BIOSTAR TPower X58 any good?

Korduo · 9 May 2009 at 14:45

Hi,

Looking for a i7 mobo for overclocking, Is BIOSTAR TPower any good for i7? or is the UD5 and P6T better?

Looking to spend no more the £250, cheaper the better, but want a good clocker.

Thanks again in advance,

Jokester · 9 May 2009 at 14:47

I've heard a lot of good things about the TPower overclocking wise.

Nelly · 10 May 2009 at 05:00

Its a good motherboard, I used one for around 3 months.

Don't waste money on ram thats better than 8-8-8-24 @ 1600mhz because the board at the moment with the current bios wont allow for better timings, those timings are good enough anyway.

It's not a big deal to be honest, it's the only niggle with the board I had, I used two sets of ram OCZ Platinums rated at 7-7-7-24 @ 1600mhz & OCZ Blades rated at 9-9-9-24 @ 2000mhz, neither kit would go further than 8-8-8-24 @ 1600mhz.

It's a bios issue, maybe other manufacturer kits would better - Biostar are aware of the issue, maybe they will fix it.

Korduo · 10 May 2009 at 16:36

Thanks for the pointers, much appreciated.

Its a good motherboard, I used one for around 3 months.

Don't waste money on ram thats better than 8-8-8-24 @ 1600mhz because the board at the moment with the current bios wont allow for better timings, those timings are good enough anyway.

It's not a big deal to be honest, it's the only niggle with the board I had, I used two sets of ram OCZ Platinums rated at 7-7-7-24 @ 1600mhz & OCZ Blades rated at 9-9-9-24 @ 2000mhz, neither kit would go further than 8-8-8-24 @ 1600mhz.

It's a bios issue, maybe other manufacturer kits would better - Biostar are aware of the issue, maybe they will fix it.

Nelly,
Thanks for the heads up, So the OCZ Blades (3x2GB) @ £114 would be ok for this mobo? I'll see what else is cheaper.
Would you have bought a different X58?
I should have bought your mobo, but I was too slow.

rjk · 10 May 2009 at 18:32

hello - mine does 222 BCLK

it is the best motherboard i have ever owned

i personally would go for the biostar or the UD5

i had a P6T deluxe - it was fail
i have also used pretty much every x58 board at work
and have only been impressed by the high end gigabytes [ud5/extreme], the classified, the biostar and the rampage gene

avoid the rampage extreme 2 - its not all it should have been

Nelly · 10 May 2009 at 18:43

Korduo said:
Thanks for the pointers, much appreciated.

Nelly,
Thanks for the heads up, So the OCZ Blades (3x2GB) @ £114 would be ok for this mobo? I'll see what else is cheaper.
Would you have bought a different X58?
I should have bought your mobo, but I was too slow.

The UD5 will clock memory well, just check various threads on websites which will show this, but the Biostar will run okay on the ram below no problem.

For ram I would just get these:

OCZ Gold 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 (1600MHz) Tri-Channel (OCZ3G1600LV6GK)

I would avoid Asus motherboards, if anything goes wrong RMA can take upto 8+ weeks, although retailors will sort you out after 4 weeks.

Not sure how good Biostar RMA is, I've never known anyone have to do one so far, Gigabyte RMA usually takes 5 working days as it's based in the UK - Milton Keynes.

Korduo · 11 May 2009 at 18:13

Thanks for all the help, I'm gonna give the BIOSTAR a go go.

Nelly · 11 May 2009 at 18:32

Korduo said:
Thanks for all the help, I'm gonna give the BIOSTAR a go go.

Nice, you wont be disapointed unless your a memory overclocking freak & want every bit of memory performance you can get lol.

As you can see by my spec I've actually slightly downgraded in some respects at a cost! but all I do is play games, web browse, microsoft office, some video decoding.

AM3/Phenom II is more than enough for my needs, it's less boring than going Intel like the majority & I can handle video decoding taking an extra few minutes or so max lol.

Helios1234 · 11 May 2009 at 21:39

I'd definitely recommend the Biostar. I haven't really had any issues with it and even if an overclock is unstable, it always boots up without having to clear cmos etc. I personally also love the layout and while my initial decision was between the Biostar and the ud5 back in January, I settled for the Biostar just to be different. It' very user friendly as well imo.

Nelly · 12 May 2009 at 00:23

Helios1234 said:
it always boots up without having to clear cmos etc.

Good point, always annoying having to do resets etc, the board has the button on the motherboard, but the board always resets itself after a bad clock & boots up so you can load optimised defaults.