Motherboard advice

[hatsumi]

Ok so i've finally upgraded to 2Gb RAM currently running HTT at 1:1 with RAM to 250Mhz and my Opty 144 is at 2.25Ghz.

Am looking at motherboards and thinking about either the ASUS or DFI crossfire boards. Any one have experience with either? Looking for stable overclocks and ease of recovery if I push too far.

After that I'll be after Dual core S939 CPU and probs a PSU.

My biggest problem is convincing the wife ( ) rather than finding the money

[Clunk]

if you need a PSU, buy that first. its THE most important part of your pc, especially when you are overclocking. cheap psu's kill pc's.

edit: i forgot to add that DFI boards are great for overclocking and they have endless tweaking features, but their reliability is poor, and i can say this as ive had several in as many months, all with different faults.

[hatsumi]

Am currently using an Antec NEO 480W PSU. Am going for the seasonic 600W as I may look at buying another gpu for crossfire.

[Sumanji]

No experience with the specific boards you mentioned but I wouldn't touch an ATi chipset with a bargepole don't know if it was board, BIOS or drivers but the amount of problems I had with my HTPC has driven me to buy an nForce board!

The reviews on both the Asus and DFI are good though so maybe my experience was a one off.

Suman

P.S. Your Opteron is clocked at criminally low levels... it should be at 2.6 at least hehe!

[Dark Horse]

The older ati chipsets were a bit poor but the newer crossfire ones are just as good if not better than the nforce equivalent.

The xpress 3200 boards worth looking at are the abit at8, asus A8R32, dfi CFX3200-DR and the sapphire pure rd580.

Ignore the ram overclocking and just overclock the core, it'll make things much easier.

[-ChEM-]

ive got a dfi cfx32000-dr

it came sealed with the latest bios so its obviously fairly new and it never gave me any problems getting it going, ive tried a few different RAMs in it, 2 and 4 sticks and no problems there

ive got the HTT up to 339 which would be enough for 3ghz on a 144

psu is a silverstone strider st60f which is a bargain at scan atm, a bit more expensive than hipers and louder under load than seasonics (still near silent when browsing/idling) but worth it over those two for opteron overclocking imo

[this_is_gav]

The xpress 3200 boards worth looking at are the abit at8, asus A8R32, dfi CFX3200-DR and the sapphire pure rd580.

Hmm, I've got the A8R32, and I'd struggle to recommend it. The examples in most reviews certainly weren't what's ended up on sale (the Hexus one seems about right though). Check out the thread in the OcUK forums - it's just problem after problem. The quality control on this board has been non-existant.

I've never hesitated to buy ASUS boards before, but I'll be double checking with the next one.

It's quite a solid board once you've got everything to your liking, but it's hit-and-miss as to whether you'll have issues. I'd go as far as saying it's 50/50 you'll get a board with no problems at all.