Decent MB for Q9550?

R

Rapid

New member
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.
 
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?
 
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€.
 
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. :)
 
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:wavey:)
 
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.
 
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.
 
I would go for a corsair psu either the HX series if you want semi modular or the TX if you want non modular.
Click to expand...

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. 21dB)

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.

name='Mul.' said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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'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.
 
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.
 
name='Mul.' said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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 :)
 
name='Mul.' said:
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.
Click to expand...

How do you find out whether games scale well with crossfire?
 
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.
 
name='Mul.' said:
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 :)
Click to expand...

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.
 
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