I sat down last night to start to design a new workstation for myself as I have been upgrading several client PCs and I am starting to realize my E8400 is a little underpowered for my current needs. I am settled on CPU and am going with a quad-core S1156 or S1136 CPU - need need for hexa-core and I do not foresee such a need either.
What I cannot find a good motherboard - for either socket. By the end, I am sure this will sound like a <rant>, but I am amazed it is so hard to find a clean, basic motherboard. By that I mean one that is not loaded with onboard sound as almost every onboard solution sounds like crap. I want a motherboard where if it does have onboard features, say with the NIC(s), it uses quality parts like Intel chipsets. I want a motherboard that gives you the ability to overclock, should you want to. I do not want a motherboard that uses crazy colors and LEDs - I know there is a market demographic for this, but I am sure there is a demographic like clean understated designs as well.
In terms of manufacturer's I am a fan of pretty much Asus, Gigabyte, and Supermicro. They all make great motherboards, but finding one that meets the criteria I laid out above is harder than finding a Yeti. Gigabyte is pretty much ruled out at the beginning b/c they all have onbaord sound, they continue to put FDD and PATA headers on their boards, and their colors tend to make me want to vomit. Now, I use their motherboards all day long for client builds because they are well made and offer features that are suitable for client builds, but for my own workstation, no dice. Asus makes great boards as well, and right now, their Maximus III Formula is almost what I am looking for. My gripes against it are the colors used and the heatsinks around the socket - they are pretty much sized for decoration and not function. Flip it over to Supermicro and I like their MBD-X8SIA-F-O motherbaord except for the fact, that I need to run Xeons (cost), I could not overclock (well) the CPU used, and there is limited cooling around the socket and the chipsets.
Can someone point me to a hybrid of the best of the Asus Maximus III Formula and the Supermicro MBD-X8SIA-F-O? Does such a motherboard even exist or should I be content to settle for something that is less than ideal?
What I cannot find a good motherboard - for either socket. By the end, I am sure this will sound like a <rant>, but I am amazed it is so hard to find a clean, basic motherboard. By that I mean one that is not loaded with onboard sound as almost every onboard solution sounds like crap. I want a motherboard where if it does have onboard features, say with the NIC(s), it uses quality parts like Intel chipsets. I want a motherboard that gives you the ability to overclock, should you want to. I do not want a motherboard that uses crazy colors and LEDs - I know there is a market demographic for this, but I am sure there is a demographic like clean understated designs as well.
In terms of manufacturer's I am a fan of pretty much Asus, Gigabyte, and Supermicro. They all make great motherboards, but finding one that meets the criteria I laid out above is harder than finding a Yeti. Gigabyte is pretty much ruled out at the beginning b/c they all have onbaord sound, they continue to put FDD and PATA headers on their boards, and their colors tend to make me want to vomit. Now, I use their motherboards all day long for client builds because they are well made and offer features that are suitable for client builds, but for my own workstation, no dice. Asus makes great boards as well, and right now, their Maximus III Formula is almost what I am looking for. My gripes against it are the colors used and the heatsinks around the socket - they are pretty much sized for decoration and not function. Flip it over to Supermicro and I like their MBD-X8SIA-F-O motherbaord except for the fact, that I need to run Xeons (cost), I could not overclock (well) the CPU used, and there is limited cooling around the socket and the chipsets.
Can someone point me to a hybrid of the best of the Asus Maximus III Formula and the Supermicro MBD-X8SIA-F-O? Does such a motherboard even exist or should I be content to settle for something that is less than ideal?
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