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Need a cheap motherboard for quad

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Ben333

Folding for Team 32!
Joined
Feb 18, 2007
I realised this is kind of long so I underlined the most important things:santa:

I have a Quad Xeon (x3210) B3 stepping and I currently can only run it at 8x300 even if I volt it at 1.5 Vcore. The only reason I can seem to find is that my motherboard is limiting me. I have an Abit AW9D-MAX with the Intel 975 chipset which aparently can not overclock quads at all. I am water cooling this with an Apogee, two swiftec dual 120 rads, mcp 665 and a home made PVC res (shaped like a T) My video is the 8800GT and for now (but not for long I hope) I am running two gigs of 667mhz kingston value ram. I have a decent PSU with two 16 amp 12V rails (antec earthwatts) and anyway long story short I'm looking for a p35 board to take my quad to 4 GHz. I do plan to use a tec and maybe even a water chiller in the near future. My budget is pretty much under $150 with a max of $200 and minimum of $100 (give or take on any of those)
Thanks, Ben

EDIT: I don't really want to spend the full $200 unless its the only way to 4GHz and more...
 
the DS3L is a good choice so is the DS3 even the S3/S3l's to the only difference is the S3's dont have the solid caps. ocing will be the same though so its a good choice to go with since you cant buy the abit IP35-e/IP35 anymore for some reason. yea the lack of ocing on the 975 is cause you cant increase the cpuvtt or cpugtl for feeding the quad. still a good board for duals though...

*edit*
forgot if you looking with a gigabyte board with raid look the ones with the R at the end like DS3R. imo dont look at the asus sub $100 boards since they only have a 3phase pwm vs 4phase on the gigabytes. for quads at stock 3phase might be find but if you want to oc a little then you want a stronger cpu voltage system.
 
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So a p35 asus should do the best bang for the buck?
 
So a p35 asus should do the best bang for the buck?
errummmm,no, the gigabytes are cause they carry the 4 phase pwm for suppling voltage to the cpu. the asus's have 3phase unless you go up in price to get the ones with 4phase and higher.
 
well my friend road-runner said that the GA-P35-DS3L is only 3 phase and he is a giga byte guy (but still, if its 4 then I'll be proven wrong) and he said its worth the extra dough to get the GA-P35-DS4. What would you guys say on this one?
 
I have a IP35 PRO ben, its a really good board, good for overclocking and very stable. The PRO has a lot of features that you might not need (extra SATA ports, raid support, external SATA ports). If you don't need a lot of those extra features the Abit IP35-E is just as good for overclocking.
 
fyi - the abit ip35 pro is currently $150 after rebate at newegg.

We have a winner! :santa:
lol... And I don't want onboard RAID, right? PCI-E raid provides a better overclock for not using the chipset, right?
 
ip35-e/ip35 are the same board, ip35-e is just missing raid/firewire and some heatsink setup. both are solid boards the IP35 when it was on newegg last was $129 the IP35-E was lower like $89.

Been the DS4 is also a good choice, there are lots choices with lots of things to look into for the boards and options you need.

as going by the picks at newegg the DS3 looks to infact have 3 reg's per choke thus makeing it 5-phase.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ShowI...on=GIGABYTE+GA-P35-DS3L+ATX+Intel+Motherboard
the DS4 on the other from the pic is 6-phase.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ShowI...YTE+GA-P35-DS4+Rev.+2.0+ATX+Intel+Motherboard

as it now seems they are following the others in reguards to pwm phase and regs per choke. that is how you tell the number of PWM phases on the board, is the number of chokes. the numbers should match up for every choke, on abit and asus its 3 voltage regulators per choke.

*edit*
you can still oc while using the intel raid via the ich8r.
 
Well I am now considering buying a water chiller. I assume this will aid OCing as much or more as a top notch board so I am now thinking of the IP35-E or the DS3. I assume the abit one is better? Again, thanks guys.
EDIT: and whats the deal with the "solid" caps (i think thats what they call them) are those a big deal to have on my new mobo? I don't see why not because for as long as I can remember every comp I've had has had the regular caps.
 
the solid caps are suppose to last longer.. but how many people are gonna keep their rigs for 10+ years?

if you get a water chiller get the DS3 then, the IP35-e may not be able to clock as high if you get a sweet cpu.
 
not if he is using a waterchiller and the cpu can go over 500mhz....i havent seen any ip35-e/ip35 do over 500mhz...
 
I have a G0 quad xeon currently @ 300 x 8 (configured to q6600 speed)
I guess DS3 now then :p
 
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