£300 Budget

[stevebarnes15]

Ok guys,so i got my nzxt phantom today,and i have £300 left to spend on a new mobo and cpu,i'd like to go intel,and have some bells and whistles on the mobo please,any suggestions?

I'm replacing a gigabyte UD2H 880g,and a phenom 2x6 1055t,as my son has nabbed it for his warhammer first custom mod project.

 

[sg12004]

Asus P8H67-LE Rev 3.0 Socket 1155 Motherboard £120.59 click here

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz Processor £168.22 clickhere

 

[SieB]

If you can afford ~£30 more go for a Asus P8P67 pro and a 2500K.

 

[stevebarnes15]

ah thats the new sandy bridge cpus everyones banging on about,i read an article that there was a major design flaw or something a few weeks ago,would that fall into that category?

Motherboard will go nicely with the theme of the phantom.

 

[SieB]

Nah, just make sure the motherboard is a B3 revised version of the P67 chipset. The problem with the B2 versions affected the SATA 2 controller and caused it to degrade over time affecting performance.

 

[stevebarnes15]

Nah, just make sure the motherboard is a B3 revised version of the P67 chipset. The problem with the B2 versions affected the SATA 2 controller and caused it to degrade over time affecting performance.

Ideal gonna head over to asus website for full specs,i had an i5 750 before on my last rig,with foxconn inferno katana mobo,can highly reccomend that mobo,but just doesn't suit my theme:

Old i5 system

thanks for your time guys.

 

[Karlos_the_n00b]

Looked on your profile and I'm suggesting this based on the presumption that your son let you keep your [font=Verdana, sans-serif, FreeSans]gtx 430 1Gb.[/font]

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[font="Verdana, sans-serif, FreeSans"]For £300 I'd defiantly go with a 2500K which you can get for around £160 and then a P67 motherboard as its the P67 chipset that allows for overclocking on the K series processors. Personally I wouldn't go for a H67 unless you where running onboard graphics.[/font]

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[font="Verdana, sans-serif, FreeSans"]Not gone into looking at boards in depth I admit but I like the look of this one:[/font]

[font=Verdana, sans-serif, FreeSans]http://www.msi.com/product/mb/P67A-GD65--B3-.html[/font]

If that takes you too close to your budget than there this:

[font=Verdana, sans-serif, FreeSans]http://www.msi.com/product/mb/P67A-GD55--B3-.html[/font]

Both thouse boards get good reviews but the 65 looks the better of the two.

This board from ASUS also gets good reviews but it only supports crossfire so I'd rather go for one of the MSI's for my money. It's not that I prefer NVIDIA to AMD, probly more the other way around, but I do like being able to choose.

http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=Qx3PdnZI9Pq9BcIU

Hope this all helps.

P.S. I wouldn't let your son know if you actually go and order a 2500K otherwise your gona be right back to your 1055t

 

[SieB]

If he goes for the P8P67 he should go for the PRO version it supports SLI an CF also at x16 and x8 the standard P8P67 only does x16 and x4 and only supports CF. The PRO version is also better for overclocking I have the standard P8P67 and it takes me 3.5v to get 4.5ghz but on the PRO version most people are able to do it at 1.32v.

The MSI GD65 is a good board I don't know about overclocking on it though. You're right about H67 motherboards though, you only should get one if you want to use the IGP on CPU. H67 does not support overclocking only P67 does but P67 does not support use of the IGP only H67 does.

 

[stevebarnes15]

Yes will be keeping the gt430 for time being at least for a month or 2 anyway,in all fairness,it's gonna be a gaming rig for black ops and bf3 when it's released,so onboard graphics wont be up to much.

I still have the nzxt hale 750watt psu to buy aswell,which i'll be ordering tommorow,followed by the mobo, and cpu next week.

Must admit i've never been a fan of msi boards but they seem to be getting better of late.However i do like the first asus boards you linked to.

water cooling will be last on the list,which i'm gonna be having a closer look at before i buy.

 

[Karlos_the_n00b]

I didn't originally take note of the Pro version because that would take him over the budget however, if he can push over budget a little or find it cheaper elsewhere than I agree with you totally that that's the better board as far as the ASUS's go.

I don't know how Steve is with overclocking, but personally I've never done any, so I'd go for the MSI's because they have a button that you press and it goes and overclock's itself so that's great for a n00b like me where the ASUS doesn't have such a feature to the best of my knowledge. I think the ASUS is also only really going to be worth the extra coin if he actually planning on running SLI or CF at a later date, but you might have stated this yourself.

I've also heard, and this goes for the MSI, ASUS and everything else, that the FPS difference between 16x and 8x duel GPU's isn't that great, but I have no idea what "isn't that great" is as a figure.

Just read your last post before posting this, and tbh I wasn't much of an MSI fan before either but with there new motherboard designs and features along with the twin frozer graphics cards I'm really starting to look to them for my next build. Failing not being able to stretch to a Gigabyte P67A-UD7 that is. That boards just lush![font="Verdana, sans-serif, FreeSans"]

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[stevebarnes15]

I've always been a bit dubious of overclocking personally,i have had a go at it but i'm always nervous something is going to go drastically wrong,and end up fryng my beloved : /

I think some of the asus boards have the turbo feature to,but in all fairness i probably wouldnt use it.

I usually choose my boards for the visual aspect and what it's capable of,out of box.

budget wise i could probably stretch to another 50 quid realistically,without the mrs lopping my bollocks off.

 

[SieB]

I don't know how Steve is with overclocking, but personally I've never done any, so I'd go for the MSI's because they have a button that you press and it goes and overclock's itself so that's great for a n00b like me where the ASUS doesn't have such a feature to the best of my knowledge. I think the ASUS is also only really going to be worth the extra coin if he actually planning on running SLI or CF at a later date, but you might have stated this yourself.

Asus has a similar feature called OC tuner It's also good to have the option to SLI later on as it can some times work out cheaper than buying the latest GPU.

I've also heard, and this goes for the MSI, ASUS and everything else, that the FPS difference between 16x and 8x duel GPU's isn't that great, but I have no idea what "isn't that great" is as a figure.

On the lower boards SLI or CF runs at x16 and x4 and there is a huge performance drop so if you do want to SLI/CF get at least a midrange board which will do x16 and x8

I've always been a bit dubious of overclocking personally,i have had a go at it but i'm always nervous something is going to go drastically wrong,and end up fryng my beloved : /

I think some of the asus boards have the turbo feature to,but in all fairness i probably wouldnt use it.

I usually choose my boards for the visual aspect and what it's capable of,out of box.

budget wise i could probably stretch to another 50 quid realistically,without the mrs lopping my bollocks off.

Overclocking on 1155 is easy you can't really go wrong, the only way you would damage something is if you went crazy with the voltage but as long as you stay with in safe limits, ~1.38v you are ok. You can use the OC tuner on the motherboard which will overclock for you but it's still best to do it yourself tbh. It's up to you but if you can stretch that £30 extra it is worth it because the PRO version has more features which could come in handy in the future sch as SLI/CF and if you decide to overclock the board will be good for it.

 

[Karlos_the_n00b]

Asus has a similar feature called OC tuner It's also good to have the option to SLI later on as it can some times work out cheaper than buying the latest GPU.

True

On the lower boards SLI or CF runs at x16 and x4 and there is a huge performance drop so if you do want to SLI/CF get at least a midrange board which will do x16 and x8

Didn't know that there where boards that ran in x16 and x4 but the MSI boards I linked to do use x16 on a single card and then duel x8 in SLI/CF and like I say, its been said that the difference between duel x8 and duel x16 "isn't that great".

Overclocking on 1155 is easy you can't really go wrong, the only way you would damage something is if you went crazy with the voltage but as long as you stay with in safe limits, ~1.38v you are ok. You can use the OC tuner on the motherboard which will overclock for you but it's still best to do it yourself tbh. It's up to you but if you can stretch that £30 extra it is worth it because the PRO version has more features which could come in handy in the future sch as SLI/CF and if you decide to overclock the board will be good for it.

I know nothing about overclocking. Like Steve by the sound of things, it gives me the willies. Thats why a button that does it for you is a dream come true for someone like me so thats a feature I would want. However I do understand that I would be able to reach a higher overclock on that board by not using the feature and doing it myself, if I knew what I was doing. I completely agree though that if he wants to go the ASUS route and can get the pro then he should.

Can't really blame you if your hell bent on going with ASUS though as I'm currently still on 775 and using the [font="Verdana, sans-serif, FreeSans"]ASUS P5W DH Deluxe and its been solid over the years (touch wood).[/font]

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[font="Verdana, sans-serif, FreeSans"]Edit: Just wanted to add that whist I'd be prepared to compromise on the mobo, if I had £300 to spend I WOULD NOT IN ANY WAY compromise on the 2500K. From all the reviews I've read, that CPU is it when it comes to gaming as far as what you get for your money. It got the gold award and the value award from TTL.[/font]

[font="Verdana, sans-serif, FreeSans"]http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/i7_2600k_i5_2500k_2300_1155_sandy_bridge_review/8[/font]

[font="Verdana, sans-serif, FreeSans"] [/font]http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/best-gaming-cpu-core-i3-2100-recommended-processor,review-32155-4.html

 

[Karlos_the_n00b]

SieB,

PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong because I think I've just gotten confused but are you saying that the ASUS P8P67 Pro runs one card at x16 and one card at x8 when in SLI/CF because I don't think that's right?

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If he goes for the P8P67 he should go for the PRO version it supports SLI an CF also at x16 and x8 the standard P8P67 only does x16 and x4 and only supports CF. The PRO version is also better for overclocking I have the standard P8P67 and it takes me 3.5v to get 4.5ghz but on the PRO version most people are able to do it at 1.32v.

I've been looking on the P8P67 Pro specification page http://www.asus.com/...MMvTCuBcZLfu2YL[/font]

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[font="arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif"] [/font][font="arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif"]It looks like the blue and white x16 slots are paired so if your using them it will run a single card in x16 and duel cards at x8, same as the MSI boards.[/font]

[font="arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif"] [/font]The black x16 slot however runs at a maximum of x4 and is linked to the x1 slots and the some of the USB ports so could actually run lower.

So as I understand it, this board either allows you to run SLI/CF in 8x and 8x by using the blue and white slots or 16x and at best 4x by using the white and black which, like you said, the performance really drops there.

If I misunderstood you I really do apologise.

 

[SieB]

You're right I never noticed that I thought it was x16 and x8

I don't fully understand the whole SLI/CF business myself. The way I understand it is the more cards you add the lower the performance goes for each card you add because the motherboard can't power them all fully so you would need all the PCI-E lanes to be x16 to run them at full power.

 

[marsey99]

ud4@£143 and 2500k@£166 is what i would go for if i was you, yes its a little over budget but the ud4 has had less issues than the p8p67, it has about the same bells and whistles, imo the all black with grey looks better and best of all it cheaper

 

[Karlos_the_n00b]

I don't fully understand the whole SLI/CF business myself. The way I understand it is the more cards you add the lower the performance goes for each card you add because the motherboard can't power them all fully so you would need all the PCI-E lanes to be x16 to run them at full power.

I can't say I understand it all myself but from what I've taken in over the past few months is its not so much about power as bandwidth.

I'm pretty sure that the P67/H67 chips are only capable of running 1 slot at x16 bandwidth so when you run CF/SLI the bandwidth gets divided between the 2 slots so you 8x bandwidth.

Now I might be wrong on this part but I believe that when you get to the high end cards such as the MSI big bang which are able to run SLI/CF at duel x16 bandwidth, that's actually because they use a second chip so the P67/H67 is running one card at 16x bandwidth and the second chip is running the other card at x16 bandwidth.

I believe power only comes into it when your trying to run the big boy cards like the 6990 and 590 or 580's and 6970 in tri and quad configs and that's because the power that those cards try to draw from your motherboard can be enough to fry it. That's why the likes of the Assassin series and the MSI big bang have thouse extra power connectors on the board to supply the PCI slots with more juice.

This is how I understand it but if I'm wrong (like I normally am) then please correct me.

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ud4@£143 and 2500k@£166 is what i would go for if i was you, yes its a little over budget but the ud4 has had less issues than the p8p67, it has about the same bells and whistles, imo the all black with grey looks better and best of all it cheaper

[/font]Two Batmen. Its getting like the modern day DC universe in here

(sorry, comic book humor)

Noticed that board supports cloud OC. Thats great. Means I can overclock my mobo sitting in England whilst I'm visiting my GF parents in Spain xD

Joking aside though, that board does have a great feature set and also some good reviews http://www.gigabyte....spx?pid=3648#na

 

[SieB]

The BBM uses Lucid Hydra and I tink all the lanes on it are x16. Most of these OC features on the P67 boards and BT GO etc are gimmicks more than anything, doing it manually is still the best way.

 

[stevebarnes15]

What do you think of this board?

http://www.ecs.com.t...uID=103&LanID=8

Rather sexy looking,and would fit my theme amazingly,as i'm planning to make a custom window in the side of my phantom.

Although i've not been able to source a supplier for it yet,but first look at specs look pretty good.

 

[SieB]

I have never heard of ECS before tbh, personally i'd stick to well know manufacturers.