A good overclocking motherboard

[cragfin]

Hi, I am looking to buy either a Q9300 or Q9450 and I am looking for the best motherboard for overclocking them?

Motherboard should be $250.00 or less.

 

[Extelleron]

Originally posted by: cragfin
Hi, I am looking to buy either a Q9300 or Q9450 and I am looking for the best motherboard for overclocking them?

Motherboard should be $250.00 or less.

With a budget like that there are plenty of options, but what are you looking for? Are you looking for a basic board that will overclock well? Or do you want features like firewire, Crossfire/SLI, etc?

Gigabyte P35-D3SL is a good choice and it's around ~$90. It falls under the category of a good oc'ing board with few features.

Higher end, you can look into an Intel X38/X48 board (Crossfire) or nVidia 780i/790i board (SLI). 790i will likely be out of your reach though.

As for your processor choice, I would recommend considering a Q6600 rather than a Q9300-Q9300's 7.5x multiplier really limits it and the Q6600 will likely end up running faster. The Q9450 will overclock better, but it is still not really worth the price premium.

 

[runawayprisoner]

ASUS P5E-VM HDMI is the best motherboard for Q9450 if you want more than 3.4GHz out of the chip. Believe me or not, all other boards no matter from which manufacturer... just fail at clocking the chip for some reason.

 

[happy medium]

Evga 750i sli FTW for 190.00$ is what i'd recommend.

review:

http://www.guru3d.com/article/mainboard/525/1

newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813188026

 

[bryanW1995]

Originally posted by: runawayprisoner
ASUS P5E-VM HDMI is the best motherboard for Q9450 if you want more than 3.4GHz out of the chip. Believe me or not, all other boards no matter from which manufacturer... just fail at clocking the chip for some reason.

ummm...right. so my ip35 pro that easily hit 3.6 was just blind luck, huh? I'm sure that there aren't any dfi, gigabyte, or other high end asus boards that can do 450 fsb + either. Or 790i for that matter. I can't wait to get started overclocking my ip35-e, I wonder what you'll say about THAT if it also gets up to 3.6 for 24/7 use.

 

[runawayprisoner]

Originally posted by: bryanW1995

Originally posted by: runawayprisoner
ASUS P5E-VM HDMI is the best motherboard for Q9450 if you want more than 3.4GHz out of the chip. Believe me or not, all other boards no matter from which manufacturer... just fail at clocking the chip for some reason.

ummm...right. so my ip35 pro that easily hit 3.6 was just blind luck, huh? I'm sure that there aren't any dfi, gigabyte, or other high end asus boards that can do 450 fsb + either. Or 790i for that matter. I can't wait to get started overclocking my ip35-e, I wonder what you'll say about THAT if it also gets up to 3.6 for 24/7 use.

I'm talking about having 3.8GHz or 4.0GHz stable for 24/7 use. It's possible now to get to 3.6GHz stable, but that's the maximum limit of most if not all boards. 780i and 790i boards might also be able to get to 475, but they can't go to 500.

 

[cragfin]

Would the Gigabyte P35-D3SL, support an 9800 GTX & a Q9450?

Also I only plan to overclock to 3.0 GHz, and use it about 6-8 hrs a day.

And don't really care about SLI, since the multi gpu card solution are on a rise.

Also is the P35-D3SL an easy overclocker as I am a newbie?

 

[bryanW1995]

yes, the DS3L would be a great mobo for you.

 

[v8envy]

Except that the DS3L doesn't come from the factory with BIOS support for 45nm quads. You may need another CPU to flash the beta bios from GB to get it to work. Pretty sure rev 7 of the bios supports 45nm duals, but not quads.

 

[cragfin]

Originally posted by: v8envy
Except that the DS3L doesn't come from the factory with BIOS support for 45nm quads. You may need another CPU to flash the beta bios from GB to get it to work. Pretty sure rev 7 of the bios supports 45nm duals, but not quads.

So the DS3L does not support 45nm quads?

Is there any way to flash it without using another cpu?