Which Nehalem motherboard should I buy?

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RamGuy

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So I've finally come to the conclusion that I will sell my P5Q-Deluxe @ Q6600 setup and get myself a Nehalem rig!

Then I have to decide which motherboard I'm going to get!
The past two-three years it's been ASUS only for me, but after some rather dull experience with motherboards like P5N32-E SLi, Striker Extreme and now my P5Q-Deluxe I'm not sure if ASUS represents the same quality that they did for a few years back?

Okay, both the P5N32-E SLi and Striker Extreme was destroyed by the lack of a decent chipset, the nForce680i didn't really do it.. But that doesn't hide the fact that there were release lots of dull BIOS versions for those two boards?

My P5Q-Deluxe is running the P45 chipset which is awesome, still I've had quite a few issues? The combo of P5Q-Deluxe, Q6600 and Crucial Ballistix PC-8500 RAM wasn't going that good the first month, it wasn't before the latest 1406 BIOS my system got stable? Not very impressive..


To me it seems like ASUS have become more lazy with their BIOS?
Instead of making quality boards and BIOS, they now seem to focusing on making their boards look sexy and release lots of different models?


Gigabyte on the other hand have also had quite a few BIOS issues so I'm not that confident in them either, and MSI got a habit of making boards that look good on paper, but rarely living up to it's expectations.


So I'm wonder which board to go for?
I'll be doing some overclocking, most likely running SLi and mostly play games..

The Rampage II Extreme seems solid, but then again I have to question what's going to happen with ASUS and their BIOS?

We've also got Foxconn whom is supposed to be rather "[H]ardcore"?
What about the DFI LanParty board? I've been a little disappointed with DFI since the nForce4 days, but they still might got something here?


Currently I'm looking at these boards:

- ASUS Rampage II Extreme (whom is the first extreme without a chipset cooler supporting watercooling?)
- Foxconn Blood Rage
- DFI LanParty X58-T3
- ASUS P6T6 Revolution
- Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme
- EVGA X58 SLI FTW

So which one do you think will be the best board?
 
Hard to say. I like the Bloodrage. I could also go for the Asus Rampage II Extreme, DFI, or eVGA.

Edit: As far as I can tell the eVGA is overclocking better than the other boards out there. I still need to see the DFI board in action as well as the Bloodrage. If they can't overclock worth a damn I will be getting me a eVGA x58 FTW board.
 
Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme here. I've never had any trouble with Gigabyte before and I highly recommend them. And it has like 8 USB ports and 10 SATA ports with dual lan which is a huge bonus and supports 16x/16x/8x SLI and Crossfire which is nice.
 
I would like to get the eVGA board and I probably will but...from the pics on Guru3d...god damn it looks fugly compared to the rampage.
 
soulesschild said:
I would like to get the eVGA board and I probably will but...from the pics on Guru3d...god damn it looks fugly compared to the rampage.
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Exactly what I was saying . . . very disappointed in how plain and ugly this EVGA X58 board is. There are several others that look A LOT better (Asus Rampage . . . the Bloodrage . . . the Gigabyte . . . and so on).
 
The looks / visuals of the board isn't my first priority at all!

- First of all I want the most stable and throughout solid board! Stable BIOS! No more ASUS Memory compatibility issues!
- Second in line is the gaming and overclocking performance (the board need to have the nF200 chip / support for full SLi)

And that is all that are important in my opinion.. Things like Clear CMOS buttons, possibility for easy multimeter checking, the visuals and stuff like that is simply not important when I chose a motherboard, I want the most stable and solid board I can get, and hopefully it will have some stable and decent BIOS, not having all kinds of memory compatibility and you know what issues like I've had with Asus P5N32-E SLi, Striker Extreme and P5Q-Deluxe the last years. And of course the performance and overclocking capability is rather important, not as important as the board being rock solid and stable but still important. It's not that important that the motherboard is able to run my Core i7 at like 4.2GHz as I will never be able to run at those speeds 100% stable, but it should be able to run my 920 at 3.5 - 3.8GHz without any issues as I should have no issues with hitting that as a stable overclock.

The Rampage II Extreme does indeed look sexy, but I couldn't care less if other boards are mores stable and got better and more stable BIOS? Rampage II Extreme also got all this "bling-bling" like the useless LCD-poster, the possibility to attach a multimeter for checking the voltage etc..? I wont bother using things like that, so I'm better of with the Blood Rage if that's a more stable board with better BIOS even when it doesn't got all that "bling-bling" as the Rampage II Extreme got.
 
RamGuy said:
The looks / visuals of the board isn't my first priority at all!

- First of all I want the most stable and throughout solid board! Stable BIOS! No more ASUS Memory compatibility issues!
- Second in line is the gaming and overclocking performance (the board need to have the nF200 chip / support for full SLi)

And that is all that are important in my opinion.. Things like Clear CMOS buttons, possibility for easy multimeter checking, the visuals and stuff like that is simply not important when I chose a motherboard, I want the most stable and solid board I can get, and hopefully it will have some stable and decent BIOS, not having all kinds of memory compatibility and you know what issues like I've had with Asus P5N32-E SLi, Striker Extreme and P5Q-Deluxe the last years. And of course the performance and overclocking capability is rather important, not as important as the board being rock solid and stable but still important. It's not that important that the motherboard is able to run my Core i7 at like 4.2GHz as I will never be able to run at those speeds 100% stable, but it should be able to run my 920 at 3.5 - 3.8GHz without any issues as I should have no issues with hitting that as a stable overclock.

The Rampage II Extreme does indeed look sexy, but I couldn't care less if other boards are mores stable and got better and more stable BIOS? Rampage II Extreme also got all this "bling-bling" like the useless LCD-poster, the possibility to attach a multimeter for checking the voltage etc..? I wont bother using things like that, so I'm better of with the Blood Rage if that's a more stable board with better BIOS even when it doesn't got all that "bling-bling" as the Rampage II Extreme got.
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same overhere i need stable board not looking sexy

anyway the board with NF200 will take a while to be release since it take longer time to design

so i pick EVGA now then you can step-up when NF200 Board come out

ASUS and Foxconn is sexy i had very bad experience with asus bios also i need to wait a couple months until stable bios come out also thier RMA service is very very BAD

but we have to wait until all review come out and desire which one we are going to get ^^
 
From what you have said I would recommend not buying anything until the second revisions of "anyones" board comes out. The first wave will be not be mature products and have a lot of the bios and other compatibility issues you say you are trying to avoid. While some of the initial reviews look promising they are not the result of long term use. This is a standard thing with all new major processor/board introductions. All you have to do is look back 2 years to the Core 2 Duo and the P965 chipset introduction. First couple of months was rough on people who expected to buy a board that has no issues. I hope I am wrong and it all goes off without a hitch, but past history indicates it will not be so, at least for the first several months. Dont get me wrong, it will all work but its like buying the first model year of a new car introduction. Give the mauf a little time to get the bugs out. Also the manuf like to launch the "flagship" products first to soak the "first adopters" the mid range boards will follow later.

that said I would go with EVGA they have a history of "make it right with the customer" even if it costs them money. A remarkable thing in this day and time.
 
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