Which mobo best suited for a Q9300?

Look no further than the EVGA 780i. I love mine!

All three boards that you listed are great, and if you aren't going XFire then you don't need X38/X48 at all. Get a Q6600 and P35 board and save yourself alot of money. Q9300s are severely price gouged.

those chips will overclock to 4 ghz with a good motherboard i would go for an x38 or 780i, 790i. mainly depends on your budget you could just get a 750i those will handle almost 500 fsb. which will get you a good overclock.
just my thoughts

4Ghz? You got to be kidding! You aren't going to find any mobo under $1000 that can hit 533FSB easily with a quad.

Get off your butt and use Google to search for reviews of motherboards that support quad core processors.
Check the major consumer motherboard manufactures for products that support quad core processors.
If you can afford $250 for a motherboard you can afford $250 for a 2G kit of DDR3 memory.

I agree... First off there are boards that will hit 500+mhz. I would opt for a good intel chipset like X38/X48!

With a quad on air?

yes... with a Q9300 that would only be 3750mhz at 500mhz fsb. And to go even further you could just lower the multi. Why do you think its so hard to hit 500mhz + with a quad?

I guess I see your reasoning here. Yeah it may be a bit hard to run it stable at 533mhz. I thought though that the new mobo would have added support (790i and X48) for 1600mhz making it easier to run over 2000???

The Q6600 on the other hand makes it to 4000mhz easier. It only requires 445mhz. Man... that might just make for a better proc.

Sorry I miss-read!  

How's about this board ?

http://www.computerpoweruser.com/editorial/article.asp?...

^^^ Yes... exactly what I'm talking about. They hit 535 without touching chipset voltages. I think that you can take a Q9300 stably to 4ghz with that board no prob... but until it's done nobody will believe me!

Interesting, but I don't see any evidence that they even tried. I can say I hit 600MHz, and I don't even own the board. I may have exaggerated about the $1000 board, but that board is still 4x as much as I'd pay for a mobo. It's $AU400+

Thanks for all the responses, I am still trying to understand the link between CPU speeds, CPU FSB, mobo FSB and what does it mean to overclock. I have learnt (which is always hard work!), that a CPU FSB of 1333 Mhz really means a real clock speed of 333 Mhz times multiplier (7.5) for the Q9300 gives me a 2.5 GHz speed rating. To overclock this, I need to increase the FSB and this requires a board that can handle the higher FSB without issues. Does the board need to be specifically configured to the higher FSB or is it just driven by the CPU and thus capable of handling it?

I am not into pushing the limits of overclocking, just want to get to that 'easily achievable FREE increased performance with high stability' zone. Getting it to the 3-3.5 Ghz range would be my goal for now, which requires a board capable of handling ~450 Mhz. Right?? In other words, get the Q9550 (without the extra cache) for no extra $$.

Also, again, please help my understanding, if I get DDR2 800, then it is rated for 400Mhz FSB unless I overclock it with higher voltages and/or changed timings. Is my understanding correct? Or should I just get the DD2 1066 that can go to 533 MHz without any mods?

I also won't be going anymore than a single video card (8800GTS likely) so SLI or crossfire is not a major consideration. Does this mean a P35 board will be adequate for my needs?

Thanks (I was out of town traveling and did not have a chance earlier to come back to this post I put up)

If you aren't going to go with a SLI setup why not go with p5K-e with 35 chipset. Personally I go with q6600 just find it easiler to achieve the levels you desire. Plus there is alot more information ava. about OCing a q6600 then a Q9300. Both will be pretty easy to OC IMO. Q9300 is more board limited because of FSB and Q6600 is more CPU limited. CPU you just need to get a good heat sink and fan and you should be ok. I am running q6600 stable @ 3.6 with a VID 1.325. Which is about as high as they come. Just something to think about.

I already have a Q9300 OEM.

Your on the right track R00tkid. Overclocking the cpu overclocks the FSB. It's diff for some mobo. For example my mobo you can only raise the mobo FSB. Starting at 1333 I have to raise mine to 1800 to get my 4.05ghz. On my buddies X38 you have the option to overclock the cpu by raising the cpu FSB. Not the mobo FSB. But it essentially does the same thing. So on his board he would raise it to 450mhz to get his 4.05ghz. Same thing right? Right!

The memory doesnt matter that much. Obviously faster memory will run faster. Usually you cant take 800 speed memory and run it faster at the same timings. You have to lower timings in order for that to happen. Sometimes faster memory will allow for a more stable overclock of entire system. Not always true though.

Thanks, hunter...

No prob.... let us know what you end up doing and if you need any more input/help.

hughyhunter, what you call "CPU FSB" and "motherboard FSB" are really the same thing.

The actual FSB is 333 MHz, but this is quad-pumped (4 bits transmitted per cycle) on Intel boards:

333 x 4 = 1332

When you say you raised the "motherboard FSB" from 1333 to 1800, what you really did was raise the FSB from 333 to 450:

450 x 4 = 1800

The processor speed, of course, comes from multiplying the FSB by the CPU multiplier:

333 x 9 = 2.997 Ghz
450 x 9 = 4.050 Ghz

I knew it was kind of the same thing but I never realized it was 4 bit transmitted per cycle. What is cpu FSB voltage? The reason I ask is because the NB and SB have their own voltages and the cpu and the FSB have their own. So what where is the cpu FSB voltage going to?