Best motherboard? URGENT need answer by 14 hours please when I phone company

I'm posting from my Wii due to having no working PC at the moment, or I would copypaste sorry - please read this? http://www.techsupportforum.com/hard...e-company.html

Thanks for any help anyone! *cross fingers*

you need to be registered there for the "threads started by this user" to work ...
the abit IP35 Pro was probably the best allround P35 mobo & is certainly very capable of running a Q6600 but it's no longer cutting edge tech. (although tbh performance differences with even the latest chipset would be minimal with the same CPU) & as such you can futureproof slightly more by going with something like a P45 based mobo.
If you gave us the list of available options or a price range & required features we could help better.

Asus P5Qe is a great motherboard.

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Originally Posted by BUFF

you need to be registered there for the "threads started by this user" to work ...
the abit IP35 Pro was probably the best allround P35 mobo & is certainly very capable of running a Q6600 but it's no longer cutting edge tech. (although tbh performance differences with even the latest chipset would be minimal with the same CPU) & as such you can futureproof slightly more by going with something like a P45 based mobo.
If you gave us the list of available options or a price range & required features we could help better.

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1. my post with specs is the glowing red hot topic "psu requirement" (check its latest posts, pg2 and "6 posts back") in the PSU subforum there

2. up to £300, anything on motherboards section of http://overclockers.co.uk - in that post I linked to I said some ideas though, not sure what others think?

not sure about features, I'm not very experienced on the hardware side of things... but as well as the specs there hoping to add an old ATA IDE drive in

Nothing wrong with the IP-35 Pro.

It's only limitations aren't real limitations, not yet anyway.

It doesn't have PCIe 2.0 but nothing has the bandwidth to utilise that yet, unless we are talking crossfire for which the IP-35 only does 4x and the P45 does 8x. Does your Hd4870 X2 though.. I dunno.

It only has 1333MHz not 1600MHz.. so what.. nothing worth the money has a 1600MHz FSB and yours is a 1066MHz so makes no difference.

If you can change to something like a Biostar P45 then go for it but the Abit is perfectly good.

what about asus striker II (PC gamer mag's top rated mobo) or rampage?

haven't heard of biostar before

If you don't know why you need it.. then you don't need it :)

It's an extreme overclocking board as far as I know, pointless in everyway unless you want to do uber xfire/Sli (can't remember which it is) setups and overclocking.

And if it's an i7 board then your Q6600 won't work anyway. A decent midrange board is all you want.

Biostar won the best mobo award in CustomPC

so it 's coming from OcUK which means that any mobo needs to be something that they stock & for P45 that means Asus, DFI (but I wouldn't recommend that for you) or Gigabyte.
of those I would probably have recommended the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P or maybe UD3R but both of those are out of stock...

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with an IP35 Pro XE though if your current spec. is what you intend to stick with rather than being 1 of us inveterate upgraders that change something every few months :P

Eugh.. OuUK.. Ok then so probably stick with on the various P5Q flavours, PRO or E probably.

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Originally Posted by BUFF

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with an IP35 Pro XE though if your current spec. is what you intend to stick with rather than being 1 of us inveterate upgraders that change something every few months :P

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Well yeah that's kinda it I'm thinking about the future - but if the i7 boards don't support the older version of cpu nevermind that then, hmm. Can you tell me the difference in layman's terms between the IP35 and asus Striker II? It's been rated as best motherboard in the list of top hardware for months in PC Gamer magazine

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Originally Posted by Perfectionist

Well yeah that's kinda it I'm thinking about the future - but if the i7 boards don't support the older version of cpu nevermind that then, hmm. Can you tell me the difference in layman's terms between the IP35 and asus Striker II? It's been rated as best motherboard in the list of top hardware for months in PC Gamer magazine

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the ASUS Striker II is top top end stuff... as in it has a stupid amount of overclocking features that even your hardened OC-er won't use much, it's basically just top of the line and has a few more (for most people redundant) features

Yeah, its one line description in the mag for the months it's been recommended as top-of-the-line is "ludicrously well endowed" which I figured might be what I'm looking for since I want to be able to upgrade the PC in the future - is it any faster games-wise cos of the better quality?

And any differences apart from overclocking/tweaking friendly (PC comes oc/d anyhow)?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Perfectionist

Yeah, its one line description in the mag for the months it's been recommended as top-of-the-line is "ludicrously well endowed" which I figured might be what I'm looking for since I want to be able to upgrade the PC in the future - is it any faster games-wise cos of the better quality?

And any differences apart from overclocking/tweaking friendly (PC comes oc/d anyhow)?

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bump? last chance for me to phone em this morning still on the line due to above post :/

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Originally Posted by Perfectionist

Yeah, its one line description in the mag for the months it's been recommended as top-of-the-line is "ludicrously well endowed" which I figured might be what I'm looking for since I want to be able to upgrade the PC in the future - is it any faster games-wise cos of the better quality?

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"ludicrously well endowed" does not mean the ability to upgrade in the future...
case in point - doesnt support i7 chips - therefore not upgradable to next gen chips...

doesn't it support DDR3 as well as DDR2 though? And yeah, was hoping for stuff like extra expansion slots though