is it worth the £10 more?

[matty-hodgson]

Abit IP35-E, iP35 Express

Abit IP-35, Dark Raider, iP35 Express

just incase i need to buy a new motherboard if i can't get a replacement on my old 1..
would the Dark Raider be worth the extra £10?
i wouldn't use the extra 2 SATA ports and i have decent case airflow so the added heatsink may just be a waste of time..

[Agent]

Raider also has RAID.
Off the top of my head I think it also has slightly better voltage regulation for overclocking, although I am not 100% sure on that. You'll have to check, I may have it wrong.

[matty-hodgson]

Raider also has RAID.
Off the top of my head I think it also has slightly better voltage regulation for overclocking, although I am not 100% sure on that. You'll have to check, I may have it wrong.

tbh.. i don't think i'd ever use the RAID on it.. it seems like too much hassle to set up and doubles your chances of a hard-drive failure..
would rather buy an SSD or Raptor tbh..

would the better voltage regulation make any real difference on OCing or will it be a small difference?
and is it worth the extra £10?

[BUFF]

differences are 6 SATA incl RAID ability v 4 SATA no RAID
firewire
different (not necessarily better though) chipset coooling
some solid caps

Personally I think that it's worth the £10 but if you know that you'll never use the extras ...

[matty-hodgson]

differences are 6 SATA incl RAID ability v 4 SATA no RAID
firewire
different (not necessarily better though) chipset coooling
some solid caps

Personally I think that it's worth the £10 but if you know that you'll never use the extras ...

i dunno.. i'm pretty certain that i'd never use RAID..
i've had no intentions to use it in the past, and wouldn't plan on using it now..

but saying that, if i bought the £10 cheaper 1 and in a few months i get a job and i can afford a decent RAID0 set-up i'd be annoyed that i hadn't set out the extra £10 now..

i'll have a think about it while this board gets RMA'd and see what happens..

[-iceblade^]

better to have a feature that you think you might use, then have to splash out £50 because of a bad purchase choice in say 3 months.

the argument i always use to convince myself - what's £10 3 months from now...

[Agent]

If it has solid caps, its worth the extra tenner IMO.
£10 really isn't much difference when talking about a motherboard

[matty-hodgson]

looks like i'm gonna fork out the extra tenner if i don't get my motherboard back..
would feel more complete with the RAID and stuff tbh..

cheers guys

[Saracen]

And for me, the addition of firewire (assuming BUFF is correct) would be worth the extra tenner on it's own .... and the RAID wouldn't interest me.

Which just goes to show, the only person that can decide if it's worth the extra is the buyer, because we all have different budgets, different reasons for buying and different priorities.

[this_is_gav]

And for me, the addition of firewire (assuming BUFF is correct)[...]

Having built a system around it myself, I can confirm the Dark Raider it has at least a firewire socket on the board. Can't remember if there's a backplate for it or if there's one on the I/O shield though - I connected it to the front of a P182.

I normally wouldn't make such an almost pointless post, but the ABIT iX38 Quad-GT I was looking at for my last build did have it, though it was chastised in all the reviews I looked at for not having any means of connecting via firewire. I went and bought a Maximus Formula and then lo and behold it turns out retail Quad-GTs do have firewire. Must have just been a review sample or 2 that didn't have it.