Recommend me a P45 motherboard please!

sastusbulbas

sastusbulbas

sastusbulbas

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Hi all,

I am just contemplating my next build, and putting a short list together of stuff to get over the next few weeks, and was wanting a short list of the better recommended P45 motherboards.

Budget will probably be £100 to £150, I want an easy cable management, no worries of graphics cards getting in the way of sata :D, and an easy to work bios, with some sort of safe easy to reboot feature, my current Asrock is quite nice and simple in that all I have to do when something goes wrong, is power down for a few minutes, and reboot back into Bios to change problem settings, simple.

I will probably use the E5200 from my current machine, and probably end up with 4Gb of Dominator PC-8500 or such with an E7400 or E8400.

I also have a rather large Scythe Kama Angle CPU fan I would like to use, so I am trying to take this, plus the dominator fan (IF I get such), and the chance of a long graphics card into consideration.

Biostar TPower I45 Intel P4 is one option I have looked at, but does the fan on the back of this mother board intrude? And are the voltage options in Bios easy to understand?
What Asus and Gigabyte motherboards should also be considered?

EDIT, Would I be better off with DDR3?

Thanks,
Steve
 
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I have just been through this myself ,so i know the choice can be difficult with so many options.
With the Biostar the fan is optional.

I went with the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UDP3 to go with my E8500 and 2x2gb of GSkill 8500
and i must say that i am very pleased that i did.

I have my E8500 running @4.0 24/7 stable, and i even booted it to 4.7, but i got a bit scared and dropped it to 4.0.

I am not an experienced overclocker, so the bios is a bit daunting compared to my EVGA 680i that i had, but with a little experimentation, and reading up on Tweaktown.com forums, overclocking this board is a breeze.......well once you get past all of the various bios options, and using easytune as a guide, makes the job a lot easier.

If you get a gigabyte board, at least i can help with some overclocking, if you need help that is.
 
One thing I have just noticed is that you can now choose between DDR2/PC-8500 or for similar outlay DDR3 such as Corsair 4GB DDR3 DHX 1600C9DHX (though according to the reviews this does not do 1600Mhz?)

I guess I have to ask here, does one go with an E7400 (or E8400) with DDR2 PC-8500 at 1066Mhz or with an E8400 with something like DDR3 PC3-10666 (1333MHz)??

DDR2 or DDR3, bloomin hell I'm so indecisive!
 
I recently ordered that motherboard moremoney. Should be arriving today and I've just read so many good things about it. I decided against DDR3 for the time being, since I'm not planning on getting an i7 right now, and would like to wait for DDR3 to mature a little bit more, as well as become cheaper. It will definately be my next upgrade though in about a year's time, or two.
 
Is the DFI LanParty DK P45-T3RSB Plus Motherboard any good? it's DDR3? Could use CorsairTwinX XMS3, DDR3 PC3-10666 (1333MHz) or OCZ 4GB DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz Intel Extreme XMP (2x2GB) Dual Channel DDR3?

Would a DDR3 set up such as the above or similar outperform something like the Biostar TPower I45 Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard with Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 Dominator PC2-8500C5 or Kingston HyperX 4GB (2 X 2GB) DDR2 8500C5.

Considering you can get a DDR3 mobo for the same price as a DDR2, and you can get 4Gb of DDR3 for teh same sort of price as DDR2, what would be the best option for overall performance?

Edit,

I notice most motherboards now have an extra 8 pin power cable connection where there used to be a four? Does this mean a new PSU would be required?
 
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sastusbulbas said:
I notice most motherboards now have an extra 8 pin power cable connection where there used to be a four? Does this mean a new PSU would be required?
Click to expand...

afaik the 8-pin connector is required for Quad core CPU's, so for the dual core you should be ok with just a single 4-pin connector.
 
aslong as you intend to run ddr3 memory i can't reccommend the P5Q3 Deluxe enough, but be aware that their are overclocking stability issues with this board and the layout is'nt great if you're using full lenght video cards btu other than that once all the problems have been addressed, it's a proper little corker.
 
BOO sastusbulbas :D.

Personally I do not think that there is any point in DDR3 unless it is an i7 system. For Core 2 systems, stick with DDR2 RAM. Good quality DDR2 PC2-8500 RAM is cheap and more than perfect enough for any decent overclocking you wish to do.

The 8-pin motherboard connection for motherboards is mainly for power stability purposes when overclocking or for Quad Core CPUs. Whilst some boards can run fine with just a 4-pin connection, its ideal to use 8-pin just for the safe side. You can also get adaptors to change the 4-pin into an 8-pin though, but with your plans, more ideal to get a new and better PSU compared to your current Hiper one.

As for P45 motherboard recommendations;

For Asus, the Asus P5Q Pro is one of the most popular and highly praised around here and it is wonderful for the price. The more expensive variants of this model have better power phase management, especially for high-end CPUs, but other than that, not that much difference though.

For Gigabyte, the UD3 series is highly recommended, especially the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R for single graphics cards or the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P if you want Crossfire. Only downside is that these are more expensive than the Asus boards, but the Gigabyte's does come with its own little features like DualBIOS. If you screw one up, you have another as backup. I personally have the UD3R board since January and can say it is a fine board.
 
Yes I will probably stick with DDR2, after all it seems most are of teh opinion of DDR3 performing less? What a waste those AMD3 platforms must be?

Anyway, I do prefer the sideways/edge connection for sata on the DFI and Biostar mobo's?

Quite shocked that DDR3 with an E8400 is considered a poorer performer than with PC-8500?

Considering an AMD3 (tri core cpu) platform with DDR3, or a 775 P45 platform (E8400) with DDR3, or a 775 P45 platform (E8400) with PC-8500 all cost the same sort of budget.
 
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I found a nice increase in memory bandwidth when moving from DDR2 to DDR3, even with the slacker timings, hitting 10K plus in read,write,copy in everest memory and cache test.
 
Asus Maximus II Formula -> best p45 board if you can afford it. comes with all the bells and whistles you can think of + great at OC. Otherwise as a cheaper alternative the Asus P5Q Deluxe.
 
Just had exactly the same choice myself; Core 2 system, new board wanted, should I get a DDR3 Core2 mobo? I decided not to in the end. I got an Asus P5Q-E instead of the P5Q3 because you can get better quality DDR2 for the same cash, and unless you get i7/lower voltage DDR3 you won't be able to cascade it to a future Core i7 system anyway and that stuff is still more expensive. And even if you do get a triple stick kit, you'll probably only use two of them anyway do have them dual channel.
Stick with a DDR2 setup and at least when it comes time to upgrade you'll be able to sell the lot on as a cpu/mobo/ram combo.
 
lunarwolf said:
Asus Maximus II Formula -> best p45 board if you can afford it. comes with all the bells and whistles you can think of + great at OC. Otherwise as a cheaper alternative the Asus P5Q Deluxe.
Click to expand...

I second Lunarwolf's word here. Maximus formula is a fantastic board, had it for a year before upgrading and didn't fail me once ;).
 
I have 2 systems with P45 chipsets at the mo. Asus P5Q Deluxe and Gigabyte GA-UD3P. Both IMO are excellent. Not much difference in the two. They both have their pro's and con's.
 
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