Hey everyone, I'm planning on changing my motherboard soon as I currently have a Dell, and would like to explore the world of overclocking. Therefore I've been looking around for a new mobo and found the Asus P5N32-SLI Premium with the nForce 590 SLI chipset. It's on sale from 330 CHF down to 150CHF, which would be £140 down to £60. I've been reading a couple of tests on it and the comments about it vary a lot. The specs look good but some comments made on this board are very discouraging. So I wanted to know if I could get any help on that. Thanks in advance, dr.dro
You may be better with a newer board, as it is "last gen". I am not the definitive source by any means, I run a board based on NF4 In fact, it is the P5n32-sli SE Deluxe, which is probably the older brother of that one.
The 590 was a good chipset, but its an AM2 board, so it only supports AMD processors, which unfortunately don't have much overclocking headroom. If you want to overclock, you'd be best off buying the following items right now: 1 - Good P965 motherboard, 680i motherboard, or P35/X38 board. I reccomend Abit for overclocking purposes. 2 - Any core 2 duo processor. I do mean ANY. Simply buy the processor with the amount of cache you want. It will overclock to the clockspeeds of any other Core 2 part, or it should. 3 - Good air cooler. Check reviews on frostytech and see what fits you best. To take advantage of their decibel readings, I suggest you look at this. http://www.floorscan.co.uk/acoustic/decibelchart.asp By popular opinion, the Thermaright Ultra 120 Extreme is the single best air cooler on the market right now. Pair it up with a high RPM Scythe S-Flex fan for best results.
590SLI for Intel isn't great and the overclocking was very poor, the 650i SLI is a better budget option. Are you after something SLI specifically?
Ditto; The NF6xx boards are a lot better than the NF5xx. What kind of system specs/budget are you looking for?
Thanks for the fast replies! GuitarBizzare: the 590 is also available with the 775 socket and supports Core 2 Duo. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131071 Bindibadgi: I'm not specifically looking for a SLI capable board but since the price is so attractive, why not go for SLI. radodrill: my budget would be around 200CHF, which are about £90. I'm currently using a C2D E6400, 2Gb of PC2- 4300, 2*250Gb in RAID 0, generic 7900GS, everything installed on a Dell P965 board
Why no SLI? Because you get a better performance for lower power usage from a faster single card than two strapped together. It means your case is cooler and quieter too. Grab a P35 board - they can be had for exceptionally cheap as well.
Ok thanks Bindibadgi. So in that case, what about an Asus P5K? It seems to be pretty good, has the P35 chipset and a reasonable price, 160CHF so a little less then £70. Well let me know and thanks again for all the advice!
As far as I am aware, most of the difference between NF4&5 was to support AM2, so if you are buying an Intel NF5 board, it is pretty much the same as an NF4 board. You may want to check this out though. So anyway, go with what GuitarBizarre says.
Fair enough. I'm surprised you've found somewhere selling 590 for intel boards though...they sucked hard and are actually very old. Go with the P35 you were looking at. (Although I'm STILL gonna shill Abit on this one. I've not had trouble with asus, although other people have before now. Simply put, I prefer Abit products. And their customer service is better imo.) http://www.microdirect.co.uk/ProductInfo.aspx?ProductID=17580
hey guitarebizzare, in your first post you also recommended a P965 board. well i found this guy selling a brand new Abit (just like you recommended) IB9 mobo http://www.abit.com.tw/page/fr/motherboard/motherboard_detail.php?pMODEL_NAME=IB9&fMTYPE=LGA775 for about £40, which seems to be a good price to me though let me know what you think about it. thanks again for fast answers! dr.dro
I love Abit, but I love them for their more upmarket boards, so I'm not entirely familiar with that model. A quick search for user reviews makes no real mention of overclocking, but being abit I'd say its fairly good (At the very least I'd say you can expect 3.0GHz out of it with a core 2 duo.) Unfortunately I did discover the following: Pros: This this is a GREAT board. totally stable, idling at about 37C (and I've even got an 8800 OC'd with PLENTY of heat coming off it). My rig hasn't once crashed with this board. Looks great, 4 DDR2800 slots, nice heatsinks on north and southbridge. EASY overclocking, super stable. And with the low price, definatly tons of bang for the buck with this one. Cons: Someone very sadistic obviously designed this board. you WILL NOT be able to install this board without a floppy drive, and in my case an floppy cable because the one that came with the box didn't work, so plan on that right away. Also you can forget about using IDE right off the bat because the board doesn't have the drivers to support it on it. SATA is fine though, and CD drives work. You have to boot from the driver disk that comes with the board, and make a driver floppy. Then start installing windows. It'll ask you if you have any software you want to install, and stick in the driver floppy. Install it, and you're set. Other Thoughts: I pulled out all my hair, ground my teeth onto powder and cryed for 3 days stright trying to get this thing to work. I was all set to write a very nasty review for it. But once I finally got it working, i am SO impressed by the quality of this board, I have to give it at least 4 stars. I'd give it 5 if it wasn't so absoluetly awful to set up. But, i'm sure anyone can do it. This was my first build so i'm pretty much a noob, and i managed to do it just fine! All in all though, while for that price, that board is phenominal, it may be worth it to you to buy a board new instead of second hand. That way you get manufacturers warranty if its DOA, not to mention, the more up to date chipset that P35 is, and the features that comes with. PCI-E 2.0 support could become a major thing fairly soon, along with refined I/O operation and more out of the box SATA support.
O right, thanks. And thanks as well for the research, it must be a real bugger to have to install the board with a floppy drive though so I'll just cross that one out of the list and probably go with the one board you showed me http://www.microdirect.co.uk/ProductInfo.aspx?ProductID=17580. Though I'll look for a retailer in Switzerland and if I can't find one, I'll just order it of the link you sent me. Thanks again to everyone for everything. I really appreciated the help. dr.dro
Ah. I don't think microdirect do international shipping. and even if they did, it would probably be better to order it from america, since in the UK we get raped on prices. The dollar is worth about 50p now though, so when you're trading with alternate currencies, its preferable to buy from the US and not the UK.
Ok thanks for the advice but good news. I just found a swiss website which sells it for 176CHF so around £75. So now i just have to get all my money together and I'll try to order it by the beginning of next week so it should arrive by the end of next week. Thanks again.
