I got an Asus Maximus III Gene on the 17th of september. This motherboard is troublesome to say the least and I am not alone with this. It seems this motherboard is unstable. Some people RMA'd their motherboard and the replacement is just as unstable. Every cold boot with this motherboard either results in a blank blue screen and the system hanging or a BSOD. I thought this was because my OC was going wrong but ithe motherboard still BSOD's randomly when I have default bios set with my ram timings set right. Also I didnt realise that the PCI Express slots were so close together before buying this motherboard and one of my GTX470s is 6 celcius hotter than the other because there is only a few mm between both GPU's. Before anybody says X8 x X8 is a bad bottleneck they need to read this http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article/2010/08/23/gtx_480_sli_pcie_bandwidth_perf_x16x16_vs_x8x8/ Anyway thats my explaination why I am looking for a new motherboard. I am looking for a motherboard that has external bios reset or an easy to reach bios reset button with SLI and the PCI Express Slots further appart. It would be nice if there was a possiblity to save bios profiles like my Maximus III Gene. I need one profile for gaming and a profile for normal use to save electricity. It will be mainly for gaming , but I do some video encoding every once in a while. I have a budget of around 220 euro or less.
Hi, I'd like to recommend this Gigabyte motherboard. I have the GA-EX58A-UD3R and it's absolutely fine with my i7 930 at 4.3Ghz. Doesn't break a sweat. The BIOS is incredibly easy to use and there is a CMOS reset switch onboard. It also allows you to save profiles. As for the spacing between the PCI-E slots, it's a tough one because many of them are close together. The spacing between them on mine is also small (Although I only run one 5870). I also cannot comment on how it performs with SLI/Crossfire. Somebody else may be able to offer more accurate information.
Does it need to be mATX? It could be tricky to find one where the x16 slots are separated by two other slots. You will need a fairly high end motherboard which employs some sort of pic-e lane switching/upscaling as they don't get the sli compatibility with the second slot being x4, only x8/x16. The motherboard that tom recommended is good though I think you could look at the ga-p55a-ud4 its cheaper and has all the same features except for looking slightly less fancy. Not sure on the profile saving but other gigabyte ud4 boards have it so I should think it does. Though I'm not sure you really need individual bios profiles for gaming and general browsing, Intel speed step clocks the processor down nicely with out any issues for me, didn't stop me over clocking either, I got to 4.0ghz with it enabled with very little extra voltage.
Thank you. I will have a look at that motherboard. I will look at the reviews also. It doesnt need to be mATX. I just bought this motherboard because for one it got great reviews and two it was the only one I could find on Dabs.ie with an external bios reset button. I have a Corsair Obsidian 800D so the size of the motherboard doesnt matter. I have loads of space to play with . Thank ypu for your suggestions so far.
