which 650i board?

C

Crapgame

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 18, 2002
Messages
182
I've narrowed it down to these 3:

GA-N650SLI-DS4
MSI P6N Platinum
EVGA 650i Ultra


I want to overclock but not to extremes, most likely a e4300 at around 3ghz and switching to a quad core later.
I want to use a big cpu cooler like a Scythe Ninja or similar.
I'd like to reuse several ide drives (dvd, dvd burner and a couple HDs), hence the Nvidia chipset choices.
It would be great if the onboard sound was good, negating the need for a separate soundcard, SLI is not a big factor to me but the option would be nice to have.

In the past I've had many many MSI boards with horrible build quality but the thread about the Platinum boards here has me convinced it's a pretty damn good board. From what I can see reading through the threads about these three motherboards, they're all good. Convince me that one is definitely better than the others.

The parts I intend to use with them are:

e4300
DDR2-800 (might even go 667 unless I'm very likely to get significantly more than 3ghz out of my cpu) in whatever good brand that happens to have a decent deal the day I order.
8800gts 320meg version
2 Raptor HDs and 1-2 ide HDs
ide DVD burner and possibly ide DVD player
Antec Truepower/Neo 550watt (will replace if I eventually go quad-core and SLI)

I don't intend to go to Vista until a DX10 game I really want comes out so winXP for now.
 
If feature set isn't an issue the Evga board will be the superior choice. Failing that i hear ok things about the msi. As long as a bios update comes along.
 
I just got the DS4, and it was totally painless to hook up and get Windows installed. BUT, see the other thread in here about Giga 650 board. I had some trouble this morning. You can read about it there. I am gonna rma it for exchange and give it one more try if ram swapping doesn't work. Only 4 sata ports.
 
Crapgame said:
I've narrowed it down to these 3:

GA-N650SLI-DS4
MSI P6N Platinum
EVGA 650i Ultra

I'd like to reuse several ide drives (dvd, dvd burner and a couple HDs), hence the Nvidia chipset choices.

.. SLI is not a big factor to me but the option would be nice to have.

In the past I've had many many MSI boards with horrible build quality but the thread about the Platinum boards here has me convinced it's a pretty damn good board. From what I can see reading through the threads about these three motherboards, they're all good.
Click to expand...

If the eVGA board you refer to is their 122-CK-NF66-T1, then it doesn't meet your IDE/PATA nor SLI requirements. Only one each PATA and PCIex16 slots.

I like my MSI P6N SLI Platinum, though I might have opted for the Gygabyte board if it had been out back when..

Buena suerte!

TonyB.
I doubt you can go wrong with either (barring that occasional fauly part).
 
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