What motherboard chipset do I need ?

[jamieuk23]

Hi All I want is to run one Graphics card and a 2500K CPU ? I really dont want to be paying out for other features like SLI as I wont need them

I understand there are P67 boards but not sure what other type of board I should be looking at to hopefully save some money

Thanks as always guys !

[Jasp]

P67 board allows overclocking of the K series, but will not allow you to use quicksync video transcoding. Given you have a Discrete GPU and K series chip you want a P67, if you want to use Quicksync and a few newer features you want the new Z68. Gigabyte are said to be phasing out the P67 in favour of the Z68.

You could wait till June as bulldozer is set to launch so should push prices down across the board.

[jamieuk23]

Am guessing quicksync video transcoding is for people who video edit ? my build will be for gaming only. I think I will buy a P67 and wait until June when the prices decrease

[Jasp]

Quicksync uses the CPUs GPU to transcode video in terms of speed nothing even come close to beating it. It can do in 15sec what a normal GPU does in 2mins.

But yer i'd either wait all together for bulldozer or just get a P67.

[Blackmage]

The Z68 boards are over priced!!!!

You don't need SSD caching if you own an SSD. Plus if your gaming you won't be using the HD2000/3000, Yes quick sync is good but unless the prices come down, then i'll be happy to decode on my GPU/CPU.

I managed to get a MSI P67 GD65(B3) for £120 which is thanks partly to the release of Z68; great board I must add!

[planet436]

Cheap P67 is all you need then. I'd recommend one of

MSI: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/msi-p...usb30-firewire

Gigabyte: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigab...6gb-s-raid-atx

Asus: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-...-sata-raid-atx

[EtheAv8r]

MSI P67A-GD53(B3) here http://www.scan.co.uk/products/msi-p...-atx-sli-xfire

....is what I would get.

[Pob255]

QuickSync info http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/t...-2100-tested/9
Now while it's faster at transcoding than a separate graphics card or cpu only, it's only transcoding (ie taking one format video file, decoding it, re-encoding it into a different format and saving it.)
We're talking video editing, not playing a dvd, also quickSync will only work given the following situations.

H67 or Z68 chipset + NO graphics card + video editor which supports QuickSync
H67 or Z68 chipset + graphics card + Lucid's Virtu GPU visualization + video editor which supports QuickSync
(the moement you plug in a separate graphics card the "cpu on-chip gpu" turns off, so you need Lucid's Virtu GPU visualization software to stop this)

The SSD caching works in the same way as the silverstone HDDBoost http://www.silverstonetek.com/produc...HDDBOOST&area= files that are most commonly accessed are cached on the SSD for faster read/write
However I don't know how good/dynamic it is, failier to be dynamic has been a major stumbling block for most of these sort of ssd+hdd combined systems.
Also if you have a larger SSD it's fairly pointless as you might just as well use The SSD as a primary OS drive.