Which MOBO to get???

[skitzo_zac]

i am currently looking into buying a new system primarily for gaming, i have selected all my parts apart from a mobo.

I am looking at Abit AW9D-MAX or ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi-AP or Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3

Other specs of the system are:
Case - Antec Nine Hundred
CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo E6300
GPU - XFX 8800GTS or Radeon x19050 PRO
HDD - Seagate 7200.10 320Gb 16Mb SATA II
DVD - LITEON SHM-165P6S 16x DVD-RW Dual Layer Black
RAM - G.Skill 1GBNR PC6400 1024Mb/1Gb 2x512Mb DDR2

 

[TimeParadoX]

Hmm... If price is no problem you should get this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131074

It has 3 PCI-e slots ( 2 for SLI / Crossfire and 1 for A physics card but those are a piece of crap :haha: )

But if you only have to choose from the 3 you put get the Abit AW9D-MAX


Also to power all that stuff you'll need a GOOD PSU so get one that has like 800w or something

 

[skitzo_zac]

mm i like the striker extreme i have looked at it before but that is definately out of budget which is $2000 AUD, that has to include everything! and PSU wise i was thinking about going with a Antec NEO HE Highly Efficient 2.2 550w
So it looks like in giong with the Abit then.

 

[zephead]

i'd go with the ASUS P5N32-E SLI instead ($300 USD), which is already plenty of $$$ for a mobo.

i would go with two 160GB drives and run them in a raid0 array, providing a massive increase in performance and giving you a single 320GB volume.

the antec neopower 550w is fine, but if you want to run SLI i'd reccomend the pc power & cooling silencer 750w (www.pcpowercooling.com) or higher. check out their website, they make the best products in the industry.

 

[skitzo_zac]

P5N32-E SLI is that the 680i SLI one? the one below the striker? and well $300 us is porly a bit outa my budget, i onyl wanna be spendin $300 AUD max on a mobo, i was thinkin bout Raiding sum drives for the first time just for the experience of doing it. i didnt know it would beneift me performance wise.

 

[zephead]

genuine raid0 is definitely going to produce a noticable increase in performance. but if your controller supports JBOD (just a bunch of disks) mode only performance will not increase. both asus boards mentioned here support standard raid0

 

[skitzo_zac]

hmmm well, apparently the Abit is my best option there, but u cant run dual graphics with full 16x PCI-E lanes with it only 8x with dual cards, does that matter? would i be better getting a mobo with full 16x lanes? and i'll get 2 160 gb HDD's and run them in raid if its finiacially more beneficiall to me rather than buying 1 320 gb.

 

[TimeParadoX]

Yes getting full 16x lanes is better then 8x

 

[zephead]

it's cheaper to get one big drive, but for the few extra bucks the performance is definitely worth it.