Need advice on mobo for QX6700

S

sekira05

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 5, 2008
Messages
310
It will be used primarily for gaming and I plan to overclock the qx6700 to 3.0-3.2 if possible (first time overclocker here though). I was looking at a tuniq tower heatsink... do you think that'll be adequate to OC the cpu up that high?

I also plan on getting either the GTX 260/HD 4870, but that is not written in stone. I have a 520 HX corsair psu, do you think that will be enough power?

I initially was looking at 680/780is, but I've heard good thing about DFI boards.

What do you guys think?

Thanks ahead of time.
 
p45, x38, x48, 790i. my suggestions. p35 will limit gpu bandwidth for anything 9800gx2 or greater. 680i and 780i are plagued with issues. nvidia still cannot get rid of video corruption on 780i chipset. not too mention ocing on intel chipsets is much easier, generally speaking. just my opinion.
 
The 750i FTW is the only SLI board I would recommend at this time. If no SLI, a P35 board. You will see no performance reduction, even with PCIe 2.0 cards -- none of the current cards come anywhere near saturating the PCIe 1.0 bus. This may change with the Radeon HD 4xxx series and Geforce 2xx series, but I seriously doubt it.


If you're running lower than 1920x1200, forget SLI. It's unnecessary, and a horrible upgrade path. Stick with a single card and an Intel chipset -- P35 or P45. I recommend the Gigabyte EP35-DS3R, Abit IP35-Pro, DFI P35-T2RS or T2R, or MSI P35-Neo2-FR.

If you're running 1920x1200 or higher, SLI is an option for you depending on how demanding a gamer you are. As of right now the best bang for the buck SLI config is a pair of 8800 GTS 512MBs, and the absolute top end is a pair of 9800 GX2s. This is of course going to change in around two weeks, so wait for it and see where we stand then.

As for cooling, consider the Xigmatech S1283 and a Thermalright bolt-thru mounting kit ($36 + $6, or thereabout) instead of the Tuniq. Over all a better set up. If you alreay have the Tuniq, it should be fine.
 
"The 750i FTW is the only SLI board I would recommend at this time. If no SLI, a P35 board. You will see no performance reduction, even with PCIe 2.0 cards -- none of the current cards come anywhere near saturating the PCIe 1.0 bus. This may change with the Radeon HD 4xxx series and Geforce 2xx series, but I seriously doubt it."


This is true with most cards, but the 9800gx2 does saturate the pcie1.0 bus. Anandtech demonstrated this when running the cards on skulltrail vs. 780i. I actually just realized and experienced this first hand. I was on an abit ip35-e with my 9800gx2 and moved to an asus maximus formula. When running on the abit, if I ran the crysis gpu bench at 1920x1200, high settings, very high shaders I would get around 30-31fps. If I oc'ed the card significantly, I would only get 31-32fps. Moving to the maximus and pcie 2.0, I get 32fps on default and jump all the way to 39fps when oc'ed. Because of this, I strogly recommend not buying a mobo with pcie1.0 if you are a gamer. If the gx2 saturates it now, the next gen probably will as well.
 
I'm running my QX6700 on an MSI P-35 Platinum.....
it does 3.2 (10X320) with no effort on stock voltage....it does 3.6 (9X400) at 1.4 volts.

I run it at 3.2 because outside of benchmarks, I see no performance increase at 3.6.
I'm running a single 8800GTX

I had this chip on a 680i and it wasn't worth crap for overclocking.
I think for any quad, an Intel chipset is the clear choice.....unless you want SLI, then I don't know..
 
because you do not plan on sli, x38/x48/p45 are best choices. the one you listed doesn't look bad, i would probably lean x38/x48 myself. only because we haven't seen many reports on p45 yet and i wouldn't want a chipset so new that i wasn't aware of possible flaws. plus for 200.00 you can get a x38 which will allow you to do crossfire in the future if you like. anything by DFI, Abit and Asus are the ones I prefer.
 
silent-circuit said:
As for cooling, consider the Xigmatech S1283 and a Thermalright bolt-thru mounting kit ($36 + $6, or thereabout) instead of the Tuniq. Over all a better set up. If you alreay have the Tuniq, it should be fine.
Click to expand...

Just curious, any particular reason (I expect there must be one :)) you recommend getting the Thermalright bolt-thru mounting kit to use with the S1283 -- is there some issue with the mounting solution provided with the S1283? I was planning to get the S1283 for my new build (incidentally, I too am making the difficult "mobo decision" -- probably will go with a P45 board, maybe the Asus P5Q Deluxe or else one of the Gigabyte boards when they come out...).
 
It just seems more secure to have the bolt-through kit. I did pick one up for a friend and he's been fine without it. Personally, I don't trust springs and plastic on my cpu.
 
If you are going to OC a quad I would be looking for the best (beefiest) cpu voltage regulation circuity I could find with already good factory cooling (unless you are good at mods). The newer boards/heatpipes that have a backplate in the mosfet area under the board to keep the mosfets in good contact with the heatpipe (or fabricate your own) would be something I would want. Basically you will be running 2 "normal c2ds" and with a high OC even at idle they are going to pull double the juice nevermind (although other than a stress test program I dont know what would do this) all 4 at 100% load.

The cooling of the cpu is almost trivial. I prefer spring mounted bolt thu kits if done well they are the best, thats why we use them in water cooling, it compensates for themal expansion and contraction and keeps a steady clamping force on the cpu which you can adjust. You need good springs.

About $6 of hardware from lowes special hardware drawer and precision die springs (very stiff) from macmaster-car. Easily adapted to most hardware configurations/heatsinks with a little thought.

computer007.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top