Now as a computer technician I should probably know this, but as at work I only deal with AMD motherboards/CPUs, I don't have much hands-on experience of newer Intel based motherboards/CPUs.

My P4 system is slowly dying and I want to replace it with a C2D when I have the money, however I have a question regarding 2 motherboards.

ASUS P5N-E - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/125082
and
ASUS P5N-D - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142585

Which board is the better value for money? I want to spend under £100 on a decent motherboard if at all possible.

If there's any alternatives then I'll listen to them, but I want a board with SLI compatibility and if possible 2x ATA ports on it.Although I can live without 2 if needs be.

I would go for the newer 700 series P5N-E.. there is not a lot of price difference. The 600 series roughly a year and a half old already.. Being a tech you know that in PC years thats old

Asus is a great brand and i've had a 680i motherboard overclocked from 1.8GHZ right up to 3.0GHZ on air cooling with no issues. I usually run it at 2.6 just to be safe though.

Get a P35 mobo. Why would you want SLI on a low end mobo? It's useless. better to buy a 9800GX2 then and have proper perfomance on a proper motherboard. P35 is THE thing for C2D. Well, actually P45 which is coming out soon so wait for that.

get this for example:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/129126

nVidia Chipsets on Intel CPU's are rubbish - the 680i is total fail, the 650i is slightly better but still totally unimpressive, and the 7xx is still very expensive for a tiny step in the right direction.

As such, SLi on Intel is a bit painful - Crossfire is supported on the "best" Intel chipsets, though.

SLi isn't that good anyway, so you aren't missing out.

What CPU will you be using? Will you be overclocking? Do you need RAID?

The P35 chipset from Intel is a great 650i competitor, although for Crossfire it's totally useless - it has it, but one lane runs at 4x which is a major bottleneck. An entry-level P35 mobo will cost £70 (Gigabyte P35-DS3R), a midrange one £85 (Asus P5K-E) and a high-end one £100 (Asus P5K Premium).

If you want to spend a little more on a Crossfire board an X38 board will overclock even better, and will have RAID etc, and has dual 16x lanes - the cheapest X38 DDR2 board is the Asus P5E Lifestyle at £130.

If you want you can also get versions of board like the P5K (P5KC), Gigabyte P35-DS3x (P35C-DS3x) etc which have DDR2 AND DDR3 slots, although imo it's a waste of cash.

I really am having a hard time finding any P35 / X38 boards with Dual IDE, though.

Note - I used eBuyer because you gave me a link. You can probably find that stuff cheaper somewhere else.

EDIT - If you want to use IDE do NOT buy a P5K (or a P5KC - the P5K-E, P5K-Premium etc are fine, though) as they have the worst IDE placement - at the VERY bottom at the back of the mobo, meaning that even with an extra long (i used a 24 inch IDE cable) IDE cable it will pull up on whatevers on the bottom PCI slot - This bent all the pins on my X-Fi

Quote from Jakg :

nVidia Chipsets on Intel CPU's are rubbish - the 680i is total fail, the 650i is slightly better but still totally unimpressive, and the 7xx is still very expensive for a tiny step in the right direction.

Why would you say its rubbish? If he's on a budget like that he's probably not going to be using DDR3. They both over clock well.. he wants to use PATA hard drives which the P35 will not do. I think you're saying its rubbish is just a personal opinion which I would disagree with... I do like the P35 boards as well, I don't have anything against either of them. He already stated he wants an inexpensive motherboard.. you are giving him good options but at almost double the price.

Buy the one in your first link.. use it for 12-24 months, and upgrade it again with something else around the same price at that time if you want up to date.

The 680i chipset has random incompatibly issues, overclocks badly (esp Quad Cores) and is very expensive.

The P35 WILL use PATA hard-drives.

The 680i is only a worthwhile choice if you NEED SLi - saying it's crap is not an opinion it's a fact.

He said under £100. I found him a board for £70 with almost everything he needs.

Quote from Jakg :

The 680i chipset has random incompatibly issues, overclocks badly (esp Quad Cores) and is very expensive.

The P35 WILL use PATA hard-drives.

The 680i is only a worthwhile choice if you NEED SLi - saying it's crap is not an opinion it's a fact.

He said under £100. I found him a board for £70 with almost everything he needs.

lol sorry I didnt think 1.8GHZ to 3.0GHZ on air was a "bad" overclock... I have two video cards, 2xraptors in raid.. vid card oc'd, memory oc'd, CPU oc'd, PCIE bus OC'd, FSB oc'd... never had one issue with incompatiblity or anything over heating.

Thanks for the tips.

I don't really want to go down the Crossfire route as I'm not a fan of ATI cards at all - had far too many bad experiences with them in the past to even think about buying another and I've never had a single problem with nvidia cards.

I was thinking along the SLI route so I can get an 8xxx series card with SLI compatability, then when I need more graphics 'umph' I'd get another one to add to it as I don't really have the money to splash out on top notch stuff straight away (downside to owning a car).

As for the processor, I was thinking along the lines of the C2D E6550 - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130485

I'm not so interested in overclocking as I've never really been a fan of it to start with anyway, but maybe if I want to squeeze that little bit more power out of it I might have a look at it. I'm not too fussed about RAID, if I have it, great, if not, I don't mind.

My current set-up with hard drives is:
1x 250GB IDE - Windows install and all programs/game installs
1x 80GB IDE - music
1x 160GB SATA - Storage
1x 250GB SATA - Storage

The 250GB IDE is still fairly new, so ideally I want to keep that, but if I can't get a motherboard with enough PATA then I'll put this HDD in a caddy and use it as external storage.

I think new 45nm's would be better deal, but I can't find them in ebuyer

Yeah, get a 45 nm CPU (E8200, E8400 if you can), forget the 'if i need more power i'll add another card' s**t since it's useless - by the time you'll need more power, it'll be hard to get a GFX that you have now, they will be too slow (SLI scales badly, really badly) and will use too much power. Having 2 HDs will be hard, if so, forget IDE optics - you'll have to buy SATA DVD drives. I'd loose the 80 gig HD since IDE is mostly slow on P35 - it's done via another chip and is not supported out fo the box via the chipset.

There's a new mobo out there, P5K PRO - very good value for money and Bit-Tech just put up a review of it. Seems it's a good performer and costs 80 pounds.

P5K Pro?! Where?

I've been looking for a review of that (and of the P5KR) for aaaaaaaages!

EDIT - http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/04/02/asus_p5k_pro/1 - Here!

Looks like a Non-WiFi P5K-E. God I hope it is!

EDIT - Still got the same PCB layout as the P5K, which implies it's a black P5K with RAID and a poorer quality PCB than the P5K-E. Still the worst IDE placement ever though.

It's shorter - it's missing the right-most set of holes for the screws. SO i think it's somewhat of a redesign (or the other P5K are the same and it's only the Deluxe/Premium that are different :P)

Hmm, I was thinking of basing my system around this.

Asus Striker II Formula nForce ... -Express DDR2 Motherboard (can't seem to remove the underline sorry)

Gettin a Core™2 Quad Q6*** and sticking on two 8800 GTS GPU's

Also 2 x 160G SAGA hardrives with no raid, one for running vista (64 bit) and one for storing my small number of files? (I don't need a mega HDD)

Antec Nine Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case, with a decnt 600w power supply.

Still to check out power supplies and cooling, I have read a couple of reviews on the mobo, some folks have advised the non OEM cooling may be required if it is overclocked as it may run at quite a high temp?

Oops forgot about decent quality RAM 4GB to help with the vista 64. Is it easily possible to run XP on a seperate HDD if I get peeved of with Vista?

What do you guys think of this, don't be harsh i've just started looking

So, are you building this PC yourself? If so give me a budget, and tell me if you do or don't need monitors and i'll build something - the one thing I can say is that it won't use a 780i.

If you want 2 GFX cards, then i'd go for 2x 3870x2's.

You may need a PSU beefier than 600w, actually...

If you are overclocking then you could do with an Arctic Freezer 7 Pro, if you plan on going more than 3 - 3.2 GHz then go for something beefier.

XP is easy to run on an extra HDD but I doubt you'll get annoyed with Vista.

Quote from AlienT. :

Hmm, I was thinking of basing my system around this.

Asus Striker II Formula nForce ... -Express DDR2 Motherboard (can't seem to remove the underline sorry)

Gettin a Core™2 Quad Q6*** and sticking on two 8800 GTS GPU's

Also 2 x 160G SAGA hardrives with no raid, one for running vista (64 bit) and one for storing my small number of files? (I don't need a mega HDD)

Antec Nine Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case, with a decnt 600w power supply.

Still to check out power supplies and cooling, I have read a couple of reviews on the mobo, some folks have advised the non OEM cooling may be required if it is overclocked as it may run at quite a high temp?

Oops forgot about decent quality RAM 4GB to help with the vista 64. Is it easily possible to run XP on a seperate HDD if I get peeved of with Vista?

What do you guys think of this, don't be harsh i've just started looking

Sounds like a good start. I'd look at some Corsair XMS2 memory... and possibly a Corsair PSU - though they're a bit expensive.

I'd go with Seagate Barracuda hard drives. Excellent quality. But you really should look at getting two 320Gb drives.

You could easily run XP on the other hard drive. Then on boot you can select which drive you want to run off of.

I don't know why you'd really want two 8800GTS cards. Aside from requiring a lot of juice, that's just going to make it more difficult to cool your case - not to mention make it louder. Besides - I don't know what you'd REALLY need two of them for. One will run almost all games in existence without any issues. If it's for Crysis, then you're going to need more like 17 of them... lol. Save the money from one of those and get the 320 Gb HDDs and a nice PSU AND a nice aftermarket cooler for the CPU.

Thanks mate, hmm if I don't need 2 graphics cards then maybe I don't need SLI? and could go for a less expensive mobo?

The only games I play are race sims (got almost all the half decent ones loaded) Race 07 seems to give me the slowest FPS with my current laptop, BF2, Age of Empires and Eve Online.

I did the LFS benchmark twice and was getting around 26FPS on the first run then averagae 30 FPS the next time I tried, so I guess my supposedly uber XPS laptop is shite after all......I demand a refund! lol.

As for my original question, I've been forced to put it off another month or 2 due to unforseen circumstances requiring £200 of my money.

Sorry for hijacking your thread Chris.

Asus p5n32-e SLi
Under a ton, got SLi x 16, got 2 IDE Slots, 6 SATA slots, overclocks a dream....and so far no probs with it apart from the stupid nVidia firewall app that stays hidden and does sod-all apart from give an error message every time I boot up uTorrent!

http://www.lambda-tek.com/comp ... ase7.2&prodID=1326199

Quote from Bladerunner :

Asus p5n32-e SLi
Under a ton, got SLi x 16, got 2 IDE Slots, 6 SATA slots, overclocks a dream....and so far no probs with it apart from the stupid nVidia firewall app that stays hidden and does sod-all apart from give an error message every time I boot up uTorrent!

http://www.lambda-tek.com/comp ... ase7.2&prodID=1326199

Yep, I was looking at that, it benchmarks hardly any different to the 780i and runs a lot cooler as well, could be a good choice. Then maybe in a year when DDR3 get cheaper I could upgrade.....hmm!

Quote from AlienT. :

Thanks mate, hmm if I don't need 2 graphics cards then maybe I don't need SLI? and could go for a less expensive mobo?

The only games I play are race sims (got almost all the half decent ones loaded) Race 07 seems to give me the slowest FPS with my current laptop, BF2, Age of Empires and Eve Online.

Yeah. Those games will be DESTROYED by just one GTS. Unless you're playing the latest and greatest DX10 games, you don't need anything more than ONE of the latest and greatest cards. You could go with a lesser mobo, but TBH, I think you should just stick with an SLi board. They might be more expensive, but they're also more geared towards performance and overclocking... and they tend to be better built.

EDIT: That's a nice alternative though (the one posted above...)

Quote from AlienT. :

Yep, I was looking at that, it benchmarks hardly any different to the 780i and runs a lot cooler as well, could be a good choice. Then maybe in a year when DDR3 get cheaper I could upgrade.....hmm!

As you can guess, I'm talking from experience here...got a Q6600 plugged into it, currently running nice and smooth at 2.8 Mhz.. Got a 700 watt PSU and an Arctic Cooling 7 fan on the CPU, with 2 supplemental case fans. System ticks over quite nicely at between 35 to 42 deg C depending on load. Add to that some "el Cheapo" generic RAM and a 1st generation 8800 GTS...I get 300+ fps at Aston and Blackwood (until I add other cars )

You could say that I was quite chuffed with it!

IF you're not building a TRI/QuadSLI rig, forget nForce. Get a good P35 mobo and get a 9800GTX/3870 X2. And forget a 6600/6700 quad, they are old news. Since you'll be playing games, get an E8400. There's a big review of the E8200, E8400 and E8500 on bit-tech and they said the E8400 is the best buy for gaming. As for the mobo, i'd get the Abit IP35-PRO or a P5K board (Premium maybe or P5K-E or something simmilar).

Quote from Jakg :

So, are you building this PC yourself? If so give me a budget, and tell me if you do or don't need monitors and i'll build something - the one thing I can say is that it won't use a 780i.

If you want 2 GFX cards, then i'd go for 2x 3870x2's.

You may need a PSU beefier than 600w, actually...

If you are overclocking then you could do with an Arctic Freezer 7 Pro, if you plan on going more than 3 - 3.2 GHz then go for something beefier.

XP is easy to run on an extra HDD but I doubt you'll get annoyed with Vista.

Sorry Jack I never noticed your post yesterday.

Ok far too much choice for me to decide, so if I had £800 to £1000 to spend on a rig what would you or anyone suggest and yes after some reading up I reckon I'm going to have a go at building my own. (Jess I can stick subsea production and control systems in water depths of over a mile surely I can manage this :tilt
I noticed some mother boards have slots for DDR2 and DDR3, what do you think of them? When the DDR3 comes down a bit I could pull out the 2's and replace them with 3's.
Just to make things a bit more specific I do not want to go with ATI GPU's or AMD processors.
Once I have my rig specced then I will look at monitors so do not include monitors in the build.

Many thanks for any help that you or anyone else can provide

I'll let you know how I get on with the Asus 780i motherboard.
I've got one due to be delivered tomorrow.