MidnightUT Posted February 11, 2008 Posted February 11, 2008 Hey All, Been a while since I put my last comp together, it's still running strong, but my poor DVR/fileserver box is limping along on it's last leg. Since it does a ton of commercial cutting and xvid encoding I figured it was time to give it a little makeover and give my hand a try at overclocking an Intel for a change, specifically an E21XX. Since the motherboard is usually the heart and soul of the overclock I thought I'd turn to the experts. I'm mainly looking at the three boards in the title, but I'm open to suggestions. This is going to be a budget OC job, and while price is going to be a big factor I don't mind paying a little more if it makes a difference but I don't really need bells or whistles. Right now I'm leaning towards the Abit IP35-E mainly because I can pick it up for $60 (AR). The DS3L looks to be a slightly better board, but it looks to be running about $30-40 more. The DS3R is sitting at a premium price of about double the Abit, but its got twice the SATA ports and a few other things that would be nice but I won't miss if I don't have. Thanks for the advice as always. -Mid Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dr_bowtie Posted February 11, 2008 Posted February 11, 2008 at this point in time I'd say get what you can afford....the more you spend for a board the better your options are.... I am not up on the Abit board but its lesser price may mean limited bios options and may or may not be a contending overclocker where as I know the Gigabytes are.... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Branjo Posted February 11, 2008 Posted February 11, 2008 RAID and SLI are what will cut your choices and you seem to rely on your RAID 5 array now as per your sig so straight away the DS3L is out, no raid support. Reading the reviews on the IP35 it seems to be a great little board but its not gonna win any contests when compared to Gigabyte or ASUS P35's but it is a lot lower in price so that is a plus. The 4 SATA ports might be an issue later on for you though, I assume you will be using the same RAID setup on your new rig so that will leave you 1 port, and if you want to take advantage of an SATA DVD drive then your all out of ports. As the Doc said the Gigabytes are super easy to overclock, they basically do it for you lol. From a budget point of view I would agree with you on the Abit but you might regret its limitations, but there is always PCI cards if you need more ports of this or that. I couldn't be happier with my DS3R and the Quad core, I do a little encoding myself, actually I do a lot more now that I don't have to wait all day for it to complete. So if you have the spare cash I would highly recommend grabbing one. My Rig has to last me a few years so I tried looking ahead (at the time of buying) as to how long it could keep up with the latest games/software. I still think I made a good choice in components. Good luck bro Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
HITandRUN Posted February 11, 2008 Posted February 11, 2008 RAID and SLI are what will cut your choices and you seem to rely on your RAID 5 array now as per your sig so straight away the DS3L is out, no raid support. Reading the reviews on the IP35 it seems to be a great little board but its not gonna win any contests when compared to Gigabyte or ASUS P35's but it is a lot lower in price so that is a plus. The 4 SATA ports might be an issue later on for you though, I assume you will be using the same RAID setup on your new rig so that will leave you 1 port, and if you want to take advantage of an SATA DVD drive then your all out of ports. As the Doc said the Gigabytes are super easy to overclock, they basically do it for you lol. From a budget point of view I would agree with you on the Abit but you might regret its limitations, but there is always PCI cards if you need more ports of this or that. I couldn't be happier with my DS3R and the Quad core, I do a little encoding myself, actually I do a lot more now that I don't have to wait all day for it to complete. So if you have the spare cash I would highly recommend grabbing one. My Rig has to last me a few years so I tried looking ahead (at the time of buying) as to how long it could keep up with the latest games/software. I still think I made a good choice in components. Good luck bro I would say what he said! :beer Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MidnightUT Posted February 11, 2008 Posted February 11, 2008 Thanks for the responses as always. Here's a bit more information from what I've found so far and what I'm planning that might influence the decision. The Abits from what I've read seem to be pretty solid little overclockers themselves. The BIOS support seems to be about a step behind Gigabyte as they don't officially support the new C2D 8XXX chips, however they do work. This being said what I've read sounds like Abit has worked hard on updating the BIOS to the point that they've got a rock solid stable budget overclocker. As for the Raid and SLI I won't use it even if they have them. Unless of course the RAID 5 is leaps and bounds ahead of the RAID 5 on my current DFI board, which is sadly dog slow. I'm "probably" going to throw Windows Home Server on this box, which has its own unique hard drive allocation and mirroring built in. I'll look around and see if I can find some performance specs on the RAID with the Gigabyte. Right now I've kind of ruled out the DS3L, I'm probably going to go one extreme or the other Thanks again. -Mid Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dr_bowtie Posted February 11, 2008 Posted February 11, 2008 if thats the case you might try the Abit board.....They have always been good to me but, I would highly base my decision on the ports needed.... I had a E2160 and DS3L and I loved it...the only issue I had with the board was lack of Sata ports compared to older boards with more.... my next choice for a Quad would be the DS3R and Q6600 if I was going to go with a 45nm Quad then I would opt for a X38 board instead...good luck on your decision... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jelly Posted February 11, 2008 Posted February 11, 2008 I have been using my abit board with a lot of good luck. Alot of people here have the gigabyte boards, and they seem to love them. I looked at the DS3L but seen that there is no raid on it. You would need to buy a raid card for that. I will say this about my abit board. Its an easy board to work with and they have great support! With a bios update you will be able to run a 45nm chip. If you want alot of knolage on a board around here, then go with the gigabyte, thats what everyone has. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest SuppA-SnipA Posted February 11, 2008 Posted February 11, 2008 everyone who built new pcs dumped dfi and went gigabyte huh.. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
HITandRUN Posted February 11, 2008 Posted February 11, 2008 everyone who built new pcs dumped dfi and went gigabyte huh.. Yeah because when DFI first came out with the 775 Conroe board they wanted $300+ for it! F..... them and their flaky .! I mean my P35-DQ6 has been running like a champ from day one and I never had to even reset my BIOS no matter what insane OC I cranked out of it. :beer Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest SuppA-SnipA Posted February 11, 2008 Posted February 11, 2008 hmm interesting, i've had to do some cmos resets myself, but never bothered me so much, im still deciding between dfi, asus, gigabyte, evga, xfx lol (lots to choose from) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
taowulf Posted February 11, 2008 Posted February 11, 2008 Yeah because when DFI first came out with the 775 Conroe board they wanted $300+ for it! F..... them and their flaky .! I mean my P35-DQ6 has been running like a champ from day one and I never had to even reset my BIOS no matter what insane OC I cranked out of it. :beer All of my resets have been memory related. On this DFI P35-T2R board, it has handled everything except the Ballistix PC8500 2GB kit I got. Damn things won't run at 5-5-5-15 @1066 (or close to it) at all. They are getting RMA'd back the Egg again this week (first set was DOA on the 680i board I have). I am back to my PC6400 2GB OCZ for the time being. They run fine at 890. Oh, and I think the JMicro controller corrupted the drive I was using for the OS at the time...the Intel controller has no such problems, so all of the HDD's are moved to it now. I probably could have gotten a lesser DFI board, but this one is good. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
HITandRUN Posted February 12, 2008 Posted February 12, 2008 All of my resets have been memory related. On this DFI P35-T2R board, it has handled everything except the Ballistix PC8500 2GB kit I got. Damn things won't run at 5-5-5-15 @1066 (or close to it) at all. They are getting RMA'd back the Egg again this week (first set was DOA on the 680i board I have). I am back to my PC6400 2GB OCZ for the time being. They run fine at 890. Oh, and I think the JMicro controller corrupted the drive I was using for the OS at the time...the Intel controller has no such problems, so all of the HDD's are moved to it now. I probably could have gotten a lesser DFI board, but this one is good. Good old OCZ! I never had a set of Ballistix which lasted longer than 6 months! But they run like the were made in hell! He He! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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