Advice on Intel 1366 Mobo's

testa12

testa12

testa12

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I'm thinking of purchasing an entry level Intel i7 CPU and have been told I'll need to use a 1366 (x58) motherboard.

There seems to be a wide range in price from £160 up to £380.

I wont really be looking to do any major overclocking or watercooling with it and don't plan on plugging in tons of USB devices either.

I'll only be using one Graphics card in it, but might look at upgrading the graphics card to something beefy at some stage.

Can anyone let me know what to look out for in the X58 series, such as the key features for good performance?


Thanks!
 
I'd have thought you could do a lot worse than the following.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-320-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1283

Not too expensive, the board itself is directly related to two other comprehensively well received boards from the same manufacturer which, though it may have its detractors, remains universally respected. It also supports upto 3-way SLI should you ever change your mind.

There aren't many below the £200 mark (that is, assuming you purchase from here...), but if the extra £40/£50 is a deal breaker, then why not take the cheapest on offer:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-159-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1283
 
With the memory controller on the CPU with the i7 you won't find much difference in performance at stock clock rates between the various motherboards.
However the feature set is quite different. Taking Gigabyte as an example, their cheapest motherboard (an OCUK this week only special at £160) has 4 ram slots, so for the fastest performance (tri channel) you can only use one stick per channel whereas the more expensive options allow two sticks per channel (allowing you twice the memory at the fastest speed). Likewise other boards have more network ports or better sound. So you need to find the board that has all the interfaces you want at the cheapest cost.

If you aren't overclocking the motherboard is much less of an issue.

HTH

Jeremy
 
ive just gotten the Asus P6T SE from "elsewhere". seems like a nice stable board so far, haven't attempted any kinda overclocking yet cos frankly, i'm a little baffled by the bios atm.

it doesn't have all the bells n whistles of the more expensive X58 mobos out there, but i don't need all the bells n whistles so it does the job quite nicely for me. click me for Asus P6T SE tech specs

its a fair bit cheaper than the UD5, P6T, or Biostar. so if your not out for an all singing all dancing mobo, i can't fault it tbh. ;)
 
Mr Kingston said:
its made by a better company and also supports sli , plus the gigabyte board is very good at overclocking. Do some research dude ;)
Click to expand...

And if you did your research, you'd have found that the biostar is one of the best overclockers out there ;). I wouldn't say biostar is a bad company considering they are relatively new to the enthusiast market which already had some great companies to compete against. I wouldn't discount them seeing as how they employ ex abit engineers. They also support sli.
 
i wouldnt get the biostar i had that. Its not bad but i would go for a better, more well known brand. however i achieved 200mhz higher than either the intel smackover or the asus p6t deluxe. I wouldnt bother with the gigabyte ex-58-ud5 go for the ud4, if you want sli then the ud4 can be flashed with the ud4p bios (google it)
 
Mr Kingston said:
its made by a better company and also supports sli , plus the gigabyte board is very good at overclocking. Do some research dude ;)
Helios1234 said:
And if you did your research, you'd have found that the biostar is one of the best overclockers out there ;). I wouldn't say biostar is a bad company considering they are relatively new to the enthusiast market which already had some great companies to compete against. I wouldn't discount them seeing as how they employ ex abit engineers. They also support sli.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Indeed, like Helios mentioned the Biostar X58 can overclock an i7 920 to 4ghz+ no problem because thats what I've got mine running at on air i.e 1.39v idle, 1.4v load. ;)

Their is currently two issues I have come across with the Biostar X58:

  1. T-Power II software utility does not work once the system is overclocked.
  2. Ram Timings issues, at the moment my OCZ 3x2GB Platinums rated at 7-7-7-24 will not pass IntelBurnTest or Prime95 but will play games no problem with the latest official bios released in March.
    Still needs work on as I cannot overclock the ram either, even with dropping the timings to 9-9-9-24.

    They work totally stable at 8-8-8-24 @ 1600mhz - see below.
If Biostar can solve the above two problems it will be fantastic, in terms of perfomance vs price it is easily a match for any Asus, Gigabyte or DFI X58 motherboards even the Rampage / Classified waste of money boards.


Biostar TPower X58

4ghz on Air, 1.39v idle / 1.4v load, HT ON

10 Passes of IntelBurnTest v1.9

Cooling: Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme + 1 YATE LOON 120mm - D12SL-12

biostartpowerx584ghzstac.jpg
 
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