i would spend as much as it takes to get the best mobo ...... but it would be nice if more emphasis was given to amd , instead of the Intel this Intel that . some of us have not given up on amd ...... (yet)
It's this card (price gone up a bit since i got it though ) Compared drive is a single 500GB drive... though it's a seagate .9 whilst the array has .10 drives in it, not sure how relevant that is Seems very nice so far, better driver support and stability compared to the onboard nvidia raid i was using, and also i don't have to worry about a drive dying whilst not loosing much space to redundancy Definately worth the money so far. Only problem i do have though is not having any HDD activity lights... i'll sort that out when i'm next near a Maplins
Excellent, I am planning on getting the 2320 at some point. Although I hope I can get it cheaper as the cheapest here is $619NZD or about 240 quid. Its £190 on Scan, hmm, how much do you think international shipping would be? And how to get around customs? Best thing is, I will be upgrading soon and will have a spare mobo with a x4 slot on it The motherboard was $300 (£120) when I bought it.
the one im going to get after I return/sell the one I have now will be $235. the one i have now was $170. so im going for a more expensive one. but with the more expensive one it has newer tech so upgrading the mobo wont have to happen as soon.
the motherboard i want to buy (soon) is the ip35 which converted is 138 pounds but thats a bit much for me so im more likly to go with the gigiabyte p35 ds3r which converted is 83 pounds
I just recently bought a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L for around $100, and I can't even begin to imagine what I would gain from a more expensive board. This thing is absolutely flawless - no corners have been cut, it has overclocking potential, non-electrolytic capacitors, high-quality onboard audio, gigabit LAN, 1333 FSB and 1033 RAM support. The only thing missing is dual PCIe, if that's important to you. I suppose I can see a few advantages to the pricier DS3R in some situations, with more SATA and USB ports, and a better chipset cooler. So, £70 is the most I could ever imagine spending. Seriously, if I'm missing something, please tell me what you get for your extra money. I can't even begin to imagine what it might be.
I go for motherboards with PWM and solid caps. I bought a Abit p35 pro lat week for a friend (thnx to bitech board of the year award. And its a impresive motherboard. Rock solid.
Me too, for under £55 so "Rip-off Britain" ain't too rippy. It's easy to see what you get for more money with that particular model, as (like a lot of big-brand boards) it's part of a family with a common or related chipset base. But not everybody needs the extras of the higher end boards - Raid, twin PCI-Express x16 slots, more than four SATA, more USB2, DDR3 slots, etc. I decided I didn't. But reviews of the higher end members of a family, read carefully, should give a good guide as to how the junior members can be expected to perform. It would be useful for reviews to point out the range, where applicable, and what you get/lose for more/less money. I usually start with the best bang-for-buck processor range, which decides the socket, then look for the best-liked chipset, which narrows things down a lot. Then I can start looking at prices and what you get for your money, and start looking for reviews and user comments on the shortlist. WFM.
Id say ive been spending £121-160 on my main rig's motherboards, i would rather be paying £80-120 though I dont know if cheaper mobo's are cheaper cos u cant OC as much, or because they have less features But 6+ SATA ports (probably 4 on budget boards) on any board would be good, with an IDE and Floppy
Cost isn't really an issue. As long as the motherboard has all the features I need, then I'll buy it.
My last motherboard purchase was an MSI P35 Platinum for $100 after a rebate. That's around £50 according to Google. It works perfectly fine, much easier than my previous install. The one that I bought before that was a low end micro-ATX Asus running an Intel Celeron... Horrible layout for the Foxconn case that I used. It cost $40 at the time, £20 according to Google.
Mostly I would want to spend more than $200 (~£136) on a motherboard. Even then it must come with a lot of bells and whistles.
passive cooling on the motherboard wasn't a big thing for me, my pc currently has about 9 fans in there, i can hear it through the wall in the next room quite easily, so having an extra fan isn't a big deal
I'm using a P5B-E. It was fairly cheap (~$120) when I bought it and overclocks great. I'll usually get a board that's mid-range with good OC'ing ability. The best is nice, but I don't find enough value to spend the extra dough.
Very little of substance - the L has half as many SATA and rear USB ports, has no onboard RAID controller, and has a smaller, non-heatpiped chipset cooler. It's also missing the two DDR3 slots found on the R.
I'd encourage it. This is by far the best motherboard I've ever owned, and I haven't been able to find a single thing to complain about. That's why I'm saying I can't understand spending more than $100 on a motherboard - if $100 gets you 90% of the features available on a $200 motherboard, and the missing 10% are unnecessary features anyway, there's no reason to spend more.
