Getting a new motherboard!

[Negasta]

So on Saturday I'm going to pick up my swanky new motherboard.

It's a Asus P5N32-E SLI Gaming Motherboard.

Some of the features are:

Chipset: nVidia nForce 680i SLI MCP Chipset
Socket: Intel Socket 775
Supported CPUs: Intel Core 2 Extreme (dual and quad core), Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Celeron D, Pentium 4, Pentium 4, Pentium D 9XX, Pentium D 8XX
Front Side Bus: 1333 MHz with supporting CPU
JEDEC DDR2 Memory: 800 MHz
System Memory: Dual Channel DDR2 533/667/800
SLI Technology: 2 x16
PCI Slot: PCI-E x16 (2), PCI-E x8 (1), PCI-E x1 (2), PCI (2)
Audio: 8-Channel High Definition Audio
LAN: Dual Onboard LAN Supports 10/100/1000 Mb/s
USB: (10) 2.0 ports (6 Rear + 2x2 Onboard)
SATA/PATA Drives: 6/2
SATA Speed: 3GB/s
IEEE 1394 (Firewire): 1394a @ 400 Mb/s
Native Gigabit Ethernet Connections: 2
Cooling: Stack Cool2 and Heat-pipe Thermal Solution
Power: 8 Phase Power Design

I'm also getting 2GB of Kingmax 800MHz DDR2 RAM.

 

[mike_n_herrin]

that mobo got a pretty high rating by maximum pc if i recall correctly. i can't for the life of me remember what month it was, but it was like july or something. wasn't very long ago.

all i got to say is sweeeeet.

see and all i did was manage to upgraded my celeron 2.7 ghz cpu to a P4 extream 3.0 ghz.

 

[mike_n_herrin]

ok i think i found it! it got a 9 (kick ass) rating (1-10 scale).

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/asus_striker_extreme

Posted 03/29/07 at 06:41:46PM | by

Gordon Mah Ung

How much of a badass mother is Asus’s new motherboard? It’s so bad that it doesn’t even use numbers in its name. Yeah, there’s no R2-D2-like naming convention here. Just call it Striker Extreme, or El Extremerino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.

The Extreme isn’t just about marketing shtick though. Asus has integrated some pretty compelling features into this nForce 680i–based Intel Core 2 motherboard that we hadn’t seen before. The best example of this is the LCD poster. Instead of providing a cryptic POST message, the Extreme features a small LCD display that gives you info in plain English.

The I/O shield features electroluminescent lighting, so you can see where your USB or PS/2 ports are. And there are even LEDs that can be safely activated when you work around your PC with it turned off. It’s scary to muck with parts while the LEDs are lit, but if you push a switch on the back of the board, it cuts power to USB, RAM, and the add-in slots, so you can remove or add components without damaging anything.

More important though, the Extreme gives you more usable slots. With two double-width GPUs installed, there are still enough slots to add a PCI soundcard and a PCI-E card. The onboard sound, which features SoundMax codecs, is even passable. There’s no EAX support, but SoundMax still sounds better than the Realtek parts.

On the performance front, the Extreme edges the two Intel-based boards by a small margin and comes up short only in FEAR, which tells us something is screwy with the nForce 680i chipset and FEAR. All three nForce-based boards we’ve looked at recently trailed their Intel counterparts in FEAR when run at low resolutions. Everywhere else, this mobo came up smelling of roses.

So what’s wrong? The price. The board lists at about $330 and was going for $100 more than list as we went to press. That’s not Asus’s fault though. You can’t blame the company for what others are willing to charge for such a damned sexy beast.

 

[SantaCBear]

Nice... !!

I may upgrade to a new box after xmas

right now... my 'newest' Desktop

ASUS TUV4X
PIII 1.2 Tualatin
1.5gb 133 SDRam
256mb eGeforce video
WinXP

Yeap, OLD

Have a newer Laptop tho

 

[Negasta]

The P5N32-E SLI is just a step below the Striker Extreme.

It is essentially the same board but it doesn't have the onboard LCD display and doesn't have the as much overclocking ability as the Striker Extreme (which saves me about $50)

 

[kevbo]

JEALOUS!

I've been on the market for a mobo, but I'm too damn broke right now

 

[thermodynamics]

I considered it, but decided it was likely overkill for me. I'm building what is essentially a server for now, and might become a media center down the road. I'm not a gamer, so I decided that it just wasn't worth it.

I ended up getting the MSI P6N Platinum, rated very highly as well.

 

[Negasta]

I got the board as well as my 2 GB of RAM on Monday and it has been performing very well. I was worried at first, because the board only clocked my processor up to 1.86 GHz, but Tech Support told me that the problem lay with the factory BIOS and after updating the BIOS, everything is fine now.

I've overclocked my 2.13 GHz E6400 C2D to 2.4 GHz with no increase in CPU temperature. The best part of this board is that you can overclock and adjust your fan settings right from the desktop.

Also, with the recent strengthening of the ZAR against the US$, I ended up paying $40 less for the board and RAM.