X58 Roundup: Seven $200-300 Core i7 Boards

[Crashman]

With our $300+ X58-based Motherboard Roundup weeks behind, we now examine Core i7’s middle class. How much functionality must buyers sacrifice to save as much as $100? Seven motherboards made the cut in this latest roundup.

X58 Roundup: Seven $200-300 Core i7 Boards : Read more

 

[dragonsprayer]

hey guys good info - its 4am i should not be posting with one eye closed to see the screen!
Warpedsystems has tested a least half of these, my Evga failed out of the box, i would normally let that slide but with all the 680i and 780i issues and failures over the years - beware. So i can not speak of the evga - i will say the 780i FTW is kick butt mobo!

Asus is asus and 90% or so of my stuff i ship, i switched to the new P6t from the deluxe and have had some issues - i am sitll working on the P6T tonight as i type. Opps- my jr tech set the blk to 180 and over clocked the QPI to max - i think he smoked the mobo ran amd cpu = its first in 5 years if so?

Some did not make it? no gigabyte? gigabyte is really pushing on asus for number one - really! Ya, all the evga fans are what? I can say how many evga mobos break and fail: pci-e slot fail, pressure around the cpu mounting failure, lock ups - evga lock ups are just accepted as part of life! We all know that evga error code!

I have to say the gigabyte and the higher end asus deluxe version sure seem a lot more reliable for 4ghz systems - again - we only took 1 evga and it locked up and i said "that is it the last time" - the FTW 780i gives me faith evga will come around on x58.

what ever you do - do not oc the blk and QPI - poof!

nice stuff THG!

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]dragonsprayer[/nom]hey guys good info - its 4am i should not be posting with one eye closed to see the screen!Warpedsystems has tested a least half of these, my Evga failed out of the box, i would normally let that slide but with all the 680i and 780i issues and failures over the years - beware. So i can not speak of the evga - i will say the 780i FTW is kick butt mobo!Asus is asus and 90% or so of my stuff i ship, i switched to the new P6t from the deluxe and have had some issues - i am sitll working on the P6T tonight as i type. Opps- my jr tech set the blk to 180 and over clocked the QPI to max - i think he smoked the mobo ran amd cpu = its first in 5 years if so?Some did not make it? no gigabyte? gigabyte is really pushing on asus for number one - really! Ya, all the evga fans are what? I can say how many evga mobos break and fail: pci-e slot fail, pressure around the cpu mounting failure, lock ups - evga lock ups are just accepted as part of life! We all know that evga error code!I have to say the gigabyte and the higher end asus deluxe version sure seem a lot more reliable for 4ghz systems - again - we only took 1 evga and it locked up and i said "that is it the last time" - the FTW 780i gives me faith evga will come around on x58.what ever you do - do not oc the blk and QPI - poof!nice stuff THG![/citation]

One of the companies forgot to send a board and didn't respond in time to the reminder...see the introduction of the article. What makes you think that company wasn't Gigabyte?

 

[Guest]

Which ASUS board was actually tested - the plain "P6T" or "P6T SE?" There are subtle differences, like JMB322 in P6T but not in P6T SE. Also, some difference in e.g. back panel IO and advertised overclocking capabilities.
Judging from the feature list, the board was plain P6T, but all pictures seem to be of P6T SE.

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]Ripa[/nom]Which ASUS board was actually tested - the plain "P6T" or "P6T SE?" There are subtle differences, like JMB322 in P6T but not in P6T SE. Also, some difference in e.g. back panel IO and advertised overclocking capabilities.Judging from the feature list, the board was plain P6T, but all pictures seem to be of P6T SE.[/citation]

http://media.bestofmicro.com/7/3/192063/original/asus_p6t_kit.jpg

 

[wicko]

Sadly, none of the good mobos in this review are sub 300$ in Canada.. what a damn ripoff.

 

[hardwarekid9756]

Could you expound on "Catastrophic Failure?" I'd be interested to know what all went wrong in the fray. I've been using an ASRock Mobo recently, and noticed it full-out sucked at Overclocking when compared to my MSI board, so I'd like to know what exactly caused the thing to bomb out.

 

[salavat23]

No Gigabyte.

Sorry, but you can't make a good review without including one of the top manufacturers of X58 motherboards.

 

[salavat23]

No Gigabyte.

Sorry, but you can't make a good review without including one of the top manufacturers of X58 motherboards.

 

[msdx_bizkit]

Gigabyte EX58-UD3R and MSI X58 Pro are the cheapest X58 motherboards out there at the moment. (~250$ CAD - NCIX) Could you guys give me your input on those two particuliar boards?

I am not the extreme overclocking kinda guy. In fact, I still am running on default settings on my Core 2 Duo E6750. I don't plan to overclock over 3,2Ghz on my new 920, if I ever do overclock.

Neither boards support SLI, but I'd be interrested in a dual Radeon 4870 1GB Crossfire config.

Thanks in advance

 

[daft]

i was just wondering if the "more on this topic" could be omitted in future articles, i like to skip to the conclusion in the mornings and its annoying to hit more on this topic and get a little window than to go to the conclusion

 

[Guest]

where is my GIGABYTE 1366 EX58-UD4P? supports crossfire and it's cheap

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]salavat23[/nom]No Gigabyte. Sorry, but you can't make a good review without including one of the top manufacturers of X58 motherboards.[/citation]

Tell that to Gigabyte.

 

[theloser]

[citation][nom]salavat23[/nom]No Gigabyte. Sorry, but you can't make a good review without including one of the top manufacturers of X58 motherboards.[/citation]

No salavat23. Sorry but you can't make a good reader without reading the introduction.

 

[hellwig]

What happens when 4 PCIe x16 slots share two sets of x16 lanes? I mean, if I plug an x1 card into a secondary slot, is it going to reduce my graphics card in the primary slot down to x8 lanes? So in other words, if I have two GPUs in the two primary slots, and I want to plug in a x1 PCIe TV Tuner, its going to reduce one of the GPUs down to x8? Seems to me they should have made one of those PCI slots a x1 PCIe.

 

[MotorMouth]

[citation][nom]msdx_bizkit[/nom]Gigabyte EX58-UD3R and MSI X58 Pro are the cheapest X58 motherboards out there at the moment. (~250$ CAD - NCIX) Could you guys give me your input on those two particuliar boards?I am not the extreme overclocking kinda guy. In fact, I still am running on default settings on my Core 2 Duo E6750. I don't plan to overclock over 3,2Ghz on my new 920, if I ever do overclock.Neither boards support SLI, but I'd be interrested in a dual Radeon 4870 1GB Crossfire config.Thanks in advance[/citation]

I have the P6T and love it. 3.8 GHz using DDR3 1333 RAM. All I need to do is change these settings:

Ai Overclock Tuner: Manual
CPU Ratio: Auto
Intel Speed Step: Disable
Bclk: 190
DRAM: DDR3- 1523
DRAM: Bus 1.66

That's all that you need to do to get 3.8 GHz out of it. Works like a charm.

 

[nevadarain72]

[citation][nom]hardwarekid9756[/nom]Could you expound on "Catastrophic Failure?" I'd be interested to know what all went wrong in the fray. I've been using an ASRock Mobo recently, and noticed it full-out sucked at Overclocking when compared to my MSI board, so I'd like to know what exactly caused the thing to bomb out.[/citation]

Agreed. While manufacturers not meeting the deadline is somewhat annoying, I'd really like to know which brand, and especially which motherboard model had the spectacular failure. I'm about to buy components for a Core i7 build, and knowing which one had issues would add some piece of mind to the decision.

Tom's guys, can you help us readers out on on this?

 

[harlequin6791]

I find it very interesting that review after review on just about every other site are GLEAMING about the Asrock X58. Everyone has been pleasantly surprised by the fact a budget board maker could make one of the top overclockers on their tests. This was a consistent theme it seemed.

I'm curious what's the difference between their reviews and the ones here?

 

[harlequin6791]

I'm hoping Toms just got a bad batch of boards because mine is waiting at home for it's new case to arrive.

As for the reviews here you go..

http://www.motherboards.org/reviews/motherboards/1861_16.html
http://www.thinkcomputers.org/index.php?x=reviews&id=943&page=11
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1761/13/asrock_x58_supercomputer_motherboard/index.html

I guess my concern is who is right??

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]harlequin6791[/nom]I find it very interesting that review after review on just about every other site are GLEAMING about the Asrock X58. Everyone has been pleasantly surprised by the fact a budget board maker could make one of the top overclockers on their tests. This was a consistent theme it seemed.I'm curious what's the difference between their reviews and the ones here?[/citation]

From my discussions with Thomas, it seemed that this board was solid until you started overclocking it, after which we had two different boards burn up. Thomas can clarify, though.

 

[ART-T]

Tom's; I know there are more MB manufacturer's out there. I don't expect you (or anyone) to do all of them. It may be that I am about to mention 1 of the 3 you said died. But what about the Intel board DX58SO.

I would really love to know where the Intel board stacks up in this.

 

[Crashman]

[quotemsg=9470832,19,44987]I'm hoping Toms just got a bad batch of boards because mine is waiting at home for it's new case to arrive.

As for the reviews here you go..

http://www.motherboards.org/reviews/motherboards/1861_16.html
http://www.thinkcomputers.org/index.php?x=reviews&id=943&page=11
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1761/13/asrock_x58_supercomputer_motherboard/index.html

I guess my concern is who is right??[/quotemsg]

None of those sites pushed the processors as hard, with 1.45-1.46V core used to potentially hit 4.0 GHz, plus 1.50-1.55V Uncore and 1.65V DIMM used to potentially reach DDR3-2133.

More importantly, I didn't see ANY of them say they checked stability using eight-threads of 64-bit Prime-95. When Tom's says stable, they mean it.

Tom's overloaded the voltage regulator on three boards: Two ASRock X58-SuperComputer samples (production dates were around two months apart for the samples) and a DFI. The DFI didn't die because it has overcurrent protection.

The more important thing to see here is that five of the boards did not overload under the same condition. And that's the other factor: This is a comparison, and not an opportunity to cozy up with a single brand.

 

[Guest]

One has to wonder why they are selling these for so much, there's nothing revolutionary about the chipset(not enough to drive up R&D costs higher than normal), surely they'd recoup R&D costs for both chipset and CPU if they'd sell it for less, everything I've seen would indicate that Phenom II is selling more units than i7, nor do I see people flocking to the Core2 chips that PhenomII supposedly competes with.

 

[San Pedro]

Definitely going to skip i7. The platform cost is too prohibitive. I'll just pop in the best ~$200 (or 20,000 yen) dolloar Core 2 Quad into my board when I have the chance. Hopefully it will be something with a higher multiplier than my e6750.

 

[lutel]

I would really like to see comparison of mATX X58 mobos (Asus and DFI at the moment)