Need a P35 recommendation for a Q6600

[ZombieRitual]

I'm building a machine come July 22nd and it looks like a P35 is good for my needs. I don't plan on anything beyond a mild overclock, if even that. Here's a general idea of what I'm looking at for the rest of the machine:
Q6600
4 Gigs of DDR2 RAM (value name brand)
2 optical drives
2 HD's (500g probably)
sound card (possibly)
x1950 (xt or pro), going to be upgraded in a year to 2nd gen dx10 card
Enermax PSU

With this in mind, I don't plan on ever going SLI or Crossfire as it's pretty damn expensive. I'd also like a P35 between $100 and $200 bucks as my end budget is about $1500 tops. My big concerns are stability/compatability and good customer service should anything go wrong. So what are my best options? Thanks!


P.S. I've heard that since the P35 has a FSB of 1333, it will automatically do a mild and simple overclock of a Q6600, is this true or am I completely off the mark on this?

 

[jvhb]

Abit IP35-E looks to be the killer P35 board in the budget range. In the tests I have seen it is 100% stable and with good performance at a very low price - shaved of all the stuff most people don't need anyways, such as RAID and a million SATA ports etc. Plan on getting one myself soon.
If you need Firewire get the model without "-E" - which is a few bucks more.

See here:
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2063989&enterthread=y
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/ip35economy/

Pretty sure you got it wrong about the 1333 FSB. Just because the chipset supports a higher FSB, doesn't mean it will automatically OC your CPU. It will run std. FSB and speed unless you ask it to OC - which it will be "glad" to do..

 

[Hauk]

If you don't plan to do RAID:
Abit IP35-E

If you do:
Abit IP35

As far as the customer service, I've heard people complain about Abit's. I'd like to see anything better from Asus or MSI. Forums are where most probs are solved. EVGA is the only company I've ever been able to talk to live.

 

[lopri]

If your choice of OS is Vista (it looks like since you're opting for 4GB of RAM), try doing away with a sound card. You can always add one later on if you so desire. I would even say Vista is 'optimized' for on-board sound. You will likely be surprised with its native support and quality of sound. Put the savings towards newer generation vid cards. (I actually hope Vista would put Creative out of sound card business ) I haven't had a good experience with Enermax PSU personally - this seems vary greatly per individuals, but many would agree that Seasonic, Corsair, OCZ, etc. are a safer choice. (Especially the Corsair 520W which can be purchased for $80-ish, thin modular cables are great)

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: lopri
If your choice of OS is Vista (it looks like since you're opting for 4GB of RAM), try doing away with a sound card. You can always add one later on if you so desire. I would even say Vista is 'optimized' for on-board sound. You will likely be surprised with its native support and quality of sound. Put the savings towards newer generation vid cards. (I actually hope Vista would put Creative out of sound card business ) I haven't had a good experience with Enermax PSU personally - this seems vary greatly per individuals, but many would agree that Seasonic, Corsair, OCZ, etc. are a safer choice. (Especially the Corsair 520W which can be purchased for $80-ish, thin modular cables are great)

Onboard cards have terrible EAX support. also, many state that bass repsonse is very poor on them.

OP, nice nick name :music:

 

[Heidfirst]

Originally posted by: SteelSix
As far as the customer service, I've heard people complain about Abit's. I'd like to see anything better from Asus or MSI. Forums are where most probs are solved. EVGA is the only company I've ever been able to talk to live.

It also varies by country (& I'm sure that's true of many mfrs) e.g. in the UK abit's customer support is excellent.

 

[JustaGeek]

If you want to upgrade your video card in 1 year, wait a couple of months for X38 with PCIe 2.0 support. It might be very important fo the next generation of GPU's.

 

[Aznguy1872]

Yeah, you could go with the IP35 non pro one which costs just alittle more. If the overclocking ability on the non pro is similar to its fellow brothers, then I would recommend that board. I can't seem to find any reviews for it otherwise I would put a link for you.

Forgot to mention that I read somewhere that the IP35-e has a doulble post, which adds about 12 seconds to boot time. Not sure about the IP-35 non pro though.

 

[firewolfsm]

Originally posted by: SteelSix
If you don't plan to do RAID:
Abit IP35-E

If you do:
Abit IP35

For just $10 more you get a better board that can clock much higher, and has more features.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813128050

 

[tekjansen]

I don't wish to hijack the thread but having the x38 mentioned deems a question from me. What was the price of the high end p35 chipsets when the first came out to give me an idea of what the x38 might cost.

 

[ZombieRitual]

I've been planning on building a computer with the July 22nd price drop so an x38 being released in 3 months isn't an option. Current computer is showing it's age and it's time for a new one. How's the build quality on Gigabyte? I've never purchased one of their products before.

 

[firewolfsm]

I think it's second only to the high-end Asus boards right now, the BIOS isn't as nice and some of Asus's special features aren't as good on the Gigabyte boards but performance is just as good, if not better, and the quality is...I dunno, whatever's expected from a board, it works, and it overclocks a lot too.

 

[Heidfirst]

Originally posted by: firewolfsm

If you do:
Abit IP35

For just $10 more you get a better board that can clock much higher, and has more features.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813128050

except that the IP35 is $113 after rebate at mwave which makes it cheaper & more featured ...
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/vie...a=BA23928&RSKU=BA23928

 

[Colt4545]

X38 will be out much sooner than 3 months. On June 5 at Computex, Intel VP said X38 motherboards would ship within 90 days. The latest rumor mill is that they missed the ship date of July 27, but are on schedule to make a ship date of August 7. Either way, X38 is NOT 3 months away.

 

[ZombieRitual]

I didn't think about that, however, x38 will probably be out of my price range. The P35 boards can already go for over 200 dollars, and I hate to think how much the x38's will go. I also don't think the pci-e x16 bandwidth has been tested yet, nor will be tested for another year, so I'm pretty confident a P35 will serve my needs well.

 

[firewolfsm]

Originally posted by: Heidfirst

Originally posted by: firewolfsm

If you do:
Abit IP35

For just $10 more you get a better board that can clock much higher, and has more features.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813128050

except that the IP35 is $113 after rebate at mwave which makes it cheaper & more featured ...
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/vie...a=BA23928&RSKU=BA23928

Is it? I haven't looked too much into the Abit board, what features does it have that the DS3R doesn't?

 

[Heidfirst]

firewire
You need to get a DS3P/DS4/DQ6 for that in Gigabytes

 

[AMDfreak]

Originally posted by: Colt4545
X38 will be out much sooner than 3 months. On June 5 at Computex, Intel VP said X38 motherboards would ship within 90 days. The latest rumor mill is that they missed the ship date of July 27, but are on schedule to make a ship date of August 7. Either way, X38 is NOT 3 months away.

I really hope you're right. I've got a pre-order in for a G0 Q6600. Because I want to do Crossfire and run an Areca RAID card, I'll need a board with at least 3 16x PCIe slots. (Since I'll likely never find a non-server mobo with an 8x slot.)