What is best i7 Mobo for the bucks right Now?

heavenlykid

Limp Gawd
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Mar 18, 2005
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I need help and recommendations on a mobo for the new i7 processor. Any one care to help I want good performance and stablity. I do not want to overclock. I would also like to be able to sli or crossfire. I will be using DDR3 (from my understaning that all the i7 supports). Also any recommendations on memory would be good to keep in mind i hate OCZ i think is garbage. Any and all input would be greatly appreciated .
 
Just built an i7 system, i found the price of the motherboards quite cripplling. I ended up going with a Gigabyte ex58-ud5, so far so good, great board, comes with 8 rear usb ports, 2 x 10/100/1000 LAN, 10 3Gb/s S-ATA's. And it supports both SLi and Crossfire. You say you dont want to overclock, but should you choose to, from all accounts the board is a good overclocker. (I've yet to overclock my system)

The main thing that drew me to this board was the cheaper price, I'm in the UK and ended up paying £220ish for it, now with the VAT cut, its going at just over £210 (www.scan.co.uk)

I'm by no means swearing by the board, but for me, so far its been a great board packed with features at a great price.

In terms of memory, I'm use 3GB (3 x 1GB) of corsair xms DDR3 1600. (went for the 1600 to give me some headroom when i come to overclock my i7 920)
 
Dave_06 have you had a chance to setup raid?? If so was the interface easy?? I would like to use Raid 5 (three 1TB hard drives) Will the EX58-UD5 support that??
 
according to gigabyte's website the ud5 runs 2x sli/cf at 16/16 and 3x sli/cf at 16/8/8. i've already built an 'budget' i7 rig and am waiting for the 3x sli/cf boards that run 16/16/16 before i build another.
 
Go with either the Gigabyte or ASUS boards for I7.

I cannot recommend the board I got (see sig) as I've had to many issues above and beyond "new platform" aches.

Second board, no mem multipliers in the bios, no readily obvious uncore multiplier, Auto detect on RAM improperly detecting said RAM, having more than 3 sticks of RAM on the board causing memory issues, BIOS reset button on the board sits directly under your 2nd video card (if you run dual cards with dual slot coolers) making it impossible to reset without pulling the 2nd card out, soft resets take several power offs to work, if at all, etc.

I could just be having absolute crap luck, which wouldn't surprise me, but I'd steer clear of the Foxconn currently. I've been debating on eating the cost of this board and replacing it with either the ASUS or Gigabyte considering the frustration.

--MF
 
Dave_06 have you had a chance to setup raid?? If so was the interface easy?? I would like to use Raid 5 (three 1TB hard drives) Will the EX58-UD5 support that??

Not played with RAID yet, but it is on the cards (money permitting :p)
 
yes go with asus or gigabyte. the msi boards, although representing the cheapest i7 option, will potentially suffer from some irreconcilable memory issues without some re-engineering.
 
My asus P6T is nice and stable, I would recommend it easily. The only catch is it only does 2-way sli/cf, but for most people that's not an issue.
 
ok i bought the asus p6t deluxe because only options i had were gigabyte or asus. my biggest problem is if i try to setup raid 0 with 2 500gb drives vista 64 wont install any suggestions. pops up says windows is unable to determine volume size and reboots. am i missing a driver install some where or what.
 
yes go with asus or gigabyte. the msi boards, although representing the cheapest i7 option, will potentially suffer from some irreconcilable memory issues without some re-engineering.

MSI could burn to the ground and i would never miss them. Im not an MSI fan at all.
 
Second board, no mem multipliers in the bios, no readily obvious uncore multiplier, Auto detect on RAM improperly detecting said RAM, having more than 3 sticks of RAM on the board causing memory issues, BIOS reset button on the board sits directly under your 2nd video card (if you run dual cards with dual slot coolers) making it impossible to reset without pulling the 2nd card out, soft resets take several power offs to work, if at all, etc.

I recentlly had all these problems with three different msi boards. dka70gx, k9a2 platinum, k9as-cf v2. i cant stand msi they had no answers to any of this we tried using different rams different cards different drives all same issues.
 
also one other thing my p6t is reading my memory as 1066 mhz and i have 1600mhz memory and clues there. or is that something im doing wrong
 
Dunno about your raid issue, never done a raid setup before... But on the memory, on my system, the system booted up and the memory was set to 1066mhz even though I have 1333mhz ram, I went into the bios and changed the 'dram speed' from 1066 to 1333, and rebooted and it worked. I figured maybe you would figure that out, or is that not working for you?
 
Just a follow-up to my issues with the Renaissance board. I've been corresponding with Foxconn's Technical Support and here is the reply to my questioning the lack of a memory or Uncore multiplier:

"Sorry for the late reply, the G.Skill RAMs should have no problems with the board.
About the memory multplier or unlock multiplier, we didn't provide the options to the end users."

So yeah, I'll be picking up an ASUS or Gigabyte later this week.

--MF
 
Thought i'd chime in with another vote for the P6T, bulletproof stable, I could hug it after coming from a Striker II formula, Nvidia will never see anothe penny from me Mobo wise, That POS was a PITA
 
ok i bought the asus p6t deluxe because only options i had were gigabyte or asus. my biggest problem is if i try to setup raid 0 with 2 500gb drives vista 64 wont install any suggestions. pops up says windows is unable to determine volume size and reboots. am i missing a driver install some where or what.


Not sure if this is the same issue, but pretty close
http://www.dashken.net/index.php?/archives/204-Windows-could-not-determine-if-this-computer-contains-a-valid-system-volume.html
 
i would go for the p6t deluxe because i have one myself and it has been pretty stable.
 
Ordered myself a Gigabyte UD5, pretty pointless getting the full blown version as your paying an extra fifty for two PCI-e (x1, and x4) slots rendered useless, and some extra heatsinks over the top of said slots, hopefully Monday i will be building a new system.
 
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