Motherboard recommendation

[ScottyP89]

Hi all,

I'm new to the site so I thought I'd post a question I've been trying to answer for myself for a number of weeks now.

I currently have the following system setup:

Antec 900 Case
750W Power supply
nVidia 8800GTX 768mb graphics card
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU running at 2.7GHz, B3 revision I think
Abit Fatal1ty FP-IN9 SLi Motherboard
2GB 800MHz Crucial Ballistix RAM

Over the last few weeks I have been trying to overclock my processor and have been greeted by various problems, I have read that my motherboard won't let me overclock the CPU over 2.7GHz for some bizzare reason. I got it to 3.2GHz but it kept rebooting about 45mins into stress tests. Therefore, I am looking for a new motherboard, but am yet to find one I'm keen to buy. It needs to have the LGA775 socket (obviously), nVidia chipset (as I'm planning on buying another 8800GTX soon for SLi), SLi support, good overclocking capabilities and 240pin DIMM DDR2 RAM. In a couple of months I am also planning to water cool my system (ideally up to at least 3.6GHz) so I want good overclocking capabilities on the board.

Having tidied up the case over the weekend, I'm currently running at 25c idle and 45c on load according to CoreTemp, but how accurate this is I don't know.

Any advice on which motherboard to get will be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

 

[ScottyP89]

When overclocking, I didn't touch any of the RAM clocking and just left that all standard. I increased the voltage on the CPU to 1.4v I think (will double check later on when I'm home) and that was still randomly rebooting at 3.2GHz under stress tests, though it would make it through 45 minutes using OCCT. I am planning to get another 2 x 1GB sticks of RAM, this is what I have now and what I'll buy again:

https://91.151.218.10/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-090-CR&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=813

I'm quite new to overclocking and only messed with the speeds of the CPU, didn't touch the RAM. I will go ahead and read the C2D and C2Q threads now providing I can find them!

Thanks for your reply!

 

[theAnimal]

The best mobos for Quad OCing are Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R and UD3P.

Adding 2 sticks of RAM in will make OCing more difficult. I'd recommend selling your current RAM and getting 2x2GB instead.