Spend my £240 on a motherboard and 2GB DDR2-800 for E6600 Conroe

[dancingmatt]

Hi all

There are some genius shoppers on here, I've seen some amazing responses for people wanting to build a whole rig. Can you spend my money on just two components?

I'm assembling my new E6600 Conroe rig and have so far: E6600, 1GB 7900GX2, 750W PSU, Arctic Cooler Freezer Pro, monitors, hard and optical disks, keyboard, mouse, everything else...

I've got an approximate (say give or take £20) budget of £240 to buy me a motherboard and 2GB of DDR2-800 RAM.

I want a motherboard that is
- silent (i.e. passive),
- will take my 2 optical PATA/IDE drives and has at least 6 SATA ports,
- has compatibility with and can run the 7900GX2 card at full SLI speed (like the 7950GX2 but 31cm long so must have clearance!) - but I won't be buying another card to run with it as Quad SLI,
- has 2 free PCI slots and a PCI-e x1 (or more) free with the 7900GX2 installed,
- audio is excellent quality and Intel HDA and has outputs for my 7.1 system, SPDIF in and out,
- at least 6 (ideally 8+) USB2 ports, and a serial COM port (either built in or with the board as an additional back plate),
- and generally is stable and fast with an E6600!

Ram - obviously the best pair of 1GB DDR2-800 sticks I can get from the budget. I like Corsair but am open to solid reliable suggestions.

What about overclocking, I hear you cry? To be honest, I don't intend to, I want the whole system to work really well as it is. I might overclock it later but I don't need components that are just good for overclocking, it's features and great stock performance that I'm after.

I've read good and bad reports of the Gigabyte DS3, I like Asus boards in the past but their best Conroe ones are too expensive now I don't need two x16 PCIe slots... I know more Conroe-supporting boards will be coming in the coming months but I have a good amount of spare time in the next couple of weeks to play with so I'd like to get it now.

Please help! What board and RAM fit my needs?!

Thanks in advance

DM

[Rack]

Gigabyte DQ4 or DS4? Neither have 2 x IDE, sell a drive and get an SATA! Not many mobo's with 2 x IDE any more.

Read the Anandtech review on Getting Set Up for Conroe, it recommends budget DDR2 Ram which mostly can do 800MHz anyway. PQI or Gskill or OCZ Value?

[rajindergill]

The gigabyte will be fine, as the one PATA port will service 2 devices (master and slave).

Scan are doing the DS3 for just under £100, or you can get the DS4 for £111 and the DQ6 for £133. The 2GB ram will be about £130, the cheapest I've seen is at overclockers for Gskill.

The other option is the MSI P965 platinum from Komplett for £106 plus £143 for OCZ Gold (CAS5) 2GB DDR-800(6400) ram, plus £7 delivery.

Another option is the DS3 for £95 and £147 for Corsair DDR800(CAS5) from SCAN, with free delivery is £242.

PS - I ordered a DQ6 from Scan for £133 and OCZ platinum (CAS4) 2GB was on special offer from Komplett for £142. Total £275.

[dancingmatt]

I've seen a lot of people in various places (here and xtremesystems.org's forums) say they are having trouble with the DS3, so I'm not sure about that. As rajindergill said, one IDE socket will do since I can run both my optical drives from it (I'm not getting rid of a perfectly good DVD drive just to buy another one, if I was going to do that I'd spend the extra money on a better board!)

I might look into the DQ6 - anyone know what the significant differences are between these Gigabyte models?

Will my performance be severly hampered by CAS5 RAM instead of CAS4?

Thanks for the help so far guys

DM

[dancingmatt]

A new week, new deals on websites... so any more suggestions gang!?

I've looked at that 2GB Gskill, at the moment I think I'm going to get that unless someone can make a better suggestion (and are Gskill ok? They weren't around a couple of years ago?)

The board - now that the P5W DH Deluxe is about £140 that's got more tempting, haven't seen anyone with problems with that. But I'd like to get something cheaper and I gather some P965 boards are a bit faster?

More suggestions are always welcome!!

DM

[Jahoker]

Go for the Geil 2gb at OCuk this week, £129inc.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatal...k_Only_25.html

[FatalSaviour]

Go for the Geil 2gb at OCuk this week, £129inc.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatal...k_Only_25.html

Beat me to it...I was just about to suggest the same.
Looks like damn good stuff

[Jahoker]

Indeed, nice timings and good review from a decent manufacturer, my current rig is running 1GB Geil Value, never had any issue.

When i build my new rig (payday tomorrow) I'll be getting me the Geil above, along with my 6300, and Gigabyte DS3, along with that cheapo 7600GT. New system for £450.

[dancingmatt]

I'm getting mixed up - I meant the Geil 2GB PC6400, I'd seen that offer too!

It can go with my E6600 which arrived today <pats box gently>

If I can just pick a board, and a case, and get this RAM, I'm building at the weekend!

DM

[rajindergill]

Hold your horses. I bought the Gigabyte DQ6 and 2GB of DDR2 6400 (Platinum OCZ) with a E6600. The machine would not post at all, its was only when I got cheap generic DDR-4200 from PCworld that it posted and worked.

The gigabyte boards are very fussy about ram and the bios needs alot of improvment on all the 965 chipset boards. I'm not the only one with this problem. I've just RMA'd the ram and the motherboard is going back tomorrow. With High performance ram which works above the JDEC standard of 1.8V the Gigabyte board just refuses to acknowledge it. OCZ's response was to use the cheap ram to get in to the bios and change the voltage setting. But thats not right in my book.

Looking at replacing the MB with MSI 975X and getting Corsair Memory (expensive stuff - &#163;170 for CAS4 DDR 6400). Total cost is &#163;293 from Scan. Will tell you if its worth it.

[DarthVader]

With High performance ram which works above the JDEC standard of 1.8V the Gigabyte board just refuses to acknowledge it. OCZ's response was to use the cheap ram to get in to the bios and change the voltage setting. But thats not right in my book.

Looking at replacing the MB with MSI 975X and getting Corsair Memory (expensive stuff - &#163;170 for CAS4 DDR 6400). Total cost is &#163;293 from Scan. Will tell you if its worth it.

I was also considering getting the DQ6 until I heard of its problems with performance memory. When I emailed Gigabyte about it they actually said they were not aware of such problems with the motherboard. This was their response:

"Hi,

Sorry but we haven't received this issue before. Suggest please refer to memory QVL.

[EDIT - There was also a link listing "compatible" memory modules (including the mentioned corsair stuff) but as yet I cannot include links]"

So instead I have decided to go for an Asus P5W DH as soon as the E6600 comes back into stock at a decent price. Corsair (who have been most helpful I might add) have said my Corsair memory (which is the same as the stuff you will be buying) should have no problems running at 4-4-4-12 on it.

[dancingmatt]

Does that mean the P5W DH Deluxe will be happy running any quality DDR2-800 4-4-4-12?

I don't really understand why some boards have problems with some RAM, is it a voltage thing?

DM

[Jahoker]

Gigabyte, have acknowledged theres an issue currently with certain RAM. Thats why the last 2 BIOS updates for the DS3 have been related to memory compatability, and more stable FSB at given voltages.

Obviously there are issues at the moment, but they are churning out new BIOS' like every 3/4 days, which suggests they are working bloody hard to get things put right. Given the OC, and speed of the C2D's on this board, personally it's worth waiting a few days for them to fix it. No other boards rival the DS3/4 DQ6 right now.

I'm not aware of any problems with the Geil memory either, but i guess we have to suck it and see.