Decent MB for Q9550?

[Rapid]

I would go for a corsair psu either the HX series if you want semi modular or the TX if you want non modular.

D1abl0 thanks for the great link to the PSU calculator. It seems I'll be fine with a 600w-650W PSU (the calc. result was 535W) As for the PSU, here are some info:

Corsair TX650

120 Fan (min. 21d

MTBF: 100.000 hours

Quality Japanese capacitors

Xtra long cables (for full tower)

SLI Compatible (ATI?)

5 Years Guarantee

Price: app.85€

Thermaltake Toughpower 600W

140mm Fan (16dB at 1300 rpm)

MTBF: >120.000 hours

Quality Japanese capacitors

8-pin PCIe connectors (ATI certified)

2 Years Guarantee

Price:app.85€

As seen above, both are quality PSUs. I like the 5 year guarantee of Corsair but this "only SLI certified thing" makes me skeptical. It has 50W more but its fan will be louder (concerns me greatly). On the other hand, Thermaltake solution gives longer MTBF and has a bigger and quieter fan. Not to forget that TT is also ATI certified. I believe that the TT solution suits me better, and if the PSU is going bad, then it should go bad in the first 2 years lol.

Originally Posted by name='Mul.'

All I must stress is that if you're opting for a crossfire setup, you should make sure that the games that you play will scale well with crossfire. You must also factor in that in going the crossfire route you're spending more on a decent motherboard that supports it.

I'm not advising against Crossfire but I'm just putting across the fact that it won't result in a significant performance increase over a single card in every game.

Mul. thanks for the advice. I decided for Crossfire only because of the X48 mobo from ASUS. Is there another equally fast X48 mobo that supports SLI? And is Nvidia's SLI better supported than ATI? Nvidia has a better performance/price ratio? Plz explain your thoughts.

[Mul.]

Any other reasons why you opted for the X48 chipset? How much is it?

The X48 chipset doesn't support nVidia SLI. The only way to have SLI is to use an nForce 7xx Intel edition chipset and the only decent overclocker is the 790i which requires DDR3.

I personally think a cheaper P45 motherboard and a single £200 graphics card would be your best, though I shall reserve judgement until I have a peak at HD 4770 CF results.

[monkey7]

I'd say go for the corsair. It may say it's louder (21 min instead of 16 @ 1300 rpm), but thermaltake is known for ... stretching those stats a bit, by for example measuring only the fan sound without any air resistance.

Also, I've personally never heard of a corsair failing while we do have some nice pics of a thermaltake smoking a room here.

[Mul.]

I'd agree with the monkey on this one. Corsairs CWT or Seasonic based are very good power supply units. Thermaltake have some reasonable units but I wouldn't consider them a top brand for PSU's.

[Rapid]

LOL I don't want any smoke in my room... I'll follow the experience on that!!

[Rapid]

Originally Posted by name='Mul.'

Any other reasons why you opted for the X48 chipset? How much is it?

The X48 chipset doesn't support nVidia SLI. The only way to have SLI is to use an nForce 7xx Intel edition chipset and the only decent overclocker is the 790i which requires DDR3.

I personally think a cheaper P45 motherboard and a single £200 graphics card would be your best, though I shall reserve judgement until I have a peak at HD 4770 CF results.

I opted for X48 because I read that it has a better memory management than P45 and, more important, because P45 won't support Crossfire at 16x. Only at 8x.

As far as the SLI is concerned, I saw benchmarks of a SLI 780i Striker mobo, falling behind against a Maximus Formula which is P45. The SLI 790i Ultra chipset mobo Striker II Extreme is said to be very unstable (read that from someone that bought it).

I would be very interested if someone posted a SLI compatible mobo that is equal to the Rampage in terms of performance and features.

[Mul.]

There are very few and far between. Is there a particular reason for wanting to go Multi GPU at all? What monitor resolution will you be playing at and what games do you see yourself playing? It's fine if your requirements command a multi gpu arrangement but I'd highly discourage opting for multi gpu options for "future proofing"! I haven't read about memory management differences between the two chipsets but I couldn't see it making a noticeable difference? I'm only saying so as the P45 boards are cheaper and you should definitely weigh out the cost differences with gains that you will actually be able to notice and quantify

[d1abl0]

Originally Posted by name='Mul.'

All I must stress is that if you're opting for a crossfire setup, you should make sure that the games that you play will scale well with crossfire.

How do you find out whether games scale well with crossfire?

[Mul.]

Reviews which involve single gpu and multi gpu setups being benched with certain games at low and high resolutions is very helpful. If however a game is not particularly popular or used as a benchmark much, you'd have to rely on the claims of other people that play said game. If you can't find many user reports, look out for clues on other claims such as whether a game is particularly CPU intensive or not as these are also good ways to determine how well Crossfire or SLI may scale with a game.

[Rapid]

Originally Posted by name='Mul.'

There are very few and far between. Is there a particular reason for wanting to go Multi GPU at all? What monitor resolution will you be playing at and what games do you see yourself playing? It's fine if your requirements command a multi gpu arrangement but I'd highly discourage opting for multi gpu options for "future proofing"! I haven't read about memory management differences between the two chipsets but I couldn't see it making a noticeable difference? I'm only saying so as the P45 boards are cheaper and you should definitely weigh out the cost differences with gains that you will actually be able to notice and quantify

True... I can't but agree with this, because I don't expect to see major differences too. I based my opinion on graphs and stats that show a performance improvement on X48. but I agree that these are not to so important in real use. I would like the option of a 16x dual GPU though. A good middleground solution would be the P5E Deluxe mobo, which costs the same as a P45 P5Q Deluxe and is based on the X48.

If I use one GPU on the P5E I can choose an nVidia can I? If yes, then I can decide between a single card option (ATI or nVidia) or maybe later a Crossfire design (since I'll still have the 16x option at the same price).

p.s. My sense of future proof is that I won't touch my computer for the next 5 years.