Choosing between 4 High-End X58 Motherboards for my i7 920/930

brianeck

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Feb 13, 2010
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I'm looking to build a monster computer in the next few weeks. I have put together a bunch of 1156/1366 based systems over the past 6 months so I do have experience and enjoy tweaking.

I work from my computer about 16 hours a day so the $$$ isn't a huge concern. Some photoshop but mainly lots of multitasking. I use two 22" LCD's right now but I'm thinking of getting a ATI Radeon card with Eyefinity so I can expand to 3 monitors. I might try some gaming, but the graphics card is mainly for general use on 3 monitors, with some HD video, etc. I may expand to a 2nd graphics card, but definitely not a 3rd.

I'm not really worried about SATA3 because I think it will be a while before I'm using one of those hard drives.

I'm having trouble choosing between these 4 motherboards. I'm not worried about the $100 difference (they're actually all about the same since the expensive boards are available at circuitcity.com with 15% bing cashback and no sales tax in CA, unlike Newegg).

4 Motherboards currently under consideration:

1. ASUS P6T Deluxe V2
2. ASUS P6X58D Premium
3. ASUS Rampage II Extreme
4. EVGA E760 CLASSIFIED

I'm disappointed the ASUS P6X58D doesn't have e-sata but it's not a deal-breaker.

What's best for pure (stable) overclocking? I might upgrade to water cooling in the future but it's doubtful.

Parts I'm currently planning on using:

CPU - i7 930 (once it's released at MicroCenter in 2 or 3 weeks)
Motherboard - ???
RAM - Mushkin Enhanced Redline 6GB DDR3 1600 (6-7-6-18) ---- I hear it's some of the best RAM out there because of the timings
Boot Drive - Intel G2 80GB SSD
Storage HD's - Probably x2 1TB or 1.5TB WD Green or Samsung (not too concerned since these will be for storage)
Power Supply - CORSAIR CMPSU-850HX 850W, 80 PLUS SILVER Certified Modular
Case - LIAN LI PC-888 Blue Aluminum ATX Full Tower
CPU Cooling - Prolimatech Mega Shadow

I plan on overclocking this as much as possible (and keep it stable, pretty much 24/7). I'm hoping to sniff 4.5Ghz since I hear the i7 930 will be clocked at 2.8GHz and will still have the high overclocking ability like the 920's.

Any thoughts on these parts:
What 2 fans for the Mega Shadow? I'm not worried about a little noise. I want max air cooling.
Power Supply - Is it overkill or can I get away with the Antec TruePower 650W and still have headroom for lots of overclocking and a bigger ATI Eyefinity card?

Thanks for your help.