Efficient Motherboard

[Mu5ician]

hello,

I've been waiting to upgrade my music pc for the last few months and have picked out 2 motherboards that I think will serve very efficiently and quickly.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131300


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121338


I've read over basic specs etc for compatibility with the rest of the components I'll be using and they're fine. Is there anything that either of these motherboards can offer over the other in terms of stability and speed. One other thing is SAS drives, will I have to purchase an extra pci card? or will they connect via standard sata?


any help would be appreciated.

 

[Tmagic650]

For the money you are planning to spend, either board will work. I don't care for anything Asus, but it is your decision. And yes, the SAS drives will connect to standard SATA

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

The ASUS motherboard will be better if you're into OCing and does not have native support for DDR3 1600MHz RAM unlike the Intel board. Otherwise, both are identical. Be warned though, that ASUS mobos are picky about RAM. So unless you're buying a Crucial or Corsair kit, I'd recommend the Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6. Also, consider the GA-X48-DQ6 as a cheaper alternative using DDR2. I recommend DDR3 RAM only if you're buying a CPU that has an FSB of 1333MHz and above.

 

[Mu5ician]

I'm wanting to take the ddr3 option so I don't have to upgrade so soon again. It'll be running a Q9450 so only just the 1333FSB. When you mentioned the overclocking, I was considering it, but I've been told it can lead to problems, not just temp etc, but actual data corruptuption over time. Do you know anything about this?
Thanks very much for the suggestions too!

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

OCing reduces chip life, but I haven't heard of data corruption or anything of the sort. Unless you really need extra performance from your parts, I wouldn't recommend OCing anything.
Lastly, be sure to buy RAM that has the same frequency as your CPU's FSB for maximum performance.

 

[Mu5ician]

so for example, if I overclocked the cpu to say 1600MHz FSB, then using 1066MHz RAM would bottle-neck it?

thanks again for your help Rage, it's much appreciated.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

Not a bottleneck as such, it'd just make your memory "lag behind", for lack of a better term, relative to your CPU. Thus in order to maximize your potential performance, you should try to buy RAM that has the same frequency as your CPU's FSB so as to have memory that is able to transfer data as fast as the CPU. However there is no big overall performance impact when you use RAM running at a frequency lower than the FSB for two reasons:
1.The large majority of memory access is not done directly but through the memory cache.
2. The CPU may not always need to "talk" to the RAM when it accesses the north bridge. It may choose to communicate directly with the video card or the USB ports for example.