£600 to spend on conroe upgrade

realscot · 6 Oct 2006 at 19:41

Currently got *check spec on sig*
Need a new mobo/ram/conroe cpu

I fancy the E6600 and will deffo need 2GB ram... the motherboard choice just baffles me.. when you think the P5W Deluxe Wifi one should be the one i choose you hear some bad stories about it.
Bottom line is i'm fed up of unstable machines and I'm going to have to say that this time stability is more important than overclockability.
With that in mind please spec me a mobo and memory to go with a 6600.
I know there's a similar thread here already for that cpu but i wanted to be recommended the most stable board to go with this cpu, not the "best"
I've built 2 machines for friends with the E6300 and the Asrock Conroe Xfire and it's a top notch stable board.. have them both running at 300x(whatever the 6300 multi is) on the stock cooling.
I would have just got it but i'm not sure, I have an asrock board in my second rig and it's great for a backup but i dunno if i want one in my main machine with the limited voltage options. Plus i dunno if it would work with an E6600
Thanks in advance
and sorry for posting yet another "spec me a conroe" thread. :rolleyes:

Participant · 6 Oct 2006 at 20:42

You hear some bad stories about every piece of hardware. You pays your money you takes your choice. You will not go wrong with the Asus, with which you have excellent stability clocked or not and an upgrade path to Kentsfield in 6 months.

jcb33 · 6 Oct 2006 at 21:31

Why do you want to upgrade your system is top of the range near enough... nothing it cant do

Celador · 6 Oct 2006 at 22:13

I have yet to try it (cos am waiting for the house sale to go through so I can finally upgrade to 64-bit!) but I have been recommended the Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3 Motherboard (OcUK p/n MB-061-GI). Spec-wise it looks excellent and certainly gets impressive reviews from what I have read thus far.. will defo be the way I am going...

realscot · 7 Oct 2006 at 09:15

jcb33 said:
Why do you want to upgrade your system is top of the range near enough... nothing it cant do

Because it's an unstable SOB. for some reason it's randomly freezing and I can't figure out why. It only seems to like running at stock speeds now

I've just RMA'd my Enermax Liberty PSU cos the 12V line's only at 11.8V where as it used to sit at 12.16V when i first got it.
The other reason is cos it's hellishly slow at loading maps on BF2, slower than my brother in law's S754 3000+ and that cant be right.