Please help me decide between GIGABYTE GA-X38-DS4 and P5K deluxe wifi

[steve1616]

I just got an E8400 tonight. I was set to go quad core, but I will be very happy with this E8400. What motherboard are you using with your E8400. I almost bought a P5K tonight at microcenter, but I had only read the reviews of the Deluxe version. I know that I won't benefit from a X38 board over a P35 board because I don't game, but I found the GIGABYTE GA-X38-DS4 cheaper than the P5K Deluxe. I have read a lot of forums where people have had great luck with this board right out of the box with an E8400 and 8 Gb of RAM (all 4 slots filled). Would you pay $10 more to get the P5K Deluxe or would you just get the Gigabyte board. I really don't think I could go wrong with either board, but I just wanted some opinions since I will be buying one of these boards by tomorrow. Also, I went to microcenter and got the cooler master 690 case, Samsung Sh-S203 dvd burner, E8400, Open box 8800GT by EVGA for $125. I am so happy that this thing is coming together. I have now purchased everything except my motherboard and a floppy drive. I really feel like the motherboard I choose is going to make this whole project good or bad. I just really feel like the motherboard is so important. Please give me opinions on the two motherboards I have just mentioned.

 

[DSF]

For what it's worth, most gamers don't even need an X38 motherboard. Is your heart set on one of those two boards? What features do you need in a motherboard?

 

[steve1616]

My heart isn't set on any particular board. I just want a board that is going to be the absolute most stable with the E8400. I was positive that I was going to go with a P35 based board like the P5K or P5K Deluxe, but when I saw that the x38 based GIGABYTE GA-X38-DS4 was cheaper and had a lot of great customer reviews with the E8400 right out of the box I got very interested. I have read a couple of articles that talked about the X38 being designed more better for the new penryns with higher front side bus speeds. The X38 goes up to 1600 FSB, though I will never need this option. I want the ability to be 100 percent stable at stock speeds, but have the ability to overclock to 3.6 on the E8400. I want to be able to overclock because it seems like an absolutely free performance gain without any adverse effects as long as I don't go crazy. 3.6 will be the max I would ever overclock to.

 

[steve1616]

Also, I forgot to mention that wifi is pretty nice to have, but I think I can add wifi to any motherboard. I would also like a fair amount of usb outputs in the back where they are hidden. I have five things running off of USB on my current computer although wifi might so away with some usb problems. I will post my other priorities when I think of them as far as options on the motherboard. I think most of my options can be added to even a basic motherboard though.

 

[bigsnyder]

If the GA-X38-DS4 is cheaper than your other choice, then I would certainly get the X38 board. Highly considering this
board myself.

 

[kmartinez]

Just spend hours updating an ASUS P5K-PRO motherboard so that it didn't complain about the newer E8400 CPU! One problem with this mobo seems to be the terrible start-up problems with the embedded ATA controller (which does not tell you what it is it just sits there with a version number for ages). Given that reboots are required for installs I disabled the ATA DVD drive and plugged in a usb external drive for the XP install (yuk!).

However I now have it all running with raid0 boot area and raid 5 home areas on 4 drives 🙂 CPU is running cool even with two copies of cpuburn running. (hard disk heat is another problem/fan to come I fear).