Mobo's, what to look for

[solidsteve]

ok just a simple question, when looking for a mobo what should you look for

as like HDD's looking for a 10k rpm means it's going to be faster then a 7200 rpm HDD's

same thing with the mobo what should i look for

[veedubfreak]

Meh, 10k rpm hard drives are over rated. You looking to go intel or amd. For intel i would suggest a p35 based board, or x38 if you want to spend the extra money and get pci-e 2.0 slots. I tend to prefer gigabyte myself. Your best bet is just to lurk around on some of the review sites and read up on the different motherboards out there to get a general idea of what you want.

edit: good sites for mobo reference
AnandTech: your source for hardware analysis and news
Tom's Hardware - Computer Hardware News, Tests, Ratings and Reviews
[H]ard|OCP - www.hardocp.com

[solidsteve]

to be honest i haven't decided between intel and amd yet but when i do its going to be a top end dual core off one of them i.e. amd athlon 64 x2 dual core 6400+ black edition or intel E6850

[veedubfreak]

Get a quad core. It'll last you a lot longer and its only a little bit more. I'd say at worst you'll spend 50-100 bucks more getting a good quad than a dual core and this will extend the usable life of the pc by quite a bit.

[solidsteve]

Originally Posted by veedubfreak

Get a quad core. It'll last you a lot longer and its only a little bit more. I'd say at worst you'll spend 50-100 bucks more getting a good quad than a dual core and this will extend the usable life of the pc by quite a bit.

yeah i'm still debating a quad core, but the 4 cpus i am thinking of are the intel E6850, intel Q6600, amd athlon 64 x2 6400+ black or the phenom 2.3ghz

aside from that i picked a 8800 gt gpu and a 500 gb seagate hdd, picking ram after i picked the mobo

[veedubfreak]

The e6850 is the same price as the Q6600 and if you get a good cooler, can easily be overclocked to 3ghz and higher depending on your need. Until my board fried i ran mine 24/7 at 3.6ghz.

[Vaanish]

When I first got in to pcs i had this sort of problem. But after a while you just pick it up and can tell a good mobo from a bad mobo by just looking at it.

Signs of a good mobo are: a good LED POST error readout, a well designed passive chipset cooler, a good chipset eg P35/X38/590SLi/790FX, for it to look good, solid capacitors.

[veedubfreak]

Ya, the 780i doesnt even have solid caps. WTF is that about. Yet another reason im annoyed at nvidia chipsets.

[Vaanish]

Originally Posted by veedubfreak

Ya, the 780i doesnt even have solid caps. WTF is that about. Yet another reason im annoyed at nvidia chipsets.

Wow that is exceedingly poor. Gigabyte started using solid caps in pretty much all of their boards in the p945 days...

[veedubfreak]

Well, not all of their boards. Their low end boards dont have solid caps. Its the d series boards that have solid caps. Thus the ultra durable. I think im going to end up selling one of my gts 512's and pick up either a ds3p (in case ati makes a good crossfire set of cards) or an x38 board.