Decent MB for Q9550?

[Rapid]

Hi people,

I'm building my new comp. and read a bunch about chipsets and MBs and to say the truth I got confused lol. I have decided to go for a Q9550 instead of an i7-920 due to the total cost of the parts I'll need as well as the power consumption of the i7 (280W in full load) and would like a really good motherboard for this cpu.

The comp. will be mainly used for demanding operations like gaming, video editing, photo editing etc. My wants are: a very good chipset, DDR2 memory, optical cable output. My budget for the MB is open but not above 200€. My main concern is performance. What would you ppl suggest?

I was looking at the ASUS P5N72-T Premium but read some negative comments that made me rethink.

If you have any thoughts about choosing an Intel chipset (X38, G45, G35 or P45) or another one (except VIA of course) plz comment.

[Rastalovich]

P45 for sure.

[Rapid]

Some mobos I think of are the following:

GIgabyte GA-EP45-UD3P 130€

ASUS Rampage Formula 180€

ASUS P5Q Premium 150€

ASUS Maximus II Formula 180€

If you have any experiences with those plz enlighten me

P45 is a nice chipset. G45 is the same chipset with an integrated graphics accelerator. Should I consider going for that or it's the same since I'll buy a high-end graphics card?

[f0x.]

If you cn get a P5Q-E it should handle everything you can throw at it Looks nice to

[Rapid]

Yep! I did some more research and it seems the P5Q-E is a great mobo.

Does the SupremeFX X-Fi Audio Card of the Maximus II Formula justify the additional 50€? I read somewhere that it's crap but I don't know. I would prefer to give 50 more now and save them from a future Soundblaster with X-Fi Audio that would cost 250€.

[d1abl0]

I would recommend the ASUS P5Q Deluxe P45 its about £144 on ebuyer

[Mul.]

My vote out of all of those would be the Gigabyte EP45 UD3P as it's a very capable board and the cheapest of the ones specified. I'd even take it down another notch and get a Gigabyte EP45 UD3R if you don't need ATi Crossfire support. These boards will overclock a Q9550 very nicely and really it doesn't make sense to spend much more on an LGA775 board unless you specifically need some form of Multi GPU support or really are pushing for extreme overclocks with rediculous cooling solutions! If you're willing to pay up to 200EUR on a motherboard, you may as well take the i7 route as boards like the Gigabyte EX58 UD3R cost about that much, the i7 920 isn't much more than the Core 2 Quad Q9550 and DDR3 has really come down in price.

[Rapid]

Actually I wanted to go with a Crossfire design, because it will give me more graphics power for the same or less money I would spend to a more expensive card. I read a test and saw the benchmarks of 2 combined HD4770 against an HD4850. They out performed it hard and they even got close to a GTX-260 (much more expensive card).

So I decided for the X48 chipset and Rampage Formula mobo because of the full x16 PCIe link support. Now plz excuse the one more question, but what PSU should I choose for these? I would go for the Thermaltake Toughpower but I don't know if 600W would be enough. Would it? I intend to go strictly with air cooling and the main components will be:

a) the Core2Quad9550

b) the Rampage Formula

c) 2xATI HD****(not decided yet)

d) 1 SATA HDD for the start

e) OCZ DDR2

The i7 is great but

a) I would need much more money for a complete i7 system, which I really dont need. the Q9550 would also be more than enough!

b) It consumes 280W !!!! under load, when the Q9550 tops at 180-190W...(enviromentally sensitive)

[d1abl0]

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

You can calculate what watt power supply you need by using this webiste

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

Nice components by the way as for graphics card the 4770 512mb crossfire equals the performance of the 4870 1GB and less money so if you are on a budget i would say go for the 4770 512mb but if can find a 1GB verson get that.

[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.