Motherboard help

[docbrown]

Hi Guys,

Im trying to choose a motherboard at the moment and need a little help.

Here are the details of what it will need to support:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 (45nm)
9800GTX (i figure sli is needed incase i want to buy another card in the future)
PC2-8500 (1066) ram

I was looking for one around £80 but im guessing it going to cost a bit more than that.
Your recommendations would be appreciated

Thanks in advance!

[staffsMike]

Wouldn't bother with SLi, a new single card will be more effective when the 9800 runs out of steam.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=615972
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=787775
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=818514

All good overclockers the last one is the newer P45 chipset which doesn't necessarily overclock better but the 1600MHz FSB gives you a 367MHz overclock for free. The P35's are solid overclockers and will all reach the sort of FSB you will need to overclock that quad core nicely

The P45 also adds PCI-E 2.0 (arguably a bit pointless especially right now), and 8x xfire but if you buy an Nvidia card that is also useless so you should notice a difference between any of them.

[GoNz0]

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=729916 SLI and under £80

[docbrown]

Cheers again for your help guys

@ Mike, lots to choose from, cheers bud, much appreciated.

@ GoNz0, cheers m8, but i think that only supports 800mhz RAM.

[staffsMike]

Chances are it will support 1066MHZ RAM, most manafacturers don't list support for it as it technically doesn't exist. The fastest official speed for DDR2 is 800MHz

I personally wouldn't get the 750i board though, or any of the nvidia's (having made the mistake myself) as they tend to under perform when overclocking and their only advantage is SLi which that board can only do in PCIe 8x anyway.

[docbrown]

Ok cool

2 of the one that u showed me, had crossfire, im guessing that means the are tailored towards ATI cards?

Can you have a quick look over this one for me please?
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=818511

It supports 8500 ram, but will its support the Q9450 45nm?


Cheers

[staffsMike]

Yeah thats the new P45 board, it will support it I'd go for the PRO if you can though, the chipset cooling looks a little better.

[docbrown]

Thanks very much for the advice, its helped alot