Help choosing new mobo

[albenza]

I need some help choosing between these two mobo's please.

Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R
ASUS P5KC AiLifestyle Series

I hear the ASUS is a better over clocker but has trouble with the onboard sound.

The Gigabyte has better over all performance if I'm not mistaking so thats what I'm leaning towards at the moment, but please give me your 2 cent.

I love to OC the hell out of my CPU and GPU but I still need it to be stable. I own an E2140 which I plan to OC untill it pops and then replace it with a high end CPU.

 

[o1die]

I would go by features and price. Asus and gigabyte merged awhile back. They both have similar warranties and tech support. I had problems with onboard sound, but fixed it by simply downloading the latest driver.

 

[albenza]

HeHe, thats the thing. They both have all I need and a bit extra - The price difference is around 5$ with the ASUS being the "expensive" one.

With the ASUS I get: 3 x PCI-32 / 3 x PCI-Express / 4 x DDR2-RAM / 1 x RJ-45 / 1 x PS/2 / 6 x USB 2.0 / 1 x FireWire 400 / 9 x Audio / 1 x ATA / 5 x SATA 1 x eSATA

Gigabyte is: 3 x PCI-32 / 4 x PCI-Express / 4 x DDR2-RAM / 1 x RJ-45 / 2 x PS/2 / 4 x USB 2.0 / 1 x Seriel / 1 x Parallel / 9 x Audio / 1 x ATA / 8 x SATA

Both support 2 dimms of DDR3 PC-10666

They are virtuly the same.. I won't be using the extra PCIe x 16 on the ASUS. However the firewire and the two extra USB ports are attractive for some reason.

But then again, the gigabyte has 4 USB ports which should be enough, no firewire though, but I probobly won't ever use it.. the 8 x SATA seems more appealing long term.. but seriously, 8 harddrives is overkill when you can now buy 2TB HDD

I give up... I'm gonna flip a coin.

Edit: Coin came out heads 3 out of 5 times = ASUS P5KC

 

[aevm]

You don't really need DDR3 support, not with DDR3 at the current prices. GA-P35-DS3R overclocks better than GA-P35C-DS3R, loses DDR3 support, overclocks better, costs a bit less. I suspect Asus has the same behavior. Yes, Asus overclocks better than Gigabyte, or at least allows you more BIOS options for overclocking. Also look at GA-P35-DS3P, if Firewire is useful to you.

 

[albenza]

Thank you aevm, but the coin has spoken and the mobo is ordered.

I like the option to add DDR3 since I'm probably going to be stuck with this mobo for some time.

I think you where the one who suggested I bought the 4CoreDual-VSTA I got now along with a E2140 and a GF7600GT a couple of months ago. I must say it all served me very well, especially the GPU. I'm still quite amazed about it considering I only paid 125$ for it. If I look it up now it's price tag shows 230$... (In case you are wondering it's a BFG GF 7600GT OC to be exact).
Anyway.. Once again, thank you for this excellent suggestion back when I was turning every penny, and desperate to move away from my Athlon XP 2800+ with Geforce3 Ti-200.

 

[aevm]

You're very welcome. Since you're not actually getting DDR3, there's no harm done to your pocket.

 

[BUFF]

Asus and gigabyte merged awhile back.

the merger was cancelled & they are still separate companies.