Hello. Been a reader for a long time, finally joined since i now have a request of my own.
I've been looking at buying a P45 board. I need an upgrade since i just can't stand my locked-bios crappy not-supported PB custom board and its' Celeron D (oh yes). Now, you might be thinking: "P45, pff, get an i5 or PII, so much better". Well, you are quite right, but i don't want to spend too much right now, and rather hold off the big build for a little while. But it will come eventually ^^. I'm going to buy a friend's hardly used E2140 and clock it as high as the chip and my abilities will bring it. The latter will probably limit the overclock, never done it before. (locked bios -.-). The board will also house 4gb 800mhz corsair xms2 ram.
So, of course i've been reading review after review, and found some options. I was hoping you could recommend any of them. If you have any other suggestions, these are of course most welcome. I don't need anything fancy, I won't be doing raid, only need one ethernet port, and whether there are 6 or 10 sata slots is irrelevant. I'm looking for a stable hassle-free board that'll last me atleast a year, maybe 18 months from now. The boards:
Asus P5Q Deluxe
Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P
DFI LP DK-P45-T2RS PLUS
MSI P45 Platinum
Frys has an msi p43 board with e7500 for $99.99 today, if you live near one. And if your "crappy" board is an hp, I might buy it from you if you want to sell it cheap. I still have an hp vista license. Of the boards listed, I prefer the asus or msi, but that's just cause I don't have as much experience with DFI or gigabyte.
Thanks, but I don't think there are any Fry's where I live. Probably gonna order from newegg since there are one of the few sites that still sell the case i want, and then have it shipped here. But thank you for your input.
I own both the Asus P5Q Deluxe and the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P. The P5Q Deluxe has more features while the GA-EP45-UD3P offers a better layout. They both are very stable using G.Skill PI Black DDR2-800 memory at 1.9V.