Which mobo for an E7200?

[wongnog]

Hey y'all! It's time to upgrade my S939 system, so I'm thinking of going for the E7200 with 4GB PC2-6400 ram, but haven't narrowed down the myriad of mobo options yet. I love to overclock, but I'm on a budget so I never want to break the bank on any components. I'll probably get a Cooler Master Hyper TX 2 to help with air cooling. I mostly do video encoding and transcoding, plus some gaming too. I'm quite happy with the Galaxy KFA2 9600GT card I just got, and I've never delved into SLI but might want to have that option for the future. However if there's a significant cost savings by going for a budget non-SLI mobo, I might consider that. I tend to find most of those budget boards don't have great OC options though.

Can you guys recommend me a few boards? I'll probably be buying from a local Toronto store, their prices can be found online: https://www.infonec.com

 

[Blain]

:thumbsup::laugh: > GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS3R < :thumbsup::laugh:

 

[wongnog]

hmmm i dont' think that board supports nvidia SLI. But I should be okay with my single GPU 9600GT right?

 

[Blain]

SLI is for sold-out gamers with money to burn.
For your video work, stick with a single graphics card and the Intel P45 chipset.

 

[wongnog]

Blain: How about the cheaper Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3L? Or the Asus P5Q? Just checking out the different P45 boards out there and want to know what the dif b/t price points is. I've used Asus in the past with their nforce4 chipset, right now is there an industry leader for the P45s?

 

[DSF]

Either of those boards would be fine. The main thing the "R" model offers is onboard RAID, as well as a few extra SATA ports. If you're putting together a one or two drive system, the difference between the R and L is minimal.

Edit: You're right by the way, no P45 board will support SLI, but that shouldn't matter to someone who isn't a heavy gamer.