New P35 Mobo

[Master_G]

I recently built a rig with an EVGA 8800 GTS, 4 gigs of G.Skill 800 MHz RAM, and 2 150 gig Raptors in RAID 0 all on an EVGA 650i Ultra board. Well, it seems that there is a flaw in Nvidia's chipset that prevents it from running 4 DIMMs simultaneously. That, along with some heat issues, is leading me to consider replacing the board with one based on the P35 chipset, but I don't know which one to get. I'm really attracted to Gigabyte's GA-P35-DQ6 and MSI's P35 Platinum boards for their awesome heatpipes, but the Abit IP35 Pro, GA-P35-DS3R, and ASUS P5K Deluxe/Wifi are both rated highly as well. Anyone have some advice? I'm particularly interested in good cooling and stability, along with compatability with my existing RAM. Also, I'm a newb to system building and am unlikely to OC my rig to its limits, so good stock performance would be excellent.

 

[BUFF]

The Asus apparently has some SATA issues going by forum reports (I would imagine curable by a new BIOS though).
The Tech Report also did a group test of most of these this week.

 

[systemlord]

I have two Asus P5B's and they both work perfectly. Never had a issue with anything. The SATA problems he spoke of are only when using the JMicron controller which all P965's have even P35's. I use the six SATA ports from the Intel's SouthBridge. I reached 540 FSB with one and the other 570 FSB, 600 being the max. I'd go P35 cuz they support the yet to be released 45nm processers. You can't go wrong with any of the P965's, there all good.Good luck!

 

[tubaloth]

I'm in the same boat the original poster.
I was leaning towards the Asus P5K Deluxe, but after going to the Asus Form for that board I'm starting to second guess myself. More with Bios update problems and so forth. I like that that board has the build in Wifi, but I read it gets a little hotter.
The GA-P35-DQ6 is probably next on my list, but It seems a little dated with the serial port, and only 2 PCI slots? And 3 PCI x1 slots?

I just wish one company would lead the pack and make my choice easier!

 

[systemlord]

I'm in the same boat the original poster.
I was leaning towards the Asus P5K Deluxe, but after going to the Asus Form for that board I'm starting to second guess myself. More with Bios update problems and so forth. I like that that board has the build in Wifi, but I read it gets a little hotter.
The GA-P35-DQ6 is probably next on my list, but It seems a little dated with the serial port, and only 2 PCI slots? And 3 PCI x1 slots?

I just wish one company would lead the pack and make my choice easier!

Doesn't matter what brand you get there all P35 chipsets and my P5B' s run pretty warm and its totaly normal. If you have good air flow in your case then you need not worry. Don't get the P35's with DDR3 as there latencys are too high as well as priced high to.

 

[BUFF]

Doesn't matter what brand you get there all P35 chipsets and my P5B' s run pretty warm and its totaly normal.

If you look at the reviews you'll see that the P5K Dl is consistently using ~30-40W more than the abit IP35 Pro or Gigabyte DQ6 & running hotter as a result - the Asus 8 phase PWM doesn't seem to be very efficient.