Your Next Motherboard

[chaddeus]

If you are going to build a new computer, what motherboard are you going to use and why.

- Charles

 

[NoelS]

chaddeus,

I'm going P35 chipset with an ASUS P5K-E. I looked for awhile at the x38 chipset mobos, but from all that I read, they weren't much better performing than the P35s if you use DDR2 memory. It seems that most gains using x38 come from using DDR3, and right now, that's too expensive. Most of the x38 boards came out with high price tags, as well...

As for P35s, I looked at Abit IP35-E and Pro, both pretty good boards, but in the final analysis stayed with ASUS, which I've used pretty much over the past couple of years.

Noel

 

[jmmtn4aj]

If I were going cheap, P35 from Gigabyte. They seem to have less issues than Abits and ASUS (especially, with all the ram problems). If I was going all out, probably an X38-DQ6.. Or if I was going REALLY all out, a dual socket server motherboard

 

[NoelS]

Charles,

I just this afternoon finished building my new ASUS P5K-E rig using 2GB OCZ DDR2 1066 and it booted and ran without a hiccup... I used my 74GB Raptor from one of my past builds (see sig) and didn't have to even re-install XP, but I'm currently running my HDDs as IDE instead of SATA. I'll have to do a repair install of XP to load the ICH9R drivers for using my SATA drives as SATA... Also installed 2 Samsung SATA DVD-RWs and so far no problems. I was able to read and install drivers from my mobo CD without any trouble.

Noel

 

[RayvinAzn]

Well, nothing over my current Gigabyte GA-965P DS3 board - however, if I were in the market right now, I'd probably get an X38 chipset board, although choices right now seem a bit limited. That being said, my next machine is going to use a DFI LANParty board, without question. I got to spend some time tweaking my friend's old nforce 4 board, and I really love the way they're set up. So it's DFI for me from here on out.