<rubs head> Help with Mobo for conroe...

[CreasianDevaili]

Hello everyone,

I am making the jump from amd. I got a jetpack going because It is from a amd Tbird 1.2Ghz socket-A processor so its a big jump.

I have been watching conroe and even after seeing what it could do I said to myself I would most likely still go to AMD. Well the wife asked me what I was going to build and i told her about AM2 and Conroe and she said go with whatever wont break and lets me play my games the best.

So I am thinking conroe.. but what mobo?

I have never Oc'ed and to be frank it scares me alittle. I wouldnt mind Ocing as long as i felt I wasnt about to damage my CPU so maybe some moderate Ocing will be done.

But I have been looking through the motherboards and really cant find one that seems to jump out at me at all and would love the help.

This is the planned setup-
e6300 or e6600 Conroe
7950GT non-sli
Ram (http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16820145034)
PSU=Bought (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817163111)

I just need a good motherboard to fit it and maybe some advice on aftermarket cooler since I might want to OC alittle. Also if a e6300 is worth it for me since i might not be overclocking to the extreme? I will be doing gaming on this pc and my wife will be doing her college work on it as well.

I know this is alittle of a messy post and i do apologize. I am just always like this when i am doing something that both makes me happy and fearful! I ask for your wisdom.

One note that might be important to mention..

I do not have access to spare parts for this new setup. So i wont be able to stick in a lower voltage stick of ram to boot up to raise voltage in the bios for ram with higher voltage. I just thought that might help. This will be a freash build with nothing to subsitute for bios issues on first start-up.

[MadMan007]

What's your budget? What other features might you be looking for - multi GPU, RAID, multimonitor on more than one graphics card, others? There's a really wide range of C2D motherboards with quality ones at all price points from $100 to $250+ so a recommendation depends on what features you're looking for.

[CreasianDevaili]

Well..

I dont plan to go SLI at all. I plan to get 1 WD SATA drive and havent considered RAID at all yet. Budget would be 100-200.

In all honesty I am not a extreme gamer. I like eye-candy but can live without. I am the mmorpg gamer in the family and the wife likes her FPS so quality is a must but the keyword is "reliable" rather than "the bomb".

Some of you might laught but it will be a 1 monitor, 1 GPU, and most likely 1 HDD and 1 Rom drive setup. I might be curious of a raid setup so that feature might be a benefit but I dont see myself running 2 GPU's.

However like i said i wouldnt mind experiencing the world of overclocking.

[Evilsizer]

from cheapest to most all good ocing boards
biostar tforce p965
gigabyte 965p-s3
asus p5b-e
abit ab9-pro
gigabyte 965p-ds3
asus p5b-dlx (non-wifi)
abit aw9d
slighty above your 200 is
abit aw9d-max

highly suggested are p5b-dlx/ab9-pro/965p-ds3

[bobad]

This is the planned setup-
e6300 or e6600 Conroe
7950GT non-sli


Your situation is just like mine. I want to be faster than ~95% of the PC's in the world,,, yet I don't want or need bleeding edge performance at the cost of stability or reliability.

Can I talk you into an E6400 or E6600? The higher multi's allow you to easily run over 3ghz on cheaper RAM, so the extra bucks are paid back. See my sig. If I had your proposed video card, I could cut some serious benchmarks.

The Arctic Freezer7 Pro is the best bang for the buck in coolers right now. It's plenty good for casual gaming and mild overclocking.

[jph1589]

from cheapest to most all good ocing boards
biostar tforce p965
gigabyte 965p-s3
asus p5b-e
abit ab9-pro
gigabyte 965p-ds3
asus p5b-dlx (non-wifi)
abit aw9d
slighty above your 200 is
abit aw9d-max

highly suggested are p5b-dlx/ab9-pro/965p-ds3
Hold off on the Gigabyte 965P boards for a while. Anandtech just announced a couple of days ago a problem with a resistor on the DS3 that is responsible for all the D9 Micron memory problems. I have no idea if the problem is in the other 965P boards too. There is no official word from Gigabyte on this. I'd make sure what the outcome is before buying any of those.

[batboy]

Evil mentioned several acceptable motherboards. Some of the folks here love to push their overclocks to the limit, but you don't have to do thst. I recently built a gaming system for a buddy that don't do much overclocking. We have an E6300 running at an easy 400 FSB with only one bump in vcore to ensure stability. At 400 FSB using the 1:1 memory ratio, this puts DDR2-800 RAM exactly in spec for great memory bamdwidth. While this is sort of a modest O/C for some of us on this forum, my buddy is blowing away everything his gaming friends (and brother) has. A couple of them have asked him for the specs so they can build similiar systems.

Ok, for the E6300 or E6400 (there are advantages to the E6400 if you want slightly more performance), an excellent choice is the Asus P5D Deluxe paired up with good name brand 2X1GB DDR2-800 RAM with CAS 4. For gaming you'll want a really good vid card, like the X1900XT or 7900GT or something along those lines.

[Evilsizer]

Hold off on the Gigabyte 965P boards for a while. Anandtech just announced a couple of days ago a problem with a resistor on the DS3 that is responsible for all the D9 Micron memory problems. I have no idea if the problem is in the other 965P boards too. There is no official word from Gigabyte on this. I'd make sure what the outcome is before buying any of those.
then it must be a gig guff-up since every other board i have read about has not had boot-up issues with d9's. i can speak about the ab9-pro working just fine with d9's and 1.8v

[willow]

... I recently built a gaming system for a buddy... A couple of them have asked him for the specs so they can build similiar systems.

Please share the specs.

[Evilsizer]

Please share the specs.
here he posted them in my ab9-pro thread
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=472002
Hey, just in time. My buddy ordered an AB9 which according to the tracking should be here on Monday. Now we have a new BIOS to take for a spin. I'll definitely report how it does when we get it put together.

AB9, E6300, 2X1GB G. Skill DDR2-800, X1900XTX, Cooler Master Cavalier 3 case, Sparkle 550W PSU, Seagate 250 gig SATA 3.0 perpendicular HDD, Zalman cooling for CPU and GPU, etc. Our goal is 400 FSB and low vcore for long term usage. Should be a fun system. His AMD buddy is trying to talk him out of it.
Well, I got my buddy's rig all put together tonight. I didn't have a lot of time to play with it and since it wasn't my money that bought everything, I didn't push it too hard.

It's rock stable at our goal of 400 FSB on default voltage after I flashed to the 1.4 BIOS. It would only do about 330 FSB with the 1.3 BIOS that shipped on the AB9. I'm positive that each new BIOS will be better.

Y'all probably are wondering what it did for max FSB.

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/batboybain/Conroe/E6300+3000+CPU.JPG

I could run Super Pi at that speed, but unfortunately, it wasn't stable using some of my other benchmark programs. About the highest I could call stable was 415 FSB. One quirk with the 1.4 BIOS was that after a reboot, the RAM voltage would default back to 2.0v.

Anyway, it was fun. Warmed me up for my future upgrade. I just got my new 2X1GB Mushkin XP2-6400 RAM (4-4-3-10). The new Abit AW9D-Max should be in the retail channels by next week. The prices have been dropping on the E6600. Yep, life is good.

[willow]

thanks!

[batboy]

Yes, it actually ran fine using default voltage at 400 FSB, but since he had good cooling with a Zalman 7700, we bumped vcore up just one notch (since the mobo undervolted a little) just for insurance purposes. We built that system 2-3 months ago. The newer processors are a little better. I'd probably recommend the E6400 @ 400 FSB nowadays if you get a better heatsink.