P55 On A Budget: Five Core i5/i7 Motherboards For $100-$150

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Good read but it really just confirms what a lot of us have known for a long time. Don't buy budget motherboards (MSI, ASrock, ECS) if you want to overclock and it's no coincidence that the boards from Gigabyte and Asus passed with flying colours as these companies clearly have proper testing procedures in place and quality assurance measures to avoid such issues.
 
Another great article from Tom's, letting us know about how one of these motherboards can burn your CPU. Never would have known without you.
Might have burnt out a CPU and not know the cause.

 
How would P55 stack up against non P55s is what I wanted to see as well. See if the premium is worth it over the more budget friendly P55.
 
Unfortunately neither Gigabbyte nor ASUS boards offer the 8x8x PCI-e slots for multiple GPUs. I think it's better to wait for their premium brethren to fall below $150 before upgrading.
 
For the extra $20 you can get the ASUS P7P55D PRO which is a much better board and offers the full spec for multi GPUs... However, I personally can only recommend what I would do myself and that is to wait. There are a lot of major PC spec changes over the next 6 months. So I am waiting for USB3 and SATA3 to make it to mainstream.
 
For the extra $20 you can get the ASUS P7P55D PRO which is a much better board and offers the full spec for multi GPUs... However, I personally can only recommend what I would do myself and that is to wait. There are a lot of major PC spec changes over the next 6 months. So I am waiting for USB3 and SATA3 to make it to mainstream.
 
I doubt their quality assurance is as good as you think Jeanluc. Both Gigabyte and Asus make crap DDR3 controllers for socket 775 motherboards. I've tested a heap of DDR3 socket 775 boards from Asus and Gigabyte, the Asus P5Q3 in particular is causing a lot of problems. When paired with a quad core cpu (everything stock) and running 3 threads prime(blend) + furmark, the system would inevitably freeze in under 2hr's (usually within the 30 minutes mark, quite a bit less than 2hrs). In fact systems with those boards would freeze even during normal non PC intensive use such as browsing the internet. Running prime+furmark just forces it happen rather than waiting for it to freeze which is quite random during light use like word prcoessing. I doubt Asus even realizes that their P5Q3 is a faulty product and shouldn't have hit retail stores. They have been selling the P5Q3 for ages. They probably tested the board with a cheap dual core celeron and since it worked with that called it a day.
 
[citation][nom]Jeanluc[/nom]Good read but it really just confirms what a lot of us have known for a long time. Don't buy budget motherboards (MSI, ASrock, ECS) if you want to overclock and it's no coincidence that the boards from Gigabyte and Asus passed with flying colours as these companies clearly have proper testing procedures in place and quality assurance measures to avoid such issues.[/citation]

I think you're jumping to conclusions here. Tom's reviewed some boards a while back for the 1366 socket and gave ASRock first place for quality and value.
 
@ schizofrog :
Yeah and the GIGABYTE GA-P55-UD4P is priced similarly and sports 8x8x configuration and more SATA ports.
I believe well-featured P55 mobos are still expensive for the mainstream market.
 
Still getting two or three PCI slots on these new boards. I can see one, and I realize they're budget boards - but still. I'd much rather see some more x4 PCI-e or even just x1 options that would give graphics cards some breathing room.
 
[citation][nom]helms[/nom]I doubt their quality assurance is as good as you think Jeanluc. Both Gigabyte and Asus make crap DDR3 controllers for socket 775 motherboards.[/citation]

Intel made the memory controllers on Asus and Gigabyte P45/X48 motherboards. If it fails after two hours, there's a chance you're using inferior-quality memory.
 
[citation][nom]oldscotch[/nom]Still getting two or three PCI slots on these new boards. I can see one, and I realize they're budget boards - but still. I'd much rather see some more x4 PCI-e or even just x1 options that would give graphics cards some breathing room.[/citation]

They're already using up all the PCIe lanes, when they put a second x16 slot on a board and feed it with four of the P55's eight. Sorry, the P55 isn't designed to support a buch of high-bandwidth slots, that's what the X58's for.
 
My question is
"will there be a chipset made by Nvidia for 1366 socket or 1156 socket intel cpus?"
Cause Nvidia is making good chipsets with both on-board VGA for mainstream and upper mainstream cpus.
 
[citation][nom]alexie[/nom]My question is"will there be a chipset made by Nvidia for 1366 socket or 1156 socket intel cpus?"Cause Nvidia is making good chipsets with both on-board VGA for mainstream and upper mainstream cpus.[/citation]

The answer is NO
 
The ECS P55H-A has a power connector for the graphics card next to the pci express 16x slot. My graphics card ( Radeon 5850 ) already has 2 power connectors on it.

Do all 3 power connectors need to be hooked up? Thanks!
 
Quite an irritating writeup I'd say. Sarcastic and vague comments with strong emphasis on avoidance in getting to the point. i like to call it bias, but, i haven't tested all the mobos myself. What do I get out of this article? How to kill a good article title in five.
 
I wonder how cheap can they build a mainboard with no extra features (no overclocking support, no bells&whistles). Just the bare needed to keep the cpu working at it's default potential.
I'd like one of these.
 
Hey, can you guys start testing if S3 sleep is maintained at high overclocks? Gigabyte board look great on paper, but the fact is something like 80-90% of them cannot S3 sleep once you start overclocking past a certain point. My next mobo has to be able to overclock and keep the sleep feature intact. It takes one sec to test. Please include it in the future. Thanks
 
[citation][nom]murst[/nom]The ECS P55H-A has a power connector for the graphics card next to the pci express 16x slot. My graphics card ( Radeon 5850 ) already has 2 power connectors on it. Do all 3 power connectors need to be hooked up? Thanks![/citation]

No

[citation][nom]lafanzy[/nom]Quite an irritating writeup I'd say. Sarcastic and vague comments with strong emphasis on avoidance in getting to the point. i like to call it bias, but, i haven't tested all the mobos myself. What do I get out of this article? How to kill a good article title in five.[/citation]

Could you explain further, or are you intentionally trying to sound vague and biased to make a point?
 
Agree, for 10$ more on newegg (149$), upgrade to the GIGABYTE GA-P55-UD4P and enjoy the extra gigabit lan, a couple IEEE 1394a, ALC889A instead of ALC888, and option to go 8x by 8x SLI/Crossfire...
 
[citation][nom]bounty[/nom]Agree, for 10$ more on newegg (149$), upgrade to the GIGABYTE GA-P55-UD4P and enjoy the extra gigabit lan, a couple IEEE 1394a, ALC889A instead of ALC888, and option to go 8x by 8x SLI/Crossfire...[/citation]

UD4P is $170.
 
With this failure rate, buy a Dell for 799, 20 inch monitor 4 gig of DDr3, and a OS, a 1 year warranty. The failure rate with the mild testing done here is ridiculous.
 
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