Motherboard choices

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masteroc

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Trying to see what it would cost to build a new gaming comp. I dont have a real spec list to post yet for comments/review...however I am trying to chose a motherboard and am not sure as to which I should go with. So far the three I have found are:

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Newegg.com - ASUS P6X58D-E LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Newegg.com - EVGA X58 FTW3 132-GT-E768-KR LGA 1366 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

My main criteria are that they have sata 3 and usb 3. That and i7 support of course.

Anyone have any info that might help me decide between them, they are all within about $50 of each other so price isnt that much of an issue

Thanks
 
this mother board is the big dog on campus right now... great features, great performance, and a great price for what you get

Newegg.com - ASUS P6X58D Premium LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

YouTube - Asus P6X58D Premium Motherboard


Im not really seeing how that board is any different from the 2nd board linked in my first post, minus the dual Ethernet ports which dont matter as much to me.

Correct me if im wrong somewhere but I dont think that board is worth the $70 over the

Newegg.com - ASUS P6X58D-E LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
 
Better quality components, more bios options, better mosfet cooling. With a user name of masteroc the Premium should be your choice for overclocking. If I didn't pick the Asus P6X58D Premium I would go with the EVGA X58 FTW3.
 
I have the X58A-UD3R and think it's a pretty awesome board. I'm having no issues whatsoever getting the board to overclock (my CPU and RAM are another story...) but the northbridge and southbridge cooling are good, the MOSFET's have nice heatsinks, and it has a pretty good power management chip with the Dynamic Energy Saver system. It also has plenty of onboard LED's to indicate higher-voltage conditions, power system phase, overclock level, CPU temperature level, and more. I went with it over the ASUS for a few reasons. It was cheaper than the ASUS board I was looking at ($209 vs. over $300), had more USB connections, had more SATA and eSATA connections, had an IDE and FDD port should I ever need them, 2 rear FireWire ports, and otherwise pretty much the same as the ASUS. I think these extra features make it a better board, and the build quality is nice too. You may lose a bit in customer service though as I've heard Gigabyte's support isn't good, luckily my board runs fine and I didn't need to RMA it.

Open the ASUS and the Gigabyte pictures side by side and compare the ports. The Gigabyte wins hands-down on port selection. That's my reason for choosing it (not to mention it's $100 less than the $300 ASUS). As for southbridge heatsink, I really don't think you need that sort of cooling on it, you need a good northbridge heatsink and MOSFET's as those channel power into the CPU.

As for quality, the Gigabyte also has high quality solid capacitors, high quality inductors and MOSFET's, and a double-thick 2 oz. copper PCB as part of Gigabyte's Ultra Durable 3 design. This board is as good as all the other ASUS boards I've seen in terms of components.
 
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