Choices choices.... Which mobo

mejinks

mejinks

mejinks

Soldato
Joined
28 Oct 2002
Posts
5,037
Location
Hiraeth
I'm in the process of planning an i7 rig which I plan to overclock. I have been looking at several motherboards and was wondering what the differences are and do I really need to buy the more expensive ones?

I have been looking at the GA-X58A-UDR3 and the UDR7, although, I don't want onboard sound really, so if someone can suggest a better motherboard to consider, please feel free.
 
It depends how high you want to overclock tbh. If you just want to get to 4GHz using air cooling - then any of the X58 boards on OCUK (including the £145 P6T SE or the £155 UD3R you mentioned) will do the job fine. However, if you want to overclock past 4GHz and use cooling better than air, then a more expensive motherboard with a higher maximum BCLK, better cooling and more robust power electronics (like the UD7 or ASUS Rampage II (or III) Extreme) does make sense.

Also, you may want to consider what other features you want on the board -as these usually come with a price tag. Not all have SLI - so if you plan on using Nvidia GPUs then this should be accounted for. Also, most boards are a bit tight if you plan to run 2 cards together, therefore a board with wide spaceing between the main PCI-E slots can be very useful - as seen on this board. Also, some boards use SATA 6G and USB3, which may be of use to you.
 
Thanks for that. Im planning on running 2 x 5850 (overclocking of course) when they come back into stock and a Xonar DX. I'm going to get a Corsair H50 which will cope with up to 4Ghz, which is about where I want to stop really.

How high can a D0 930 go?

I would like to have the Sata 6 and USB 3 for future expandability as I plan on keeping the rig a few years.
 
how important is usb 3 and sata 6g going to be ?
im in the same boat, if i go usb3 and sata6 my cards are going to be hot as hell
if i stick with usb 2 and sata 2 my cards are well spaced.
swings and roundabouts.

is usb2 and sata2 going to hit a brick wall in the next year or so ? or are the updated editions more of a new selling ploy ?
 
userunknown said:
how important is usb 3 and sata 6g going to be ?
im in the same boat, if i go usb3 and sata6 my cards are going to be hot as hell
if i stick with usb 2 and sata 2 my cards are well spaced.
swings and roundabouts.

is usb2 and sata2 going to hit a brick wall in the next year or so ? or are the updated editions more of a new selling ploy ?
Click to expand...

I'm in the exact same boat as this. Im finding it really hard to decide between a card that will keep my 2x5850s cool with no USB3/Sata 6gbs, or one that will make them run hot, but have it. Argh why didnt gigabyte just space out the damn PCI-E 16x slots on their UD3R/5
 
ive gone gigabyte !
im sure that a world leader in mobo manufacture thought this out, i mean all of there mobos are the same ( PCIe Layout ), the coolers on the 58xx cards are very good, and you could run x16 and x8 xfire and have the gap for cooling if it gets too hot
i was a very hard decission, possibly the hardest i had to make today lol
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom