Well I currently have about 20 tabs open in opera trying to work out which motherboard would be best for a new pc I may be building.

The spec list atm is:

8800GTS of some description (although may wait to see what ATI produce with their DX10 cards)
Crucial Ballistix 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 800MHz Dual Channel Kit
Probably C2D E6420, or i may save myself £40 and get a E4300 to overclock, havnt decided what to do there yet.

I have all the other components I need.

So what I'd like to know is what motherboard would be best within my budget of roughly £100, to provide good overclocking facility.

I've been looking at the Abit Fatal1ty FP-IN9 SLi nForce 650, and also the Asus P5N-E SLi nForce 650 motherboard, the Asus seems to be the better of the two there.

I really dont mind what chipset it has though, it really just needs to be able to overclock a C2D E6420, and I wont be crazy, not over 3Ghz most likely.

Also how much does matching the speed of the ram to the fsb of the CPU matter?

I swear it was much easier when I bought the last load of hardware, 400mhz fsb SoA motherboard, 400mhz SoA CPU, 400mhz ram lol.

go for the Asus P5B-Deluxe

Quick reply there Jak, cheers. If I could find that for £100 I'd definately get it. I'll look around.

I've read about a lot of people getting good overclocks with a E4300 and the Asus P5N-E. That would save about £80 compared to the P5B Delux and E6420. Hmm.

the Deluxe is the best sub £150 board for overclocking, the Gigabyte DS3 (or S3) is great for about £70 too.

The DFi Infinity Dark 965 looks like a VERY promising board, too

Thanks Jak, using Ebuyer's £10 off offer atm I can get it for £103 May have to invest in that lol.

Edit: So now;

Asus P5B Deluxe
C2D E4300 (I think that'll offer the best OC per £)
BFG 8800GTS OC
2GB Crucial Ballistix 800Mhz

Comes to about £470, sounds good to me.

ah, the P5B-Deluxe is a beast of a mobo overclocking wise (will do 500 fsb), but if your on a budget, or wont do mental OC's a DS3 or DFi may be better

I hate Fatal1ty products, they all are marketing and worse than the non fatal1ty series.
P5B-Deluxe is fine

yup, the last Fatal1ty product i saw was a 7600GT with a passive heatsink, marketed with the slogan "silent put deadly" :P

If i were you i'd save some money and get a DS3 (or the DFi, providing my memory would work in it - DFi's ROCK for OC'ing, but are finiky over memory and have way to many options!) over the P5B-Deluxe, and get an E6600 (if you could)

What cooling will you be using?

(PS - overclock whore here, 40% overclock!)

Ahh ok. The DS3 can be had for about £80 so that saves a bit. Am I correct in thinking the E6600 has the same multiplier as the E4300? I may be up for that. The whole lot needs to be under £500 really.

I hadnt really thought about cooling, quiet is always good. Although I'm not too worried about that straight away as I've seen how cool these C2Ds run (we have a passively cooled stock speed E6400 at home and even after putting both cores under 100% use they didnt exactly get hot).

Ive also got an Antec P180 case so that helps out on the quiet side of things. Recommendations on air cooling whould be good too please.

Thanks.

Buy this motherboard

MB MSI P6N SLI-Platinum, nF650i SLI, GbE, 1394, eSATA. This one doesnt have any fans so its noiseless.If you want mega overclokc then with the motherobard is bundled small fan which you can clip on Northbridge

and wait 2 weeks and get ATI HD2900XT.Same or less price then 8800GTS 640MB and its a bit more powerfull.Sometimes very much.I saw already pre-order at Czech shop when converted to your currency 225GBP(incl. VAT).

http://www.chiphell.com/viewth ... d=3404&extra=page%3D1

Fair play. Im in no rush to buy so I'll be waiting for the new ATI releases anyway to see what happens there.

Im not sure on the E6600, I know I dont want to be skimping on any particular part, least of all the CPU, but it is double the price of the 4300, the only drawbacks I can being the 4300 has half the L2 cache and lack of VMWare support. I'll have to think about that one a bit more.

I heard there is a lot E4300 which can get over 3Ghz while the most of E6600 can get close to 3.5Ghz.Depend if you looking for huge overclokcing or not.

2MB cache ver. 4MB cache gives around 5-8 percent boost.Not more.
There are already E4320 with 4MB cache in shops.

the E4300's tend to top out at 2.8-3.2 GHz, while i've seen E6600's hit 3.8 GHz on Air

Cooling wise, go for the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro (£15), or the better Thermaltake Big Typhoon (£30)

Well, I picked up a E6600 for £119 today, couldnt resist at that price Probably still going to use Overclockers.co.uk's offer of 2GB of Crucial Ballistix ram this week, then hold out for a graphics card.

Also I knew people wanted 3200+ Athlon XPs, but I didnt know I could get £50-£60 on ebay for mine! So todays been a good day in all lol.

New bits ordered today:

P5B Deluxe
AC Freezer 7 Pro

I have another question though. On the Crucial site it says their Ballistix ram operates at 2.2v, yet the Asus site says the mobo provides 1.8v to the ram slots. However, the Crucial site also says this ram is compatible with that mobo. Can anyone confirm is that correct?

Cheers.

Actually alot of E4300's will do 3-3.1ghz on stock vcore, then hit it at about 3.4-3.6ghz on air, then almost 4 on water/phase cooling. Also Jakg, shut up about your 40% overclock :P its not THAT impressive.
~Bryan~

Quote from pb32000 :

I have another question though. On the Crucial site it says their Ballistix ram operates at 2.2v, yet the Asus site says the mobo provides 1.8v to the ram slots. However, the Crucial site also says this ram is compatible with that mobo. Can anyone confirm is that correct?
Cheers.

1.8V is standard(default) for DDR2.
Some DDR2 memory needs higher voltage to either support faster speed
(Mhz) or lower lattencies like CL4 for PC6400.

Dont worry,on this motherboard Voltage can be set for the Memory from 1.80V to 2.45V in 0.05V increments.

Hope it helps and its clear.

Quote from dropin_biking :

Actually alot of E4300's will do 3-3.1ghz on stock vcore, then hit it at about 3.4-3.6ghz on air, then almost 4 on water/phase cooling. Also Jakg, shut up about your 40% overclock :P its not THAT impressive.
~Bryan~

i know, if i had an Opteron it would be in the 70's, and a C2D would be aiming for 100!

Almost 4 is almost, i would say about 3.8, as from what i've seen E4300's dont like going over 400 fsb

Quote from DEVIL 007 :

1.8V is standard(default) for DDR2.
Some DDR2 memory needs higher voltage to either support faster speed
(Mhz) or lower lattencies like CL4 for PC6400.

Dont worry,on this motherboard Voltage can be set for the Memory from 1.80V to 2.45V in 0.05V increments.

Hope it helps and its clear.

Ahh thats great, cheers.

I used to consider myself quite knowledgable on hardware but I just havn't kept up with the times lol... and I'm only 19

I got the p5b-deluxe. Its a beast! Get it and dont ask questions! I found it difficult to get my e6300 to get past 350 at first. But i went online and found some guides. The board is unstable at speeds from 350 to 400. When you get past that it all good. I can get 500fsb on air all day long and my temps will never go over 50. I almost got a 100% overclock. 97.5% isnt too bad for the ram i have. If i had a e4300 i could be getting much better. The only difference in the two are the higher multiplyer and lower fsb. Thats why you need better ram to overclock an e6**0 series processor. The only down side to the p5b is the lack of offical SLi. There have been people who managed to set it up, but you only get 16x and 8x or 4x (not sure) pci-e. So its not that great. It can do crossfire the same way. I have never had one problem with it. If i were you, i would go for the e6600. It overclocks very nicely, and the price just dropped. With the ram you want, and proper cooling you could get 4ghz no problem.

If at all possible try and keep some stuff from you last computer so you can get more expensive important parts. Depending on what your hard-drive is like, what kind of optical drive you have(dvd-rom,cd-burner,all in one type) could save some cash, wouldnt bother with a sound card upgrade. The one in the p5b is great believe it or not. That could be another 50 pounds. If i had one piece of advice, it would be to NOT get cheap ram, it will cost you later. The crutial seems fine, although i love my ocz xtc gold (which has dropped in price by about 50% sence i bought it 3 months ago!). Try and save as much money as possible on some parts, so you ca get the best of the more important ones.

Steve, thanks for the advice, I've alread decided to use most of the old parts from my pc, the final spec list is now this.

Purchased:

C2D E6600
Asus P5B Deluxe
OCZ 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 CL 4-4-4-15 PLATINUM XTC
AC Freezer 7 Pro
(Graphics yet to be decided)

Kept:

Antect P180
Hiper Type R 580W
2 x Seagate Barracuda 250GB Sata2 HDDs
Audigy 2 ZS
LG 16x DVD writer of some description

Acer 2051W 20" Widescreen with CrystalBrite
Creative Megaworks 250D 2.1

bump!

Mmmm tasty goodies arrived. Havnt got the CPU yet though.

Lol at camera phone quality :sour: