Motherboard pick

Neither or both.

Most P55 boards are roughly equivalent in performance. The major distinctions are connectivity, board layout and pricing.

Why look at a Gigabyte P55-UD6 when its replacement (with USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb), the P55A-UD6 is cheaper?

Overclocking is more a product of knowing how to manipulate the boards BIOS settings successfully. It is also very much dependant upon the CPU you use. Some will overclock well, some others not so much.This is mostly down to luck of the draw- unless you know which production batches have a higher oc potential or use a lower core voltage.

I personally would recommend a board that recovers well from a failed oc attempt, has a reputation for stability, a good warranty and replacement service by the manufacturer, is well laid out and has the aforementioned USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb connectivity.
With those parameters in mind the P55A-UD6 is a reasonable candidate. The Phoenix Award BIOS offers enough tweaking options without the overkill (for most people) myriad of fine tuning details found in some other board's BIOS's (EVGA Classified/FTW, Asus Maximus etc.).
Other boards worth considering are the Asus P7P55D-E Pro, Gigabyte P55A-UD4P or Asus P7P55D/P7P55D-E Deluxe.

If this board is part of a new build, then you also may have the option of delaying your purchase for a couple of months, at which time the LGA1155 (Sandy Bridge) CPU/socket and P67 boards should make their appearance. A 50% overclock (from 3.4GHz stock to 5GHz) on air cooling using nothing more than simply raising the multiplier from 34 to 50* is quite impressive.

* The 2600K CPU has the ability to raise it's multiplier to 65 by all accounts -so 6.5GHz (100% overclock) although the cooling needed would be something more sophisticated than air.
 
to me concectivity is imporntan and the gigabyte ga-p55-ud6 has more sata connectors. I use lots of hard drives. I dont relly see the benefits to usb3 and sata 6 if i dont use devices the support it?
 
I thought this review produced some interesting results; https://www.techspot.com/review/259-intel-h55-motherboard-shootout/ The Gigabyte board was slower at stock speeds, but overclocked better than its competitors. Granted that these are H-55 chipsets, not P-55, but there should be some consistency within a manufacturers product line. Here, it's obviously dependent on both Gigabyte and Intel, but hope springs eternal.

In any event, I've bought into Gigabyte's, "Ultra Durable" propaganda for my own builds, and being satisfied with the resultant computers, I'd buy the Gigabyte first.

To a certain degree SATA 6Gbs is a gimmick. especially when attached to mechanical HDDs. It would only reach anywhere near its full potential, with a couple of very fast SSDs in RAID 0.

In any event, the newer board is the only one shown at Newegg; http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128410R

If you check the specs, there is provision for 10 HDDs total! 6 SATA 3Gbs, 2 SATA 6Gbs, and 2 eSATA 3Gbs. I would be amazed if the earlier model had more.

Your UK supplier's website sucks, and the specs shown are sort of rudimentary
 
Even with ssd's in raid 0 its dependent upon the southbridge. No single ssd can saturate sata 6gb, although they can sata 3gb. Either way. sata 2 or 3 shoulnt even be a concern with his purchase
 
Right Smash, but he's claiming the newer board has less SATA ports total! The replacement board has 10, and it seems to me, that oughta git 'er done. I mean that is 8 internal, and you should be able to use SATA3Gbs drives on the SATA 6Gbs ports.
 
My internal 6 slots are saturated with 1.5-2TB drives, but I run a home network and I had to rip my thousands of dvd's to my media center. The average gamer needs maybe 3 drives at most. One for os, another for games and the last for storage. I'm a special case. I like to rip blurays while I call out "headshot," on MW2.
 
Oh dear, it seems I'm a Luddite after all! I thought that you were supposed to rip DVD to DVDs, but what do I know.

That said, the newer model same board has 8 internal slots, and 2 eSATA. I'm not certain you'll find a board with more that 10. So, maybe KC should stop posting dumb s***, and spring for a massive NAS unit. After all, discount the OS drive, and you can still attach 9 2TB drives to this board. That's 18TB...! Oh well, aren't we all a legend in our own minds?

I have a lot of HDDs, but I'm not about to use up a slot in a computer that I want a ton of storage in, by slamming a 5 year old 100GB Maxtor in it. I'm jus' sayin.

And then there's always "Rocket Raid"
 
oh boy. Was'nt there just a 3TB drive release within the last few months? Kudos on the 100gb maxtor reference. I had a friend that slid a 100GB maxtor across my desk a few months ago asking if I could extract files off of it for him. Its not that I couldn't but I knew it either had windows xp on it or a boat load of porn in really bad video quality, or even both. Not going to deal with either.
 
no i mean lots of hard drives i have 4 1TB and 5 2TB an now im getting the new 3 TB model :)i wouldnet like to have hard drives out of my pc because i have 2 little brothers who love to mess with my pc!
 
Well, of course you do, (have all those hard drives), and of course you are, (getting a 3TB HDD the day after tomorrow), silly me, I should have known that. How's that 50" TV? I know, it's on its way, even as we speak. :rolleyes:

That said, even a 400 dollar dual socket 1366 server board only comes with only 6 SATA ports, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131374 ...!

While you're waiting for that HDD to arrive, why not spend some time learning to write in English. Periods, commas, capital letters, some people use these things to better communicate their ideas, and separate their writings from the gibberish that you constantly pump out.

Properly worded and punctuated posts would be doubly important in your case, so I won't think some 5th grade English dropout is trying to b***s*** me.
 
WOW! Now I see why they call you Captain Cranky, well I am sorry but for some reason I'm always in a rush.

If you dont belive me, I took a picture of 8 of my hard drives(Just for you), But I left my boot drive in because I was doing something on my personal computer.
Oh and I'm not getting the Television until I get my next pay check.
(How's my English now?)
 

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Well, youuu did in Fact, Spell "I" Correctly, But No Surprise There.....

WOW! Now I see why they call you Captain Cranky, well i am sorry but for some reason I'm always in a rush.
That's not entirely correct as stated. I call me, "captaincranky", and everybody just seems to go along with it. Exactly why, I haven't the foggiest idea . :confused: Addressing myself to the fact that you're always in a rush, I can only sympathize, ADHD will do that to a person.
(How's my English now?)
Well it's better, but still far from good. I'll correct this statement for you.........
If you dont belive me, I took a picture of 8 of my hard drives(Just for you), But I left my boot drive in because I was doing something on my personal computer.
And forthwith the corrected version; "If you don <apostrophe>t belive (that is actually spelled "believe") me, I took a picture of 8 of my hard drives<(comma)(space)>(just for you), >But.....(since you used a comma after, ("just for you"), then the letter "B" should have been lower case, as it wasn't the beginning of a sentence, it was merely at the beginning of another clause in the same sentence).

Oh and I'm not getting the Television until I get my next pay check.
Sorry to hear that but, there should be a comma after, "Oh," < like that.

Well, I'll keep on looking for a motherboard for you that has more than 10 SATA ports, as your convenience and happiness is always first and foremost in my mind. :rolleyes:

Oh BTW, what exactly does a row of HDDs standing on end prove?
 
Well CC, lets play dominoes or is it "domino's?" or even just dominos? I probably have 25 hdd's sitting around, now find me a mobo that will fit them all please.
 
Well, "domino's" is a really clumsy possessive, but that still doesn't rule out the other two possibilities you mentioned.
Well CC, lets play dominoes or is it "domino's?" or even just dominos? I probably have 25 hdd's sitting around, now find me a mobo that will fit them all please.
I'm on it......After I find that for you, I suppose you'll want a case to fit them all to go with that....! :rolleyes: This whole affair has reminded me of the old saying, "a man works from sun to sun, but a mother ********'s work is never done"! :haha: :wave:
 
lmao, I see what you did there.

I had to buy a raid card, well not "have to," but I chose to with not much of an option. All 6 slots of my motherboard was full with bluray burners(2) and hdd's. My g/f wanted intel ssd's. Of course I couldnt afford her 2 intel drives and 2 for myself so I decided to step down to ocz. Now in between studying I spend my time working on my mountainmods case and as of today need to fit in lining up hdd's to present at ces 1998(time machine.)
 
And it Seemed Like the Hard Drives Went on for Miles.....

lmao, I see what you did there.....[ ].... and as of today need to fit in lining up hdd's to present at ces 1998(time machine.)
Don't forget about standing them all on end, and learning how to stitch photos into a panorama, so you impress the living crap out of us when you upload the whole sordid affair.......:rolleyes:
 
Okay, we've had our fun. I hope the OP comes back to this post. sata 2 or 3 shouldn't be an issue with a pick of mobo. What do you have to say old timer(CC?)
 
Well, DBZ made that point several posts ago. The UK website that KC is linking to, shows the old board, Gigabyte GA-P55-UD6, which has been replaced by the Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD6.

Now the OP insists, that the newer board doesn't have as many SATA ports as the old one.

I say you won't find a board with more SATA connections than the P55A model has, which is 10. I'm sure you can run a SATA 2 drive on a SATA 3 port, (and vice-versa) without any speed penalty in either direction. This is assuming mechanical HDDs, which should be a slam dunk, since I haven't heard of 1TB, 1.5TB, or 2TB SSDs yet, much less a 3TB SSD.

The OP is developing a history of making statements not based in fact. In one of his other threads, he went on about having to upgrade the Video card, because he was moving to a 50" inch TV from a 22" monitor. The fact notwithstanding, that they have exactly the same resolution. Which of course, I was only too happy to point out. This big bump up in size of display of course, was after I pointed out the the max resolution of the 22" LCD would be 1920 X 1080.

All of that notwithstanding, if a person does in fact have, "hard drives as far as the eye can see, in any direction", then get used to the fact that you're going to need add-in SATA controller cards. As to how somebody is going to get 10 or so HDDs into a computer case because, "my widdle bruver is always messing wit my PC", at least for the time being, I'm not going to concern myself with that segment of the problem.

Too harsh? I'm working on a "kinder, gentler, captaincranky, version 2.0", but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for his arrival.
 
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