ASUS P35 vs X48 boards

[Naxos]

Hello again I am working on a new build and some folks have been helping me out in the General Hardware forum, but I've lately become hung up on the motherboards so thought I would make a new topic instead of bumping an old one - here is the other topic if you want some more background though: http://forums.anandtech.com/me...adid=2182563&forumid=1,

I'm almost ready to finalize a build but I'm still trying to decide on a motherboard.

I'm going to put the Core 2 Quad Q9300 in either board I get. These are the 2 I'm looking at:

ASUS P5K-E/WIFI and ASUS RAMPAGE FORMULA

I might do some easy overclocking and will use WiFi so its nice that the P35 board comes with that, its also nice that its cheaper...now money is not my #1 concern here, but I don't want to waste money by putting it in places I won't notice. I want to build a fast, stable system that might give me a little room to upgrade as it gets a little tired before a full rebuild.

So my question is - what benefits would I get by spending the extra money on the X48 board?

Thanks in advance

 

[krnmastersgt]

X48 is more of an enthusiasts chipset, the Rampage apparently has a very mature and in-depth bios. If you want to do simple overclocking just to wet your feet, I'd suggest you go with the P5K-E.

 

[Naxos]

Originally posted by: krnmastersgt
X48 is more of an enthusiasts chipset, the Rampage apparently has a very mature and in-depth bios. If you want to do simple overclocking just to wet your feet, I'd suggest you go with the P5K-E.

Thats a good way to put it "wet my feet" thats exactly what I want to do.

I had been warned to make sure the P35 would support the new 45nm Q9300 chips. I assume this board is known to support these chips? (Newegg led me to believe this)

 

[Sylvanas]

Well, the Rampage Formula will support 45nm CPU's right out of the box, P35 mobos usually require a BIOS update for the 45nm CPU's in which case you would need another LGA775 CPU on hand in order to boot it up and flash the BIOS, then put the new Q9300 back in. IMO, if you intend to have this system for quite a while and intend on upgrading it- I would go the X48. Simply because it has dual PCI-E 2.0 and if in future you upgrade graphics cards, a new card 'may' only be compatible with 2.0 boards or 'may' suffer a significant performance impact with use of the older (P35) PCI-E 1.0 board (since we are expecting the next round of GPU's to saturate all the bandwidth provided by the 1.0 bus).

 

[Naxos]

Well I think I'm sold on X38 at least.

I think I'm leaning towards one of these 2 boards DFI x38 or ASUS P5E

Any thoughts between those? They both have the PCIe2 x2

 

[waxking1]

Originally posted by: Naxos
Well I think I'm sold on X38 at least.

I think I'm leaning towards one of these 2 boards DFI x38 or ASUS P5E

Any thoughts between those? They both have the PCIe2 x2

These are the same two boards I narrowed my choice down to after a few days of looking. I bought a q9450, I already have a 790i MB with an e8400 and I wanted something different.
I know the DFI board is good but I never really liked my last DFI board that much, so I ordered the Asus P5e which is very similar to the Rampage. From what I've read it will perform about as well as anything out there and uses the cheaper DDR2 memory.

 

[Naxos]

Originally posted by: waxking1

These are the same two boards I narrowed my choice down to after a few days of looking. I bought a q9450, I already have a 790i MB with an e8400 and I wanted something different.
I know the DFI board is good but I never really liked my last DFI board that much, so I ordered the Asus P5e which is very similar to the Rampage. From what I've read it will perform about as well as anything out there and uses the cheaper DDR2 memory.

Thats what I've been thinking myself - they seem darn close to identical! Since you own that ASUS, mind me asking what HSF you use? I was look at the Zalman 9500 92mm and didn't know if it would squeeze in between all those heatsinks on the mobo.

 

[waxking1]

I don't have the Asus board yet as I just ordered it. Should be here Monday. Right now I'm using an Artic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro with my 790i board and the e8400. I ordered a Thermalright Ultra 120 Xtreme yesterday. I'm probably going to use the q9450 with my 790i board and the Thermalright. That would leave the F7Pro for the Asus board.