Recommendations for a new motherboard

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » October 29th, 2007, 12:16

I killed my current one so I'm looking for a replacement. Obviously I want a decent one because of gaming and it needs PCI Express, SATA and all the usual modern things. Oh and Intel 775 socket.

Any suggestions?

Post by **deject** » October 29th, 2007, 13:05

P35/X35 based boards are looking pretty good, unless you need SLI support.

Post by **Grimmie** » October 29th, 2007, 13:13

Werd to Deject's Motherboard.

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » October 29th, 2007, 13:46

deject wrote:P35/X35 based boards are looking pretty good, unless you need SLI support.

I wont ever be running two cards so no SLI is not a problem.
This card looks okay but a little over-speced for my needs.

Hehulk · Post by **Hehulk** » October 29th, 2007, 14:05

Post by **HereComesPete** » October 29th, 2007, 14:45

Super quick ebuyer tiem go= Something like this

I'm not sure if any problems exist with that mobo, but it looks alright to me.

Dejects suggestion of chipset is quite correct, but the mobo's sporting them cost a bit more than your willing to fork out I think.

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » October 29th, 2007, 15:43

HereComesPete wrote:Super quick ebuyer tiem go= Something like this

That's a more appropriate one that I picked out but a micro atx might be a bit tight with my large heatsinks.

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » October 29th, 2007, 16:47

Is anyone one going to put their 5punky seal of approval on this one?: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/131100

It's a little more than I want to spend, but if it's worth it for the potential upgrade path and speed. What does this P35 chipset do that makes it worth investing in?

mrbobbins · Post by **mrbobbins** » October 29th, 2007, 17:03

spoodie wrote:What does this P35 chipset do that makes it worth investing in?

I think it's faster RAM support and the 45nm production processors, maybe.

Post by **HereComesPete** » October 29th, 2007, 18:15

Yup, its a more efficient, more bells and whistles that you would use kinda thing. My bad on the mATX, didn't see that.

The higher end fsb would be one of the major things if you like to oc a lot. If not, it's up to you, I'd get it, but I'm in the habit of melting cpu's, if you don't oc, and want to save a few notes I'd say stay around the £50 mark, mid-range vanilla versions drop into this kinda bracket.

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » October 29th, 2007, 18:19

Cheers for the info.

I'm too lazy to do overclocking as you need to know stuff, which I can't be bothered to learn these days, that's a young man's game. Werthers anyone?
So I'll probably go for a cheaper model then.

Although it has occurred to me only the network port seems to be broken so I might be able to get away with spending a pittance on a PCI NIC card, in the short-term.

Post by **HereComesPete** » October 29th, 2007, 18:29

How broken is it? Would a few seconds of soldering fix it? If so, ebay a shitty mobo and strip the parts off to put on yours.

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » October 29th, 2007, 18:54

HereComesPete wrote:How broken is it? Would a few seconds of soldering fix it? If so, ebay a shitty mobo and strip the parts off to put on yours.

I have no idea, but I do suspect that if I attempt that I will make it worse. There doesn't seem to be any problem from a visual inspection but neither XP or Linux like the NIC, when they were fine with it before.

Post by **FatherJack** » October 29th, 2007, 20:59

Sounds like a PCI NIC is the simplest option, as I'd favour building a system around the mobo, rather than switching one in and getting disappointing results as the other PC components may be mismatched.

My experience can only recommend Asus's P5N~ and EVGA's nForce boards, the Intel 9x5s I've tried have been disappointing. The P35s and X38s seem an effort to catch up with the nForces, but a lot of the enhancements may be stuff your processor and RAM won't do out of the box.

Post by **deject** » October 29th, 2007, 21:09

FatherJack wrote:Sounds like a PCI NIC is the simplest option, as I'd favour building a system around the mobo, rather than switching one in and getting disappointing results as the other PC components may be mismatched.

this. if it's just the NIC, get a new one. They can't be more than a few quid.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » October 29th, 2007, 21:10

deject wrote: this. if it's just the NIC, get a new one. They can't be more than a few quid.

Also worth resetting the bios, sometimes helps with totally random shit. /broken record

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » October 30th, 2007, 10:32

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:Also worth resetting the bios, sometimes helps with totally random shit. /broken record

I've done this and it didn't really help. Although I did notice that I was running my RAM at the wrong voltage, that's how good I am at system building.

How do you know what components go well with a motherboard?

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » October 30th, 2007, 10:38

I mostly rely on dumb luck, never fails

what components are you worried about?

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » October 30th, 2007, 11:39

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:what components are you worried about?

I'm not as such. I was just wondering about what FJ said about mis-matching components. Implying that certain components go together better than others and there was a way of knowing which, beyond the obvious compatibility things. Personally I simply choose parts that are compatible and hopefully make best use of each other, as far as speeds are concerned.

So long as there's not a magic database out there that lists exactly what I should buy and no one has told me about it. I wish there was though.

Post by **FatherJack** » October 30th, 2007, 19:37

I just meant that buying a motherboard with a 1333Mhz FSB, and putting, for example, 6400(800MHz) RAM in isn't optimising things, and everything doesn't suddenly start happening 66% faster just from the new mobo. I don't know of any incompatibilities as such.

However RAM over 1066Mhz is stupid expensive, and DDR3 (10600)1333Mhz won't fit.