Sub 2K multimedia system, need motherboard advice

[*.mp4 guy]

I'm going to be building a ~$2,000 editing/encoding authoring machine, and I need input on the most stable/high performance core 2 duo motherboards, with the following features.

-4GB (total) 800MHZ low latency ddr2 support
-onboard SATA RAID (not required, but would be nice)
-Support for large/heavy cpu heatsinks
-SATA (4+) and IDE (2+) connectors (not required, but would be nice)
-standard pci slots, pcie 1X and 16X slots (atleast one of each)
-6 or more USB 2.0 connectors
-100+mbps ethernet
-IEEE1394 Firewire port (not required, but would be nice)
-[see edit]

Pretty standard feature set, but I want to stress that stability/compatibility and performance are paramount. I don't want any features above or beyond those that I listed, I won't use them and they will only impact price and stability negatively.

I haven't built a system in a while, and this will be my first intel system, so I'm not up to date on the highest quality models/brands, which is what is what I'm hoping some people here will be able to help me with.

[edit] forgot one thing, -A highly configurable bios is also needed.

[Blue_MiSfit]

The Gigabyte DS3 is a VERY popular Core2 board. It's got the P965 chipset, an x16 slot, and 3(?) x1 slots. It also has 3 PCIs.

It meets most of your other hopefuls, like the SATA etc.. it only has one IDE (common nowadays), but perhaps the biggest "cool thing" about it is the insane overclockability. Push that C2D :)

[*.mp4 guy]

My current motherboard is a Gigabyte K8NSC, which I am less then happy with. That said, does anyone have any experience with the Gigabyte DQ6? Its an expensive board, but the machine I'm building doesn't need a fast gfx card, so that leaves enough room to spend extra on other components.

[Blue_MiSfit]

That's one expensive board dude!

Sure it's got a P35 chipset, but it's not that much faster from a P965 last I checked..

The pros would be built in FireWire, lots of very nice copper cooling, optical and coax out, dual x16, and 8 SATAs. Pretty stacked, but which of those features do you really need? :)

I really really like its copper coolers though. I'm a big proponent of efficient passive cooling! Solid state caps and VRMs are very nice too. It's a very modern board. I would personally not go for it though, $260 is a bit much to ask.

I would be a bit hesitant to dive headfirst into a new chipset too - initial reports have been good IIRC, but you never know. From what I understand, the P35 was really designed for DDR3, which is scarcely available so far, and therefore they've added DDR2 support as a stopgap measure.

My advice would be to find equivalent functionality on a P965 or perhaps 975X board. Both are bulletproof stable, and have been tried and true for over a year. I would imagine that something with full copper cooling, solid state components, 1394 and plenty of SATA could be found for under $175.

The last real question is whether or not you need dual x16 PCIe. It sounds like graphics aren't a huge priority, so I'm guessing CrossFire / SLI aren't in the cards. However, a nice beefy x8 SATA RAID card usually fits into an x16 slot. Do you need 12 terabytes of storage? :D :D :D I know I do!!!

edit:
How's this (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813127019) bad boy look? It's even got dual eSATA on the back! If you like ASUS, then the P5B Deluxe is a sure bet.

~MiSfit

[*.mp4 guy]

Your right about the DQ6's problems, which is why I settled on an intel "bad Axe 2" (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813121060) board. From what I've been able to find out about it, its the most stable board available for C2D cpu's, and overclocks very nicely, though not as good a deal as the ds3, or as high performance as the DQ6.

[burfadel]

The Nforce based chipsets can now overclock quite well too (by quite well I mean a lot), a far cry from the Nforce 570 and Nforce 4 series etc.

That said, the actual requirements for these high overclocks are above and beyond what you sound like you would require or prefer. The main issue is cooling, and as you stress stability then the 'massive' overclockability scores are a moot point. Such massive overclocks do stress the system a lot, and as you are probably going to run the cpu at 100 percent a large proportion of the time it could seriously reduce its life!

I have an Asus P5NSLI motherboard myself based on the Nforce 570 chipset. I bought it in September for my C2D E6600, it was a very cheap and good value for money motherboard. Many did not like it as the overclocks achieved max's out at about 314FSB, where above that is hits a brick wall... ie. 314fsb rock solid stable, 317=crash. (this varies a bit, thats the case with mine). I have run it for weeks playing games, encoding, watching TV and doing other stuff fine at 314fsb. If I bought the equivalent Intel chipset motherboard I would have had to pay over $200 more and wouldn't have gained anything. With that money I got 2GB of DDR2-800 Ram instead of 2GB of DDR2-667 thus I was actually ahead.

On an E6600 that equates to 2826 Mhz, up from 2400Mhz. This is lower than what I could achieve with an Intel chipset at the time, but cooling is an issue from me and temperature wise 2900Mhz would have been my upper limit anyway (I prefer a cool reliable CPU at 100 percent rather than getting that extra 300Mhz at the expense of its lifespan).

I'd get an Asus P5N-E-SLI-Plus motherboard at the moment if I needed to (nforce 680i). This is a high quality motherboard and is cheaper than other 680's as it isn't choked with needless features like some other 680 models. Be very careful of the names of any motherboard you get regardless of whether its Intel chipset or Nvidia, as the names and prices can be confusing. Sometimes an older version of chipset motherboard can be dearer than the model that replaces it.

If you go Intel chipset I highly you look in to it closely, almost seemingly identical boards due to the revision of P965 chipset etc can be quite different in stability and perforformance.

[*.mp4 guy]

From what I've seen the intel board can hit 433 fsb easily (the bottlenech is usually the ram or the processor, not the board). So What I'm planning to do is push the processor as far as I can without raising the Vcore from stock, which shouldn't have an adverse effect on the life of the processor. I think ~3.2-3.6 ghz should be attainable with the PSU/case/mobo/heatsink all being high quality, but it really depends on the chip.

[burfadel]

There are several motherboards with the Intel P35 chipset. If you want a good priced motherboard without wasting money on needless features I suggest the Asus P5K. There are several variations, thats the most basic one.

http://au.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=534&l4=0&model=1637&modelmenu=1

I looked it up on Newegg for you as an example, the cost is US$149.99, which I think you may agree makes it an attractive option.

It should be noted however that 1066 Ram is preferable for use with the P35 chipset. However, you need to overclock the FSB to make use of the memory speed :)

Good luck! But I'd definately look at the P35 chipset, as its comparable if not better in price to the P965 (the Asus P5K is definately much better value (and cheaper) than the equivalent P965 model).

[Dr.Khron]

I'm in a similar boat, man... Its been almost 4 years since I built my desktop!!

I'll probably be building one in the next few months, so I need to start doing a lot of research myself.

So, even though I know almost nothing about the current generation of technology, I still heartily recomend Asus. Consistently good quality and stabilty, with generally good OC performance too.

I also like their tech support. Since I always recomend Asus to my friends, I've helped build a lot of Asus systems. When there is a problem, you call them up, you get right through to a tech support guy who actually knows what he is talking about. And if you need a new board, you get a quick turn around. I've been involved with probably 4 Asus mobo RMAs over the last 5 five years, and they were all painless.

[check]

Unless you are planning on immediately installing an OS that can make use of 4gb of RAM, I'd suggest you only get 2gb now, and when you upgrade to a more compatible OS, ram prices will be significantly cheaper.
EDIT: as for the mobo, I have an Asus P5B-E, which I've very happy about. My E6400 can hit 3.0 on stock, and the limitation there is certainly the fact I only have a stock cooler (despite what intel says, they still suck :P), and Corsair "Russian Roulette" ValueRam

[*.mp4 guy]

Well, the parts have all been ordered, thanks for all of the input, lots of good advice. When its all put together and everything is sorted out, I'll try it out and post results in the Megui thread.

[burfadel]

What parts did you end up getting?

[burfadel]

as for the mobo, I have an Asus P5B-E, which I've very happy about. My E6400 can hit 3.0 on stock, and the limitation there is certainly the fact I only have a stock cooler (despite what intel says, they still suck :P), and Corsair "Russian Roulette" ValueRam

The main issue you have to look out for is temperature. The Core 2's can take a lot of overclocking, but you have to watch the CPU temp as the thermal throttle's etc don't work well a lot of the time. What is the room temp? The other issue, and in some ways more important as there aren't any safeguards is the hard drive temperature (as well as other components). They can get seriously hot if you're not careful, and people actually end up with hard drive failure due to heat from the overclocked CPU.

Check out the Hard drive temperature using the latest PC wizard for example. A 55C hard drive is not a happy hard drive (and many people run them at 70C or even higher due to heat distribution, room temperature, case circulation etc). At high temps its not if your hard drive fails due to heat, its when!

Check out the temperatures of everything by running the cpu, graphics card, and hard drive (make the hard drive work by copying large amounts of data back and forth, a couple of processes a the time as that will really work it), and watch the temperature rise. It may be ok even encoding etc. but if you're playing a game the excess heat from the graphics card etc can do damage.

[*.mp4 guy]

What parts did you end up getting?

-PC P&C turbo cool 510W
-Lian Li case (pc60 usb)
-Intel bad axe 2
-E6600
-2X1GB Mushkin PC8000 4-5-4-11 @2.2V
-geforce 7300le (causing problems, thankfully it was cheep, so replacing it won't be painful if I can't resolve the issues)
-bluegears enspire soundcard (to avoid creative bloatware)
-2X250GB SATA II HDD
-Pioneer 112D dvd+-RW burner

Right now I've got it running at
1.3625 (1.34 after vdroop) Vcore at 3Ghz (334 fsb) 48C load
2.24 Vdimm, 834Mhz, 4-4-4-9
1.6 mch voltage
1.3 fsb voltage
24hour dual prime stable

I can hit ~3.4 Ghz stable, but it requires 1.55 Vcore, which puts load temps up to 61C, which is too high. I plan on tightening the ram timings some more, when I have some more time to experiment.

[Dr.Khron]

Sounds like a sweet set up, nice work.

Just make sure you weigh in on the encoding performance thread, once you get the OC settings to your liking. I'm curious to see how much the additional Mhz improves encoding performance.

I was shocked to discover how small the encoding performance gain was with the OC on my old Thoroughbred.