Beginner Board?

[lessonz]

Okay, here are my initial thoughts. I'm thinking E6850, 3 SATA drives (2 in RAID0), firewire, 8800Ultra, and an old PCI tuner card I have. I'm leaning towards a Tuniq Tower or Big Typ VX (I realize Thermalright is tops, but the cost is a good bit higher and the lapping seems like a pain for a pretty small improvement). I intend on OCing, but nothing extreme, looking for stability not WR. I'll probably end up WCing at some point in the next year. I want to go DDR2 right now. I'd like the ability to drop a 45nm quad in there. I have no intention of ever going SLI, but if an SLI board is best I'm okay with that.

I'd love recommendations for boards. I'd like something that's going to be relatively easy to learn on, but not limit me once I know. Abit's lack of BIOS updates and weaker RJ45 scare me. I guess I'm leaning towards Asus P5K Premium, but I'd love to hear from people who know much more than I. Thanks.

 

[erwos]

"Beginner" and "RAID 0" don't belong in the same post.

 

[Glendor]

I recommend you get a board with Training Wheels

I agree with erwos, RAID0 (& Lapping) should not be used in the same sentence as "Beginner Board" unless that sentence is: "If you are planning on lapping your HSF and using a RAID0 array, then you should not get a Beginner Board."

JK, we've all been beginners at one time.

Good Luck Bump

 

[Triton67]

BIG TIP:

dont pick a Gigabyte mobo without active chipset cooling

 

[Oerekum]

Off the top of my head, p5b vanilla? Or something with the nforce 650 chipset.

 

[o1die]

In a nutshell, Dell or Intel mobos. They have fewer adjustements in the bios.

 

[lessonz]

Okay, so what's the 'best' board. I realize this is subjective, but feel free to give me your opinions, but please include some reasoning.

 

[SerpentRoyal]

Do you understand the Pros and Cons behind RAID? Highly experienced users avoid RAID because of the additional complexity and higher failure mode. These people value data integrity over an improvement in HDD throughput.

I also went further by isolating my OS in the primary active C partition. It takes less than one minute to create or restore an image file of this 950MB OS partition.

If you don't need RAID or 1394, then the $62 @ NewEgg (with $20 Paypal promo) Abit IP35-E is probably the best all around C2D board from a price and performance point of view. Board can easily hit 488MHz FSB. Pushing C2D chips above 500MHz is counter-productive because the high FSB will place alot of stress on the CPU, MB, and RAM. The onboard fan speed controller works with 2-pin/3-pin/4-pin fan.

The BIOS is stable and works with Kingston ValueRAM, HP/Crucial, OCZ, Patriot, and Ballistix. There are sufficient Vcore and Vdimm to overclock any CPU/RAM. You don't need to tweak the other parameters such as VNB, VSB, and VTT if the FSB is limited to about 400MHz.

Like many P965/P35 chipsets, this board will double post from a cold start. START-STOP-START. This will add about 14 seconds to the boot time. No double post if restarting from windows.

 

[lessonz]

I understand the risks of RAID, and I also understand its arguably small performance gains. These drives will be for OS and apps only, no critical files will be stored on them and the 'storage' drive not in RAID will be backed up regularly.

RAID support is a must. And while it might be silly, I feel double posting is unacceptable.

SerpentRoyal, I truly appreciate the recommendation, but I was hoping for something more in the 'enthusiast class' of boards. Maybe I'm trying to start too high, but that's a flaw of mine I'm willing to live with. I guess I was hoping to find a higher end board that was also a little forgiving.

 

[NoStateofMind]

Starting too high? I started with an ASUS P5B-Deluxe WiFi

 

[nitromullet]

I totally dig this Abit IP35 Pro. I've always been an Asus man, but I took a chance on this board and couldn't be happier.

I use RAID0 as well, and there are no double posts with the IP35 Pro. I'm an experienced PC builder, but I'm not an incredibly seasoned overclocker. I have no interest in water or any other non-air cooling, and I'm certainly not getting into lapping my HSF. I buy a decent cooler, slap some AS5 on it, and it's good to go. With that in mind, you can see that I've managed to pull off a decent OC (IMO) with the IP35 Pro with just a bit of tweaking with uGuru in the BIOS. uGuru is incredibly easy for someone who has no interest in digging as deep as what you might find on a DFI motherboard, but it still has a decent amount of options to let you tweak away. If you're looking for a "beginner" OC board, I don't think you can get much more easy than a P35 board with a Conroe chip, and Abit's uGuru addition to the BIOS makes it even easier. With uGuru all the OC options are in one place, plus you can choose to leave as many (or little) settings on "auto" to suit your level of comfort.

I 100% recommend the IP35 Pro.