip boards because of this...

[juneau]

Abit IP35 Pro. One of the best LGA775 motherboards available.

[WalkinTarget]

Re: the Maximum PC article .. that was a concern with the 45nm quads on the 6x0 series boards ... they do not support the new quad core chips, which is why I have to ditch my 650 for a 750 .. no other reason than that.

I could get by with a 65nm Q6600 or 6700, but they don't offer the benefits of the Q9450/9550 chips, namely lower thermal numbers due to their smaller die design. Also, it is true that the fastest 45nm quad (and not yet released Q9750) running on a 1600 is not 'officially' supported on the 750/780 series boards ... thats where the 790 series with DDR3 support comes into play.

I could go with an e8500 on my board, but dual core is not where I want to end up and stay for the next year, so I will retire my current dual and step up to the quad that should achieve the same OC as the dual, so I future proof my build. I do not see an immediate need for quad at all, but keep in mind I am designing this build for eight months from now, not next month.
I'll bet Duke could squeeze 4.0 ghz from his chip, which is where I plan on getting to as a goal. Even if I manage a meager 3.6, its .... QUAD, baby !!!

Juneau loves the Abit board, and I did help a co-worker build his rig using an IP35 Pro, but it does lack support for PCIe 2.0 if that matters. Also, the Abit board needed a BIOS update to work correctly, either for full 1333 FSB support or for the uGuru temperature monitoring to read the 45nm chips.

[juneau]

Re: the Maximum PC article .. that was a concern with the 45nm quads on the 6x0 series boards ... they do not support the new quad core chips, which is why I have to ditch my 650 for a 750 .. no other reason than that.

I could get by with a 65nm Q6600 or 6700, but they don't offer the benefits of the Q9450/9550 chips, namely lower thermal numbers due to their smaller die design. Also, it is true that the fastest 45nm quad (and not yet released Q9750) running on a 1600 is not 'officially' supported on the 750/780 series boards ... thats where the 790 series with DDR3 support comes into play.

I could go with an e8500 on my board, but dual core is not where I want to end up and stay for the next year, so I will retire my current dual and step up to the quad that should achieve the same OC as the dual, so I future proof my build. I do not see an immediate need for quad at all, but keep in mind I am designing this build for eight months from now, not next month.
I'll bet Duke could squeeze 4.0 ghz from his chip, which is where I plan on getting to as a goal. Even if I manage a meager 3.6, its .... QUAD, baby !!!

Juneau loves the Abit board, and I did help a co-worker build his rig using an IP35 Pro, but it does lack support for PCIe 2.0 if that matters. Also, the Abit board needed a BIOS update to work correctly, either for full 1333 FSB support or for the uGuru temperature monitoring to read the 45nm chips.

Good point about the bios. But i should hope it's automatically used on the boards by now.

Who needs PCIe 2.0.

[WalkinTarget]

Yea, the guy told me his CPU was showing a temp of 237c, which I kinda guessed was inaccurate. He actually left the PC powered off until he could chat with me the next day to determine what was up.
I told him to update the BIOS, but he hadn't put a floppy into the rig, so he tried the Windows flash, which worked fine, and gave the correct temp results of 30c, down 207c from the previous day.


I don't buy all the hype for the PCIe 2 spec, but we are talking about current cards in a board. Bring out Far Cry 2 next year when you are running a pair of next gen GT200 cards in the board and it might be a different story (altho I kinda doubt it).

[juneau]

Yea, the guy told me his CPU was showing a temp of 237c, which I kinda guessed was inaccurate. He actually left the PC powered off until he could chat with me the next day to determine what was up.
I told him to update the BIOS, but he hadn't put a floppy into the rig, so he tried the Windows flash, which worked fine, and gave the correct temp results of 30c, down 207c from the previous day.


I don't buy all the hype for the PCIe 2 spec, but we are talking about current cards in a board. Bring out Far Cry 2 next year when you are running a pair of next gen GT200 cards in the board and it might be a different story (altho I kinda doubt it).

I doubt it also. The extra bandwidth that is gained with PCIe 2.0 just isn't needed (thinking back to the old AGP PCIe transition). And it's not like we can't run 2.0 cards in 1.2 slots.

[{CLR}geneSW]

1.) i'm running an AMD CPU, but i've ran several Intel and AMD cpu's in the past... in my experience I would stay away from ASUS for the time being (had a nasty problem with the Network Access Manager messing up and causing BSOD's). Never had a problem with Abit, Biostar, MSI, or Evga boards. I'm currently using a gigabyte board with my amd 6000+ and I like it. I think i'll have to put in a newer BIOS so I can O/C it properly (currently can't O/C with the BIOS for some reason), but that's just a software issue.

[bobytt]

XFX 780i here working with QX6700 and 8800GTX 4GB of ram , pretty stable at 3.6GHz with tuniq tower.

[juneau]

Forgot to add. I'm also running a Gigabyte P31-DS3L.

[WalkinTarget]

Video corruption bug fix/patch was supposed to be released yesterday, but I didn't hear much from the threads detailing the original bug. The eVGA 750FTW is still my board of choice, but I have another week to decide before I want to buy.
I'm bummed that the 9450 is being EOL'ed, but the 9550 looks appealing, unless Intel does what it was rumored to do and drops the amount of cache on the chip. We shall see what happens the third week of June.
My $$ is literally burning a hole in my pocket at this point ..

[bobytt]

Walking i dont know whats ur config , but i personal am doing major upgrade when native quads from intel are out and the memory controller is integrated

[WalkinTarget]

bobytt, I assume you're talking about the upcoming Nehalem chip with your build ? I'll start a thread on my build tonight and let everyone pick away at it. I've been reading and researching for about three months now and I do my homework on each build that I assemble, so it will be interesting to see what others think about my list.
What spurs my upgrade is, basically, a mid-life crisis ! I turn 40 in a few weeks so I'm trying to cheer myself up with some fresh parts and toys .. it usually works well until reality (and my failing health) kick in and remind me I'm no longer young enough to game with these young kids.