Head up. Going with the Asus Maximus Formula working on fan placement

Well for everyone who has been helping me over the last month avem and shadow I think the most. Anyway, I am throwing in the towel and trashing the GA-EP35-DS4 Ive done everything I and others can think of and I got absolutely ZERO help in any way, shape, or form from the Gigabyte tech "support". I just cant handle the constant BSOD and error after error. I have resorted to using the local library computers while mine is down to conduct business....shameful.

Anyway, Now what I am doing is finishing my system by choosing the motherboard around the rest of the system. I want to overclock, I play highend games. i don't do video editing or anything like that...games, my business, internet thats about it...but I want first and foremost STABILITY!!!!!!! I don't want to have to stand on one leg while chewing gum and drinking a glass of water and hum the National Anthem to get BIOS to install properly. lol SO what we are building around:

Thermaltake Armor+
Q6600 (GO)
Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme w/ Scythe 1600rpm fan
EVGA 8800 GTS (92) 512
and lastly Dun Dua Duhhhhhh....Vista 64 Home Premium...

I want to use at least 4 gigs of memory and am looking very hard at OCZ memory. The support I have gotten from them has been Grade A!!! And they were helping me with Crucial memory and didn't even suggest to swap until I specifically asked...thats a class act in my book, good business. So there ya have it. My budget is around 250 for the board, id like to go lower but meh...the Mainboard as I can now truly attest is the most important component by far. Thanks every one so much for your time!!! Any suggestions will be most appreciated!!!

Thanks so much for the very fast reply!!!

yes I forgot to mention the PSU I am using a Corsair HX620W Modular power supply.

I will check out those boards right away! thanks again!

Unfortunately they all have their peculiarities. I don't think the problems you are having with your GA mobo are the norm, and mobo support always sucks no matter who you deal with. I do understand you wanting to change brands though, I know I would. When you get your new mobo, slap in the UBCD and test the RAM before you go through all the OS load BS. If you get any errors at all you have a problem.

Good luck

Well so far I am really liking these mainboards:
ASUS Maximus Formula
ASUS P5E
ABIT IX38 Quad GT
EVGA 780i

Does anyone know a place where I can do my own research as to weather or not a board plays well with vista 64? I want a minimum of 4 gigs of memory also

I think in some how one of the good places for research about any device are the forums of the seller sites.Why?!!Because you can see many users who have used the desired device and tested it at real world not in some good but not enough environments. So they know good enough about some factors such as ease of use, compatibility, stablity and...
Although test reports of some known sites such as Tom'sHardware, Anandtech and... can be useful but I believe that their tests are mostly at the LAB conditions.
For real world tests take a look at the NEWEGG.COM forums and you will find many realitys about very wellknown boards which are really unbelievable and will see many positive aspects of some boards which are not very nameful.
I have done it for many times and I have seen the difference between realworld tests and Laboratory tests.

What about DFI's boards? Their extensive features generally offer the best overclocking performance
and stability. Just be patient with the tweaks.

DFI LANPARTY DK X38-T2R
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] %2bX38-T2R
DFI LP LT P35 T2R
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813136039

(there are more expensive versions of both with crazy heat pipes)


http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews [...] herboard/5

Not much help but Im running two GA X38 DS4's, and they are rock solid here with vista home premium 64bit, the only issue I had was a (new) duff stick of ram causing stability problems. Luckily Ive got two pretty much identical rigs one was running great one was crashing horribly, swapped bits till I found the memory made the difference, then ran two sticks at a time to narrow it down to one pair then swapped indivual sticks to confirm which stick was a problem.

Pain in the neck, but the motherboard itself has been great ever since. All 8 sticks of ram I was playing with are OCZ. Oddly enough the windows vista memory test doesnt pull up any problems with the one stick although Ive been meaning to leave it repeating over night to try to find the problem

Some MB's act up when you install 4 sticks of RAM...the voltage regulators for that path don't like the extra load. Sometimes a slight boost in voltage works,other times not.

Unless your doing large GFX file work there is no advantage to using more than 2 GB of RAM.
If your using Vista it will hog up RAM and if you install 4GB will take up almost 1 full GB.

Any "security" that Vista 64 may have goes away as soon as you run a 32 bit program with it.
-->Read about it or d/l the Security Now podcast on Steve Gibsons site www.grc.com to learn why this happens.

Using 32 bit XP is not only faster in all programs but has no driver problems.
It is also alot better with RAM usage.
With 2GB of ram and a fixed size 2GB pagefile I can run all 3 of my security programs,6 torrents and play Frontlines:Fuel of War at the same time and Asus Probe II shows no more than 59% of the RAM being used.

Asus Maximus Formula Special Edition

Thoughts?

DFI has been the king of OC MB's for many years and the seven in my profile (my game LAN) are all OC'd 50% with -all- voltages set to stock.

If your getting a new MB that you want to last for an extra long time,look at those that use -solid- rather than electrolytic capacitors .
As I run my main computer 24/7/365 I have -never- had -any- brand of MB last over two years as the electrolytic caps dry out.

Over kill for the Q6600
If you are looking at that motherboard you need to be looking at this processor, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6819115051
What ever you buy will be out dated in a year or so. Unless you have BIG pockets I would lower my sights.

About the GA-EP35-DS4: What RAM did you use with it?

For the new motherboard I suggest:
ASUS Maximus Formula
ASUS P5K-x (P35 chipset)

Edit: Found your old post and you stated you have used 4GB Crucial DDR2 1065 RAM. I have been doing some research in to this problem for a while now. It looks like the P35-DS3x/DS4x boards seems to have some unknown issues with RAM that is natively higher than DDR2 800 (problems reported by quite a bit people actually)., but now when DDR2 800 is OCed to the same level( ie DDR2 800 OCed to DDR2 1021).

that's a good suggestion for Asus and Gigabyte, to set up a space
in their marketing offices so enthusiasts can check out their products.

i wonder if showing up at the Tom's Hardware offices with a
six-pack of decent beer (Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Ale, must be
10%+ alcohol) would open a door to the lab.

the Gigabyte wouldn't run stock speeds ?

Yes for all questions. You might need to update BIOS to solve some rare problems if you get an older version of the BIOS. For RAM I would recommend DDR2 800, no need for any thing higher than DDR2 800.

I just replaced my 680iSLI with 780iSLI, its much more stable than 680i ever was, hasn't crashed once in over a week even overclocking various ways. The 680iSLI both AR and A1 series seem to have some sort of HD controller issue that actually trashed one of my 500GB drives.

So far no problems and have bested my personal best 3Dmark06(default) score to 18088

So have you decided? Is it going to be ASUS?

I was about to give high five to aminel when my connection suddenly dropped without reason I'm using ABIT IX38 and Corsair, both work well and really easy to play with. No need rocket science to tweak the mobo. I was playing a bit with it, but currently I set it back to stock since I don't really need for OC at the moment. This ABIT mobo seems to be underrated and for some reason they do not advertise much. No wonder we rarely heard of them. I understand that ABIT had some unfortunate years (in couple of years ago). But from the way I see it, in particular with their IP35 and IX38, they become a silent solid performer

And for Corsair, I always love Corsair for it's compatibility. I know it's sound like a fanboism But I read/saw some issues with OCZ, but rarely with Corsair.

EDIT: OK, I just read your new post. Seems we were posting at the same moment Congratulations for you new rig Seems pretty solid to me. I like ASUS too, and I use it many times before without a problem. So good luck with your build ..

Wish you good luck my friend
Asus,Abit,Coarsair,OCZ and... are all good brands, I want to mention that good brands are not enough to say that everything will be good when you put them together. Try hard to find good brands which will be matched together. This is much more important
I hope your new parts suit you.

^ Agreed! Why can't we all have One Standard? No more AGP, PCI, just PCIe x1-x16, 1 CPU socket, etc Then we might actually be able to run AMDs on Intel motherboards (Remember the good old days of K6-2? )

^ When will you be getting the parts?

^ For fans look at Scyth and Yate Loon. If you could provide pics of your current/planed fan set up we might be able to make up a good arrangement Mark the direction of air flow in the pics.

^ Good luck.

If you couldnt make the Gigabyte board run why would you think throwing a bunch more money at your system will help you figure out what is wrong with your building abilities?

^

So Shadow, I was looking around and though that I would be able to throw in some 140mm fans on the bottom as well as the hard drive area the bottom blue circled arrow.

I cant seem to find the 140mm fan that was installed on front of the case. But a good alternative I think would be the AeroCool Streamliner
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6835129248

Then I thought that another possible intake could be the Scythe Drive bay fan
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6835185020

Then for the exhaust, I was at getting fans that have red lighting but am not sure really as to what fan company. I thought that the Thermaltake fans looked pretty good. and I would use 120mm fans with a high RPM like 1600+ I have the Scythe 1600 rpm in my rig right now and I cant hear anything...the case is remarkably quiet.