What's Folks favorite i7 MoBo for Ocing?

Caveman

Platinum Member
Nov 18, 1999
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What's the current favorite? Is there anything I should be looking for to come out around thanksgiving time when I build a new rig?

Sorry for the basic, general context of my question, but I'm essentially a noob again after beng out of the loop for 3 years (per rig specs in sig).

Moved to motherboards subsection.
My pal Lopri is loney. :X

Anandtech C&C Moderator
Aigomorla
 

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
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Originally posted by: Caveman
What's the current favorite? Is there anything I should be looking for to come out around thanksgiving time when I build a new rig?

Sorry for the basic, general context of my question, but I'm essentially a noob again after beng out of the loop for 3 years (per rig specs in sig).

u are aware the cheapet X58 starts at 180 an goes up to 450.

If you ask anyone, they will say the 450 dollar classified, but less then 10% of the people who have i7's can afford one.

But hands down, everyone wants a classified.

http://i125.photobucket.com/al...la/Haruhi/IMG_1384.jpg
 

Sheninat0r

Senior member
Jun 8, 2007
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Thanksgiving... by that time, Lynnfield is gonna be out along with ATi's 5 series (planning for a launch alongside Windows 7) and the hardware world will look completely different.

The E760 Classified, the $400 NF200-free version, is probably more desirable now. People have seen benchmarks where the E759 with the NF200 performs slower than the E760 in video benchmarks on account of the latency introduced by the chip, but others have said that the E759 is more overclockable since the NF200 takes some of the load off of the uncore for handling graphics.
 

lopri

Elite Member
Jul 27, 2002
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I've been lonely, as a matter of fact. :laugh:

@Caveman: I'm trying to find out the same thing. Sorry for not being very helpful..
 

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
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ASUS P6T-DLX
ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution
ASUS Rampage 2 Extreme
Giggy X58-UD4P and up
eVGA X58 vanilla
eVGA Classified

Get one of the boards i listed and you cant go wrong.
 

MegaWorks

Diamond Member
Jan 26, 2004
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Originally posted by: aigomorla
ASUS P6T-DLX
ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution
ASUS Rampage 2 Extreme
Giggy X58-UD4P and up
eVGA X58 vanilla
eVGA Classified

Get one of the boards i listed and you cant go wrong.

Also I would add

BIOSTAR TpowerX58
DFI LP UT X58-T3eH8
Foxconn BloodRage

They overclock pretty well.
 

lopri

Elite Member
Jul 27, 2002
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OK I just thought of a few quick wish list. (in no particular order)

1. I do not want ANY part of the board other than VRMs/MOSFETs hotter than 60C. I can use as many fans a case allows, but they all will be less than 1200RPM. (so this requirement pretty much takes care of voltage part as well)

2. I want absolutely functional S3, C1E/C2E/C4E/EIST up to Bclk 200. I do not want my CPU to run @4.0GHz when I'm typing a document, and I do not want to see any funky behavior after wake-up from S3.

3. I want to be able to use x20 multiplier without any hindrance when overclocking. (I could be a bit flexible on this one if everything else is fine, but this one is actually a good test how well the board handles QPI in general)

4. I want all manners of memory configurations to be fully functional. Say, if I want to use 4 sticks in a dual-channel configuration the board should handle it just as well as it does 3 sticks in triple-channel. (going from 1T to 2T is OK)

5. I want all PCIe slots to work as expected. That means I should be able to install single GPU in any of the available slot and at the same time I could use other slots for a network card or a network card in any slot. Same thing for two GPUs, as long as there are available PCIe lanes.

6. I want a flawless power delivery system. vDroop is fine but should be minimal without any compensation (will not use LLC)

7. I want BIOS to be as transparent as possible. I do not like board doing things behind my eye sight as a safety measure. (ASUS is good at this) Behaviors like this make my tweaking effort completely meaningless. If I set timings too aggressively, the system should crash instead of changing other invisible parameters. However, upon crash, the board should recover graciously. :D

There are a lot more, but let's just start with the above first.
 

Cookie Monster

Diamond Member
May 7, 2005
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I think there were several reports on how hot the digital PWM based motherboards get especially the DFI LP UT X58-T3eH8. If you dont provide sufficent air flow to the passive heatsinks on the digital PWMs of that board, your going to fry the circuitry which some people have already managed to do. :Q
 

jjet67

Member
May 8, 2003
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Originally posted by: aigomorla
Originally posted by: Caveman
What's the current favorite? Is there anything I should be looking for to come out around thanksgiving time when I build a new rig?

Sorry for the basic, general context of my question, but I'm essentially a noob again after beng out of the loop for 3 years (per rig specs in sig).

u are aware the cheapet X58 starts at 180 an goes up to 450.

If you ask anyone, they will say the 450 dollar classified, but less then 10% of the people who have i7's can afford one.

But hands down, everyone wants a classified.

http://i125.photobucket.com/al...la/Haruhi/IMG_1384.jpg

It's not a stock classified, is it? How can I order (or make) one like yours?
Thanks,
JJET
 

homercles337

Diamond Member
Dec 29, 2004
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Originally posted by: aigomorla
ASUS P6T-DLX
ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution
ASUS Rampage 2 Extreme
Giggy X58-UD4P and up
eVGA X58 vanilla
eVGA Classified

Get one of the boards i listed and you cant go wrong.

I have the UD4P and for $220 im very happy with it. The BIOS is top notch. Im using a TRUE (no lapping) with the 920 and im running at 3.6 and 1600. I could push it more and the thing was stable at 3.8-4.0, but i wasnt totally happy with temps. Maybe i will lap the TRUE and see what happens.
 

GarfieldtheCat

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2005
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i'm using the DFI X58-t3eh8, got my i920 up to 3.8Ghz with 1.216V for the CPU and 1.21VTT.

Seems to pretty good. But most X58 boards seem to be pretty good.
 

lopri

Elite Member
Jul 27, 2002
13,310
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I was eyeing on mATX variants. DFI seems the best among the 3 mATX (DFI, ASUS, MSI), but I hear EVGA will debut a new X58 board in mATX form factor so that'd be interesting as well.

Edit: Wait, no maybe it's not an mATX (EVGA, that is).

http://www.evga.com/articles/00481/
 

Shmee

Memory & Storage, Graphics Cards Mod Elite Member
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Sep 13, 2008
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UD5 is very good, I got one. So are the Evga ones. If you do water cooling, the gigabyte x58 extreme comes with water blocks.