p35 buying advice

[rhiridflaidd]

I'm going to be a cheapskate. Now we know the new quad core multis are ridiculously limiting i'm going for a q6600 and reaper memory.

 

Which motherboard would pair well with them?

 

Gigabyte ds4 is one candidate - but others e.g. msi are cheaper....

 

The Asus seem to have had some problems and don't pair too well with the OCZ from the little I understand. Thanks

[Branjo]

Im quite happy with my P35 DS3R, I even ran my Quad with my spare Giga 965P DS3 for a while and it ran sweet as a nut. Overclocking the Gigabytes is so easy too, not as thorough as a DFI BIOS but its got what you need, not that expensive either.

[rhiridflaidd]

How noisy is the ds3- it doesn't have the heatpipes of the ds4 - that's the only difference it seems.

 

THey're at a nice price right now (the DS3's that is)

 

5

[Branjo]

I don't know what ya mean by noisy, you mean like whiny voltage noises? none bro. The NB on "both" my boards for me seem to sit around 40C and rise to 47C during a good lengthy game of something and the heatsinks are different sizes too, Maybe its poor airflow caused by my CPU cooler I dunno, I have always wanted to get that lower but it hasn't gave me any problems either and is well within its safe temps.

 

The 965 is a solid little board and to tell you the truth if you were to switch it with my P35 while I wasn't looking, I wouldn't notice a thing performance wise. They seemed identical to me, apart from the extra SATA + USB 2.0 ports.

 

One thing that always annoyed the hell out of me is the LPT and Com ports, I haven't used either of those in over 5 years lol. Seems they got the point in the later boards though having more USB's instead of 2 ports that 99.999% of us would never dream of using again.

 

Prices are getting better now that the X38/X48's are stealing the limelight, I wouldn't mind one of those either but a little too rich for my tastes

[rhiridflaidd]

The prices on these now seem quite good.On first look I thought there was a fan on the motherboard itself (I must get my eyes tested.)

 

 

On some looking around it's £60 for the vanilla, $70 for the R that has more Sata options that I dont' really need (I think these days Raid is for Nas unless you go for perfomance raid) and £80 for one with a heatpipe.

 

So the question now is - do I heatpipe or do I not.

 

Decisions, decisions. Also, from my DFI days, different BIOSes suited different types of memory. I've a slight concern that 2GB sticks will need a really up to date BIOS to perform well - is this a reasonable concern or should I be fine?

 

Lastly, if my memory has heatpipes, I guess it would be churlish not to have mobo heatpipes!

[rhiridflaidd]

I seem to have found a q9450. I hope the website isn't misleading.

 

Now which should be the mobo for me.

 

Also, out of p35,s the abit pro seem to be good.

[Branjo]

The Abit looks like a good choice also, people here are very pleased with them. I have been reading about the Q9450 and the general feeling is don't skimp on the board, I think that only applies if you intend to go for a high overclock as with the lower multi more FSB is needed. Very pricey in your neck of the woods though but performance wise its a good bit better than the Q6600 with a lot less heat too.

 

I guess it all comes down to how much De niro your willing to drop on the new system, we are all about bang for buck these days, so most go for the good deals. But if you were to hand me a Q9450 I would take it and probably most of your arm too...lol

 

At the end of the day when you have a full 1Ghz overclock to play with on most if not all of these Intel demon CPU's your getting the performance of your CPU at stock plus the performance of the next one above you when you overclock it for nearly half the cost.

 

Still, doesn't make the decision any easier though lol.

 

My advice would be to give yourself an absolute budget and judge the components on cost/performance.

[wevsspot]

The Gigabyte X38-DS4 is a solid board if you want to go with the X38 chipset. I'm working up a review on that very board right now. I've spent almost two months with it and I'm very impressed.

 

With that being said, the Gigabyte P35 boards have all been pretty solid too. Just pick you one that has the feature set that you nee.

[rhiridflaidd]

I've gone for the Abit - a big reason is that a bloke I know has a lot of OCing experience with that board, so having support is always some help.

 

I succumbed and got the q9450, and 2x2gb of ocz reaper is also on it's way.

 

So wish me luck.

 

I OC'd my 939 systems really well, but this is my first outing with intel and DDR2.

 

To save me hours of google searches, if anybody knows the answers to any of these questions, I'd be delighted

 

-how efficient are the mobo heatpipes in the pro - or would waterblocking be a better bet.

-What do I need to tweak to get a high FSB

-What sort of memory dividers am I likely to need to use for DDR2

-Will I need to borrow a PC from work to grab the 775 processor to flash the bios to get it to work with 45nm, or will it flash with the q9450?

-That eternal question - what is a reasonable safe voltage for these chips under water.

 

Thanks. And watch this space to see how I get on.

[Branjo]

The P35 should see the .45nm no problem, but depending on the boards installed BIOS you might be better of flashing it regardless, you shouldn't need another 775 CPU for the flash at all, Get a second opinion on that though

 

The heatpipes can only be a plus depending on the thermal paste under them but don't go putting AS5 under them just yet as your warranty may not cover it, if you are getting under 40C for the NB I would be happy with that.

 

If the BIOS is anything like the Gigabyte's then the RAM dividers are basically setup as System Multipliers ie, 2.00, 2.40, 2.50, 3.00, 3.20, 3.30 and 4.00 you may have more.

So its basically the system multi X your FSB for RAM speed. Mine shows the calculation in the BIOS so I don't need to work it out on a piece of paper lol.

 

The Eternal question of safe voltage I don't know it may come down to temps, for me my Q66 default is 1.26v up to 1.5v but because of temps I can't ATM go above 1.4v so I don't try. gonna need an actual owner of the CPU you are getting to give you accurate info on that one.

 

What speed of RAM did you go for? It was wise getting 2 x 2Gb sticks they seem to be easier to get stable than 4 x 1Gb's for the majority of people.

 

Looking forward to some performance numbers from you bro, Good luck.

[rhiridflaidd]

I remember the days where it was 4x512 vs 2x1gb, and I was one of the brave souls that pinned down the timings on the newfangled crucial ballistix 1gb sticks, before finding a few months later that it all got unstuck.

 

Ah those were the days.....

 

Now I'm waiting for the postman.

[rhiridflaidd]

Interesting.

 

On reading the datasheets, the q6xxx series have an absolute maximum volts of 1.55, but the q9xxx have an absolute max of 1.45

 

a q6xxx has 0.85-1.5v as it's current specification

a q9xxx is 0.85-1.3625

 

So (obviously) don't use q6600 volts!