Looking for Core 2 Duo MB recommendations

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psteege

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I have decided to upgrade my home game system to a Core 2 Duo system and wanted some recommendations from people who have been gaming with a Core 2 Duo system for some time. I would especially like to hear from people who have been successfully overclocking their boards and still having a stable system.

I don't have an unlimited budget so I need to stay under $200 for the motherboard.
Also any recommendations on which Core 2 Duo CPU is recommended. I am leaning towards the 2.6Ghz model and plan to overclock.

Thanks, regards,

Phil
 
psteege said:
I have decided to upgrade my home game system to a Core 2 Duo system and wanted some recommendations from people who have been gaming with a Core 2 Duo system for some time. I would especially like to hear from people who have been successfully overclocking their boards and still having a stable system.

I don't have an unlimited budget so I need to stay under $200 for the motherboard.
Also any recommendations on which Core 2 Duo CPU is recommended. I am leaning towards the 2.6Ghz model and plan to overclock.

Thanks, regards,

Phil
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While the X38 boards are slowly coming around, I would highly suggest that you stick with P35s as their performance/price ratio are pretty good.

You have to question what kind of features do you want on the board.

A lot of times people buy boards that they don't use half the stuff on it and just buy it for the sake of it being "deluxe". In the same right you also want to look at the upgrade potential of the board.

For my recommendations of boards under $200 there are two in mind:

1. DFI Blood Iron P35 - Costs about $109 at newegg at the time of this post. I was thoroughly impressed at the simplicity of this board. It doesn't have all the gimmicks and gadgets like overblown heatsinks or two dozen USB ports. It has great OC options that are geared towards entry level OC'ers that don't want to have 8 dozen features that they know nothing about.

As you can tell by the price it's a budget board. It doesn't come with any extra bells and whistles, only what you need. It lacks a firewire port, but you can easily get a card if you really need it. It has only two slots for memory for DDR2 and two slots for DDR3 so there IS room for expansion in that regard.

2. Gigabyte DS4 - Cost about 180'ish or so right now. This board is great for the C2Ds (dual or quad) and will give you everything you want and more. It's got a mammoth heatsink that spans from the mosfets all the way down to the north/south bridges. It will give you everything you want in terms of ports. It doesn't have an option for DDR3 but for a sub 200 board it's got EVERYTHING you will ever need.


Hope this helps, I don't want to confuse you too much with other boards but just ask more questions and i'm sure we can narrow down a board for you.
 
I would not go with ANYTHING 680i... Bastards screwed us over with not supporting 45nm technology... Frig'n expensive boards and we get screwed... I've already wrote a letter to EVGA asking what they plan to do about it! I have two EVGA 8800GTX's and the 680i Mobo... We deserve better treatment especially when the box states it will support 45nm...
 
While the X38 boards are slowly coming around, I would highly suggest that you stick with P35s as their performance/price ratio are pretty good.

You have to question what kind of features do you want on the board.

A lot of times people buy boards that they don't use half the stuff on it and just buy it for the sake of it being "deluxe". In the same right you also want to look at the upgrade potential of the board.
Click to expand...

Very wise I agree completely. Keep in mind this time next year the "next big thing" the Nehalem CPUs with on board memory controllers will be causing a big stir and their introduction will make every board now in use obsolete.

I like:
Abit IP35 (pick any one in the series based on options and cost)
Gigabtye DS3 ( ditto)
No experience with the DFI, solid rep as a tweakers wet dream if you are into arcane bios settings.

The dirty little secret is that ANY P35 board regardless of price is going to perform withing a couple of % of any other P35 board. (and why should they not ? if the same CPU and settings and memory they are all using the same chipset so they should be very very close. )

As mentioned above, look for the features you need/want, quality of support/warranty and if you think you would ever put a quad core in I suggest you bring up picture of the boards and look at the circuity around the CPU area. This is the CPU voltage regulation/power supply circuity, you want more components in general. For example go look a a DS3L vs a DS3R vs DS4 vs DQ6 on gigabytes website to see what I mean. look in the area between the CPU socket and the I/O jacks and to the right between the CPU socket and the edge of the board. Other than that it is mainly bios features, bells and whistles etc. If you intend to OC the crap out of it a fan or reworked/improved MCH/northbridge cooling is recommended, so sometimes a complicated heatpipe assembly is more trouble than good. /shrug. It will be hard to go wrong with any good P35 board.

Keep in mind a lot of us who post very high overclocks do significant modifications/improvements to the cooling etc. before the board ever goes in the case. But 3.2GHz should be a walk in the park with any well constructed setup and decent cooler.
 
A lot of times people buy boards that they don't use half the stuff on it and just buy it for the sake of it being "deluxe". In the same right you also want to look at the upgrade potential of the board.
Click to expand...

Oh man...tell me about it! If I didn't have to re-install all my programs and and rewire, I would trade my P5K *DELUXE* for an Intel DP35DP right now. And YES, I have never used half the stuff on this board. The only reason I think I got it was...I never had gotten a DELUXE board before. Now that I've tried it...I know better. :D
 
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