Asus P5Q Deluxe or Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P

[davisboy]

My build will consist of: E8500, 4gb 1066 ram, gtx 260+. I plan on overclocking both the cpu and gpu. I've narrowed it down to 2 mobos: the Asus P5Q Deluxe or Gigabyte EP45-UD3P. Should i go with the Asus or Gigabyte mobo and why? Price doesn't matter to me btw.

 

[Akebono 98]

If overclocking, then P5Q Deluxe for its 16 phase power--more stability.

 

[GhislainG]

In addition to what Akebono mentioned, the main features of the P5Q Deluxe over the EP45-UD3P are: Power and Reset switches on the motherboard (very nice when testing it), a LED indicates when standby power still is applied to the motherboard and it includes a hot-plug e-SATA connector.

On the other hand, the EP45-UD3P also is a very nice motherboard. Their implementation of e-SATA (not hot-pluggable) is very handy as it allows one to connect 2 SATA disks in the back (handy when copying files from another disk), the onboard sound is slightly better, it autodetects memory modules better than the P5Q Deluxe and it offers a better layout if you use lots of SATA devices (up to 10). If I needed another motherbaord, I'd probably go with the Gigabyte, but I'm not an extreme overclocker.

 

[serpent1202]

I had this decision about 3 weeks ago and I bought the UD3P and I couldn't be happier. The amount of options you have in bios for overclocking is amazing. The NB and SB run extremely cool since the board uses twice the amount of copper.

I have a Q9550, stock 2.83, that is running 24/7 at 3.77. I wanted to see how high I could go on the FSB and it booted into windows at 4.25 with a FSB of 500! I'm building 2 pc's in the next few months for some friends/family and I'll be using this board in both builds.

 

[davisboy]

Will the Xigmatek S1283 cpu cooler fit on the UD3P?