Recommendations for a new motherboard needed...

[spotter300]

Hi there,

I'm abit fed up with my mobo its 3 years old now and has been starting to playing up quite abit of late (Chipset getting very hot, crashing and not wanting to reboot, disappearing drives etc) , not to mention its lack of ports etc. and so I'm looking to get some upgrades over the summer. I cant really decided what motherboard what to go with, so will you help?
I've got around £80-90 ($160-180 USD) to spend, I'd like it to have as many of the following features as possible:

- 6 SATA ports, 2 with RAID support
- Crossfire support, but I can live without it.
- 3 PCI slots, USB, Firewire, eSATA
- Good cooling for chipset, heatpipes?
- good clearance and layout
- Future Proof (45nm and ddr3)
- Easy overclocking


The following is my current spec:

Mobo: Gigabyte GA 965P DS3
CPU: Intel E6300 (oc'd from 1.8ghz to 2.4ghz) cooled by AC Freezer 7 Pro
GFX: ATI 3870 XT
Ram: 4gb Crucial DDR2 PC 5300
HD's: 2x 80gb SATA Samsung in RAID 1 (for OS) and 2x 250gb SATA samsung
PSU: Antec True Power 2.0 450 watt
Optical: SATA DVD/RW and a SATA DVD reader
PCI cards: Xfi Extreme Music and a Edimax EW-7128g 802.11g Wifi card.
Case: Antec P180
OS: XP x64 SP2

Hopefuly you can help, i'd be very greatful if you could,

Jack

 

[Shadow703793]

P35-DS3x (ie P35-DS3L,DS3R,) or P5K-x.

 

[MrCommunistGen]

If you want something that'll give good crossfire performance you'll need an X38/X48 board, or you could try and wait for the P45... whenever they actually decide to release it. Otherwise I'd recommend the Gigabyte EP35-DS3R or DS3P since onboard features seem to be something you want and the DS3L is a bit lean on features. The DS3P and DS4 support Crossfire but it'd be a bit stunted since the PCI-E ports run at 16x and 4x respectively.

-mcg

 

[spotter300]

Crossfire isnt my top priority but it would be nice for the future, i think stability is the most inportant thing to me, as thats what my current board is lacking. So the general Consesus is stick to gigabyte? My trust in them has been shaken by this board, i was looking at spending abit more and getting the Asus P5K Premium/WiFi-AP, though i wonder about the reliabilty of the built in wifi?

 

[Canuck1]

Hey, I recommend Gigabyte EP35-DS3L or DS3R or MSI Neo2-FR.

I have two older generation Asus boards and I want to go with a different Manufacturer this time. I think the other boards run cooler anyway. At least, the early Asus boards had higher power consumption/heat.

Why not just get a wifi/usb wireless adapter? I think the onboard Asus works good from what I've read, though.

 

[blacksci]

My opinion is that Asus isnt what they used to be, and there are many people that are quite happy with there gigabyte boards (me included).

 

[spotter300]

Yeah i think i will stick with gigabyte, does anyone know when p45 is meant to come out? if not i'll get a p35 i'm sure there are advantages, all the kinks will be worked out by now for example.