Solid "hands off" board to pair with Wolfdale?

N

n64man120

2[H]4U
Joined
Jan 11, 2004
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Trying to pick out a motherboard after being out of the "game" for a few years, please help!

  • Latest gen technology. It's tough to weed out the older chipsets from 2006
  • Solid and dependable
  • Hands off functionality. Owner won't be tweaking or overclocking
  • Good bang for buck
  • Compatible with E7200
  • Fairly cheap, lets say... <$150

My first instinct was to run for an Asus, since I was in love with my P4P800 Deluxe for its simplicity... but I hear Asus has fallen off the mark lately? I run a DFI now myself, and love the tweaking potential, but its not needed for the average joe.
 
No raid, single PCI-E, single LAN, pretty basic needs.

I had noticed that Gigabyte board getting top marks on Newegg. Just wasn't sure, back in the day, it was Abit or Asus or bust!
 
one of the cheaper ip35's. would a non tweaking/overclocking vanilla mainboard have any bang for buck?
 
n64man120 said:
No raid, single PCI-E, single LAN, pretty basic needs.

I had noticed that Gigabyte board getting top marks on Newegg. Just wasn't sure, back in the day, it was Abit or Asus or bust!
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I was an Abit and Asus fan back in the day also. The Gigabyte is the board your looking for
 
I second the Gigabyte DS3L board. Great layout, all solid caps, handles 45nm Wolfs and Yorkies as well. O/Cs very well with little effort, and its cheap. Do make sure you get some air over the N/B as it runs very hot.
 
the abit IP35 series are also solid (as are indeed Asus' & MSI's).
It sounds like your user may be happy with integrated gfx though which would lead elsewhere than P35?
 
BUFF said:
the abit IP35 series are also solid (as are indeed Asus' & MSI's).
It sounds like your user may be happy with integrated gfx though which would lead elsewhere than P35?
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The user's primary interest is gaming actually :)
 
OK, that's me told :eek:

does he need any features like RAID, firewire, Crossfire/SLI?
 
Negative, Negative, and Negative. Dropping in a single 7200.10 Seagate or so, and an 8800GT to get a decent bang for the buck. So yea gaming, but nothing on the super high end gaming market that makes it motherboard dependent.
 
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