My brother is helping build me a new rig (I'm basically clueless when it comes to hardware) but he says he has been out of the loop for a while and isn't sure what motherboard to recommend. So far we seem to have settled on a Core2 Quad 9550 and 2x2gb as the cpu/ram, but he isn't sure what motherboard is best suited for those. In the rough pricing list he gave me he budgeted out £90 for a motherboard, but I can spend more if the extra price is justified. Total cost of the pc is budgeted to be around £620 and will be used purely for gaming if that makes any difference. Anyone able to help me out? Thanks
Try looking at the ASUS P5Q series, they are around £65 from scan.co.uk or you could get a Gigabyte EP45-DS3P for about £83
welcome to the forums First off what sort of stuff would you like to be able to do with your motherboard? Would you like SLi or Crossfire? Would you like it to be a good overclocker? Are you wanting to use DDR2 or DDR3? Basically questions like that, if you can answer those sort of things for us we will be able to help you out a bit more. Gaz
Hi, neither SLi or Crossfire apparently, DDR2, and overclocking would be nice but not mandatory (depends how it affects price).
ok, this board seems pretty good, its got good cooling for the bridges, and according to reviews overclocks quite well. It is a full size ATX board and not a micro one, does that matter to you?
Full size ATX. He said that MSI board looks very good, but it's a preoder - anything comparable to that that is available now?
Either this Gigabyte one, or this MSI one Personally I would go for the MSI, as it has a slightly larger heatsink (fractionally bigger) and has 3 PCI 32 bit slots, wheres as the Gigabyte one has 2 PCI 32 bit slots and 4 PCI-E x1 slots, but it depends on what devices you are using. Either two are pretty good boards for the price range. Gaz
The Asus P5Q series? Or the EP45-UD3R, those are the boards I'd recommend. Although the UD3R IS a bit more, it's also a great overclocker.
