Max Builds a PC Series Part III: The Motherboard

While I'm not up to date with whats hot-or-not in the motherboard scene, I strongly recommend not considering one motherboard over another based on its audio. While onboard audio has made leaps and bounds in terms of quality over the last few years, it still doesn't compare.

Since this is somewhat an excessive rig already, I'd recommend something like the BlueGears B-Enspire, the Asus Xonar X2 (maybe?) or the Auzentech X-Fi Prelude (in order of price...I think)

Back onto motherboards, the Maximus Extreme (ddr3 version?) gets fairly high reviews...

I generally don't know much about Motherboards, so I'll stay out of this one.

However, I reckon we should futureproof the rig and include DDR3 in our spec, despite that pushing the price up high, this monster PC will be decent for at least 5 years.

I generally prefer nVidia, and I reckon in the GPU phase we should have a couple of 8800 GTs in there, so perhaps something that supports SLI (or both, because I have absolutely zero knowledge on Motherboards - apart from the fact that they hold it all together )

Over'n'out

Since you're going for the high-end quad core, I'm guessing you're not going to overclock. If you don't plan on installing a 3rd party cooler, I can highly recommend the Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 (DDR2) and GA-X38T-DQ6 (DDR3). Both have fantastic reviews, and mine is breathtakingly stable. I had to jury-rig my CNPS9700 cooler to work with the "Crazy Cool" heatsink under the board.

As of right now, the best system to have intel on is the x38. but as alwyas intel has to find a way to try and kill us with offereing a new system and replace it by a newer system in less than 3 months of released.

As of what you can buy off the market the X38 offers excellent performance.

here are the good points of the x38 

- The only chipset that offers DDR2 andDDR3

- offers 2 PCI-Express *16 ports

- Suports intel's 45nm architecture

the bad points

- going to be replaced early Q1 of next year with the x48 motherboard ( but this board so far only supports DDR3)

- pretty much an expensive board for one that will be extinct in less than 2 months. plus it's the first intel chipset that has it's lifetime shorten to 6 months by so called better hardware.

now that we have our processor the QX9650, the only excellent choice is the x38, but choosing this will mean that the only graphic card we can choose will be ati's HD38XX series ( mainly because of the built in support for crossfire, choosing nvdia is also possible but when the users wants more advance features for their hardware you be stuck with the x38).

As far as whihc mother board is the best here are your choices

gigabyte GA-X38T-DQ6

asus Maximus formula Extreme

ASUS P5E3 Deluxe

Foxconn X38A

MSI X38 Diamond

 

Now the gigabyte is an excelent motherboard, but it's only outstanding when you are overclocking, based on stock performance gigabyte is second to Asus. Asus for stock peroformance is the best, but they are the best cause thier stock settings are slight overclocks, there by putting them in the lead.

my choice will be between the Gigabye GA-X38T-DQ6 and the ASUS  P5E3 Deluxe. the reason i chose the P5E3 Deluxe over the maximus formula extreme is for two reasons. the P5E3 Deluxe offers the most features out of box and any other competitor( provided you are interested in 802.11n built in, windows media center remote and IR controller) also the maximus forumula extreme is designed to work best with a water cooling setup.

Please note the Maximus formula extreme and the P5E3 are basically the same board . they just priced differently based on additional features.

Also tomshardware has a good analysis of the best board for DDR3 and the Asus won. here is a link for the review.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/26/x38_comparison_part2/index.html

also Anandtech give the board the extreme benchmarkers choice.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3172&p=12

I personally like the brands Asus, Gigabyte, and DFI, they all use high quality capacitors, which was a problem...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_capacitors

I like both Nvidia and Intel chipsets, as for what to choose...that is quite hard. I love Nvidia's ntune, and Nvidia did announce nvidia's ESA , but nothing really supports it yet.

I've always had luck with Intel chipsets, so might as well go with the newest and best to match the processor, the x38. I'm also a fan of Gigabyte's all solid capacitor design, it really is an attractive feature. I also think firewire is an essential feature. Onboard sound doesn't matter, we better get a soundcard. So all in all I agree with dcuccia, the GIGABYTE GA-X38-DQ6 is a good choice. I see no reason to go DDR 3 at this time, though it is the future, right now it really offers no advantages.

I know it is all marketing, but read about that Ultra Durableness. http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/FileList/WebPage/mb_070427_ud2/tech_070427_ud2.htm

On most motherboards, you will probably see 5-10 solid capacitors around your processor socket, because of their quality and ability to deliver good clean power to the processor, using this design all over the motherboard is just a good idea.

See the solid capacitors south of the socket...here

I gotta agree with the other guys here. Onboard audio (or practically integrated anything) is going to suck hugely. Even on the high-end models, the only thing you should need an onboard sound card for is if your real sound card doesn't work for some reason.

All this recent talk about Nvidia's 3-way SLI almost certainly means we need to do something similar here. This includes using a mobo with 3 PCI-E slots (like one of the nForce 600i series), but we could also just opt for 2 GPUs.

Like a few others here, I'm not much into motherboards, so I'll leave the real decision-making to the people who are.

I'm not a motherboard freak either, as Lloyd... but the ASUSTeK does limit us to only DDR2 RAM, which might require more currency and is a little bit slower. Although there are sources that say that it is only a myth that DDR2 RAM is slower.

On the other hand DDR3 RAM is very expensive and I don't know if we should get the expensiest thing here too.

The ASUS board that has been pointed out http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/26/x38_comparison_part2/page2.html looks very good to me, although it seems to only support DDR3 RAM and Max's board only DDR2.

I'm really a little bit indifferent here because you can get a lot more RAM for the same price and it's a litttle bit a myth that DDR2 is slow - so one or the other is good for me!

Somebody brought up the question that we are not going to overclock this baby? Question is: shouldn't we consider that? I mean not now, but the person who is going to get it might want to do it in a year or so. What do you think?

Since I don't know much about hardware I'm using this series of posts to read and learn as much as I can.

From what I've read, given the processor that was chosen, an X38 chipset is the way to go. Ideally, we'd want to wait for the X48 chipset, since the X38 doesn't really support the full 1600 MHz FSB (I might be paraphrasing myself, but I do seem to recall saying that it was probably too soon to go QX9650), but who wants to wait any longer, right?

Since we're building tomorrow's PC, we might as well get a motherboard that supports DDR3 and DDR3 only, since hybrids will probably limit us more than anything and seem to exist only to allow financially ease the transition for upgraders (have you seen the price of DDR3‽)

As for the actual motherboard, I think I'd pick an Asus too, just not the Maximus Formula. Why? Because I'd like RAID support and the Maximus Formula (even the SE) doesn't seem to have it. That's why I'd rather go with the Maximus Extreme (still a Max ) which shares most of the advantages of the Formula, even though it would seem its form factor is a bit unusual (an inch longer somewhere?) which could be a problem.

One more thing I like about the Maximus cards is that they seem to integrate just the "bare necessities" (cue Baloo) by putting, for example, sound ports on a separate card for those of us who'd rather go for a "real" sound card.

Well, that's it for my input. Have a nice weekend,

Mauricio

PS. Oh, one more thing for the Maximus boards (I don't know if others do it, but still) is that they allow you to customize your boot logo. How cool would it be if your computer boots to a flying 8?