Most Fitting Motherboard for me

[Guest]

Hey everyone, I have been doing a lot of research and reading a lot of the reviews especially here on Toms Hardware which, might I say are amazing reviews good job guys! Anyways, I am looking for a motherboard to suit my needs and I am not quite sure which one I should get and my budget for it is rather high, so any advice / opinons are greatly appreciated.

Build I have right now:
Antec DF-85 FUll Tower Case
Antec CP-1000W (Might switch to the Quattro Power 1200W should I need more Voltage, did the antec calc and got 950 suggested 1k but I dont really like those odds)
Intel i7-960 w/ Heat Sink
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 480 (One at the moment will have a Second one later down road)
SeaGate Barricuda 1.5TB 7200 rpm HDD
6gb (3 x2) Corsair Dominator 1333ghz RAM
Sound Blaster Xi-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series

I do not do any 3D gaming so I don't quite see why I would need more then 2 GPU. I have been reading up and I have found that Gigabyte is one of the leading Motherboard producers for the x58 Chip set right now. I have friends whose only acknledgement to me asking them about an Asus mobo was, "Epic Phail". So I have focused more on the Gigabyte reviews and what not. My problem is this, which one should I get? I have looked at the ud3-r and then ud7 and the ud9 and the changes in each seem so close together I am not sure which to get, opinons on the 3? Will there even been a noticeable difference in each of the 3 as far as performance or is it just a buyer preference on features wanted? Also is there another Motherboard manufacturer in which I am overlooking and should look into?

Any help is greatly appreciated!
Thanks!

 

[davcon]

These two boards offer a little bit more then the mainstream options = enthusiast features.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007627%2050001312%20600007887%20600007912&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&CompareItemList=280%7C13%2D128%2D422%5E13%2D128%2D422%2DTS%2C13%2D131%2D614%5E13%2D131%2D614%2DTS

 

[Wolygon]

Generally higher priced boards support features such as SATA/USB 3, more PCIe ports and better OCing with the use of better heatsinks.

I personally don't believe you should go for a high end board as generally even a budget board can OC to normal limits and more than 3 PCIe lanes is not very important. If you need SATA/USB 3 you can still get this without spending the amount that you do on these boards.

Also ASUS is not a bad company AT ALL. Your friends obviously don't know what their talking about and are probably suffering from Fanboyitis. Generally most motherboard companies have reasonable quality and brand preference in not really needed, even budget companies like AsRock and Biostar are good.

Your build may or may not be optimized for your needs, I suggest you post it in the systems category with the standard post describing what you use it for. You may also want to consider an AMD build for easy upgrading to a new processor.

However one thing I can tell you without knowing what you are doing with your system is that the i7 960 is a waste of money. You could easily OC the 930 to that level and get a new cooler and you will be able to propel it way past it, to 3.8GHz and beyond. There is nothing that CPU offers over an OCed 930. A good cooler is the Cooler Master Hyper 212+ for $50:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103065&cm_re=hyper_212%2b-_-35-103-065-_-Product

Hope that helps a bit.