rik756 :
Looks and sounds like a great board- but it seems to be a bit too specialized for my skill level. I can't find a single review on it at ANY of the usual sites including this one. I found lots of threads about it and most seem to love it, but I need to stay with a board that is much more mainstream so when I make a frantic post for help with something, I have a better chance of someone knowing what I'm working with.... $300+ shipped doesn't help either lol.
It is a fairly common board (DFI LP series p35/x38/x48) depending on where you look. Over in the intel section at XS if you have any problems there are plenty of helpful people.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=59.
It is also a good place to look for info on what problems that may exist on any board you may consider There are post on most all boards there, just browse through the posts on any of thr boards and you will see that the DFI has the fewest of any listed there.
If the price is a concern the p35 variation of that board is $100 less
http://www.motherboardpro.com/DFI-LanParty-LT-P35-T2R-Motherboard-Chipset-P35-Socket-775-p-369.html (which is the board I am using) but lacks pcie 2.0 and only has 1 x16 electrical slot altho it has 3 physical.
The main reason I picked this board was its 6 layer pcb and 8 phase power along with 3 usable pci slots even with a dual slot vid card, a combination that is more difficult to find than you would think.
As far as the complex bios it is, but it doesn't have to be unless you want to. On my 2nd boot of my 8400 I went and just set vcore to 1.25 vdim to 2.1 and fsb to 450 and set vdroop control to disable (which gives a load vcore a little higher than what is set in bios) rebooted and ran that way for a few weeks.
As I learn more about what various settings do I tweak as I go. Now I am leaving vcore at auto and using a feature called special add to adjust which allows c1e, eist and vdroop to function while running a decent OC and vcore setting on my cpu.
Here is an example of what that does.
It is nice to leave vdroop on (it helps save the cpu from dangerous voltage spikes) and not have to have idle voltage way higher than needed.
All in all from all the boards I looked at when I bought, the LanParty UT and LT boards seemed to be the best fit even tho I was not going after any extreme overclocking. And I believe the old saying that you get what you pay for is true in this instance.
As far as support from forums you can get a lot of help from the threads at XS and DFI Club.
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