At my wits end...

H

H8Mondays

Weaksauce
Joined
May 10, 2005
Messages
92
Ok, if you look below you will see that it is high time for a new build. My primary interest is gaming and for once I am putting the cash into the best system possible. My number one desire is a solid, STABLE board that will allow for OC'ing if I ever get up the nerve and of course some futureproofing in the form of SLI and dual-core compatibility. That being said I have narrowed it to two favorites with a longshot third, but I have severe concerns.

1A. Asus A8N--Asus has been good to me in the past and this board has been out for a while so it should be fairly debugged. I hear this is THE choice for stability but it is limited in OC'ing, at least with earlier bios'. If I got this I was going to pair it with some low latency corsair 2-2-2-5 so that I can loosen it up later.

1B. DFI Lanparty NF4 SLI--Everything I hear points to this board, but the "plethora" of settings is a little intimidating and I've read lots of horror stories about simply getting it to boot much less run stable 24/7, not to mention this sites review pointing out some stability concerns. My heart says this is the beast to own, but my head says "You Crazy". I would pair this with OCZ DDR 500 VX, but I am concerned about heat issues with pushing 3.2V. If I OC this will I HAVE to add extra air cooling or can I do a moderate clock and survive?

2. MSI NF4 board...I like the features, but I am not quite hot for it.

After the MB, I am trying to decide between Venice and San Diego, but that is a whole other world of hurt. Can't decide if the cache is worth it or not. PSU will probably be a Neopower 480, and GPU probably a BFG 6800 OC. The case is an Antec P-160 with two 120mm fans.

I wouldn't call myself a noob in general, but relative to OC'ing and "current" tech I am as noob as it gets. Kind of afraid of burning down the house as it were. Thoughts, suggestions? Any comments welcome.
 
It seems like your assessments are pretty solid. I'm not sure that the ASUS A8N-SLI will ever be a great OCer in its current form. If you want to wait for the ASUS, the "Premium" is supposed to fix most of the problems, but it isn't out yet. I'm not sure if it is any more stable than the other boards you mentioned. I'd say it's probably about as stable as the MSI which are both a little more stable than the DFI.

Your assessment of the DFI is pretty good. I think it depends on how much you want to learn about your BIOS and how much tweaking you want to do. I have no doubt that you can OC the highest on this board simply due to the voltages you can give your CPU/RAM, but a lot of the other settings might cause instability if not configured properly.

I personally have the MSI board and I like it a lot. I picked it because of the features over the other two boards (and the DFI was way overpriced when I bought my board).
 
Thanks for the input kirbyjr. I guess the good thing about money saved is it's not spent... :D . At this point, waiting for the Premium release is not a big deal. I think I'll do that and look closer at the MSI offering. It seems very strange to me. In the past it seemed like you could lay out what you wanted in a board and then go find almost exactly what you wanted. Now, all the features I want in a board seem to be spread out between companies...good sound option on MSI, stability on ASUS, state of the art options on DFI. If someone would just put it all on one board. ;)
 
Well the stability of the DFI is probably the Best of Class the stability problems with the DFI are normaly located between the keyboard and the chair... That is the amout of knowledge and time required to find the perfect settings are more then some ppl are willing to spend i.e. the want top of the linf overclocking but they don't want to work for it or the are newBs who have read posts on XS and got out and bought the MoBo and thinks they will be able to do what OPP does by replicating his settings.

The MSI option is a very good one (acctually its the only to hold a candle against the DFI). And it is said that it is easier to gat things going with the MSI. I and neither confirm or dement this since I only have the DFI. However if one have the time, the will to learn and a high frustration treshold the DFI is unchallanged. Especially if U will user a soundcard anyway, the karjalan module is good but not as good as a real Audigy...
 
Ok. I am not scared to toy with the bios and I definitely agree it's the brain, not the pc that usually is misaligned. However, I have heard quite a few horror stories on the DFI not even getting to load the bios (most of these on DFIStreet). Still, I was thinking of ordering from Monarch as they have the DFI and the venice/san diego choices...AND they pretest the setup. I am feeling much better. My last remaining concern is the RAM heat issue. Do I HAVE to cool RAM at 3.2V? :confused: I usually don't run my pc 24/7, but am leaning toward this as I might have it serve some mp3 goodness to my office for entertainment. ;) Thanks to you both for your help.
 
Are you definitely getting the VX RAM? If you are, you kind of have to get the DFI board. If you're getting some sort of TCCD RAM, you don't need 3.2V. You will probably get all you're going to get with 2.8V or so. And if you do get the VX RAM you should probably OC since that's the point of running PC4000 (DDR500) speeds at 2-2-2 timings. If you're just going to run stock, you can run 2-2-2 with a decent set of TCCD's (probably up to about 220mhz) and a lot less voltage.

I'm just wondering since you said OC is something you "might" do :).
 
Well, whichever board I get I will eventually clock it to some degree just to try it out, so I may as well get something "high octane" so to speak that can handle minor errors on my part. Since the ASUS can't push the voltage I naturally paired that RAM with the DFI. Is it possible to get high or relatively high OC's with a different RAM that runs on lower voltage and therefore less heat? As you can tell, I'm a wuss and want to play without having to hook up a snowblower, y'know? I don't mind putting a large cooler on the CPU, but I really don't want to have to add cooling for the RAM...at least not for a while. I'm still having trouble imagining water and electronics together. :eek: I guess my concern is that if I use this RAM I MUST add cooling for it, period end of story?
 
Well, I'm not sure how much hotter 3.2V gets than 2.8V, but if it is a concern, get the TCCD RAM since it will perform with less voltage. I can run the G.Skill TCCD stuff I got at both 2-2-2@DDR400 and 2.5-3-3@DDR550. It's pretty flexible.
 
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