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Recommendations for a LGA-775 Micro-ATX motherboard?

B

blyndy

Member
Hi, there.

I'm wondering what would be a good micro-ATX LGA-775motherboard.

I want to put a C2D e8400 in it plus a decent video card for gaming and media center duties.

I'm after (in the following order) reliability, good quality, decent performance. After a few hours of searching different chipsets and feature I landed on the Asus P5Q-EM.

I looked at a comparison of Intel chipsets at Wikipedia and I liked the G45 because it's the most-up-to-date and 65nm, although I don't need the IGP. Honestly I don't know the difference between the G45 and the Q45 though, maybe a different chipset would be good also...

Oh, good Pulse width modulation is important, to reduce the speeds of all the fans when it isn't hot.

What else might be a good consideration?

Thanks
 
If you aren't overclocking, then just about anything will work as long as it has the features you want.

For PWM controls, look for as many 4-pin headers on the motherboard as you have 4-pin PWM fans. Typically a motherboard only has one (for the CPU) but a few rare boards have multiple.
 
Originally posted by: blyndy
I looked at a comparison of Intel chipsets at Wikipedia and I liked the G45 because it's the most-up-to-date and 65nm, although I don't need the IGP.
Click to expand...
If you intend to use a graphics card, there is no reason to spend the premium on G45 for an IGP you aren't going to use.



 
Originally posted by: tcsenter
If you intend to use a graphics card, there is no reason to spend the premium on G45 for an IGP you aren't going to use.
Click to expand...

The thing is that if you are looking for "features" then G45 boards are more likely to have them, such as eSATA, Firewire, RAID, more than 4 SATA ports, 4 RAM slots (versus cheaper G31/G41 chipset boards).
 
Well, I'd go for top quality wether OCing or not. P5E-VM HDMI. Its going for around $150-$160 nowadays but its the best thing out there without stepping up to a X58 mobo of some sort. Thats what I'd get anyway if I didnt want to jump onto the i7 bandwagon. Just my opinion though.

That P5Q-EM has had some problems when using a seperate video card. Look into that closely. They may have resolved it by now. There is also a DO version of that model thats halfway decent if you are not looking to OC.
 
This is a wonderful opinion I'm after (in the following order) reliability, good quality, decent performance. After a few hours of searching different chipsets and feature I landed on the Asus P5Q-EM.

I looked at a comparison of Intel chipsets at Wikipedia and I liked the G45 because it's the most-up-to-date and 65nm, although I don't need the IGP. Honestly I don't know the difference between the G45 and the Q45 though, maybe a different chipset would be good also...

Oh, good Pulse width modulation is important, to reduce the speeds of all the fans when it isn't hot.

What else might be a good consideration?

mark456

parking sensor
 
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