ASUS or EVGA

My vote for 3-WAY, currently, in order:
EVGA 141-GT-E770-A1
ASUS Rampage III Extreme

My vote for 4-WAY, currently, is the GA only because EVGA quit building the EVGA X58 Classified 4-Way SLI |170-BL-E762-A1:
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD9

Compare - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submi...|13-188-069^13-188-069-TS,13-131-642^13-131-642-TS,13-128-446^13-128-446-TS

BTW - don't worry about the number of reviews; it's a top of the food-chain thing.

Good Luck on your build!  

R3E

Good Luck!

Who'd a thunk - a Rampage user voting R3E, and a EVGA user voting for X58 C3. What's this world coming to??

Well, how many gfx cards are you planning on?

Currently have a budget of around $800
Still have my haf 932, antec 1000 psu, evga gtx 285, CM V8 cooler, and 500gb hd (that will do for now) from my old system.

so leaves around 500 or so left for a mobo and ram, im leaning towards the R3F only because the R3E 70 bucks more and most of the extra things the R3E has I probavly wont use. Im not a huge O/Cer but I plan to start, trying to get around 4ghz+.

In the near future I'll be running dual sli or xfire

Tell me what you guys think
MOBO: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00413PHBO/ref=ord_cart_shr?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

CPU: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002A6G3V2/ref=ord_cart_shr?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

RAM: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003OWTXCW/ref=ord_cart_shr?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

That {any} 2000 MHz RAM will NOT run properly unless you have a large increase to the BCLK. Also, unless you are pairing that MOBO with at least a pair of ~ GTX 470's -- then to entire configuration is out of balance.

So, that said I KNOW all (3) components will work together; the RAM is verified on the {QVL} list. That system or ANY that (we) posted are meant as stated extreme OC 4.2+GHz and on water; the CM V8 is okay {huge} but okay.

For whatever it's worth, I'm inclined to stay away from EVGA motherboards due to the one I'm using now. I've had a variety of annoying issues with it - no showstoppers, though - but their tech support hasn't been impressive. And when they have gotten back to me, their answer is always just "RMA it".

On the one hand, this could be interpreted as EVGA taking care of their customers by replacing a product with a problem.

But on the other hand, they don't seem to have taken much interest in helping me resolve any of these minor issues - there wasn't much troubleshooting offered - and they probably know good and well that I'm not going to send 'em back my mobo and be without my rig for 3-4 weeks unless there's some showstopper. I've been pretty irritated with EVGA.

Apologies to all you EVGA fans out there.  

I've built $12K+ SR-2, $6K EVGA X58 4-WAY SLI Classified XL, and dozens more off the EVGA MOBO - it's the least problematic OC MOBO out there. I too have and have built ASUS; the advantages with EVGA are incredible OC'ing stability {CPU, GPUs, & RAM}. ASUS petters-out with 4.2+GHz OC longterm. I have 9 ASUS, 1 EVGA, and 1 GA and build 1-2 high-end rigs/month.

@Clive Staples - So, I'm curious what EXACT issue are you having with your older LGA 775 EVGA nForce 790i Ultra SLI MOBO? Most of any issues I've run across are installation, BIOS, configuration, and some unsupported RAM issues <- 9/10 User Errors.

Thanks for taking to time jaquith to help me decide, if the v8 is just "okay" what other cooler would you recommend? I do plan to go water sooner or later but who knows when that will be for sure. Would the Corsair H50 or H70 be worth it to use? As for the ram I was contemplating grabing some 1600 ram vs the 2000, what would you recommend? Still deciding on the mobo everyone I talk to says the evga boards are like you said very stable and great with high OC, so the 770 might be the way to go. When I do go dual sli or xfire will the x16/x8 cause me much performance issues? Haven't really done research on either sli or xfire so I am unaware of any performance issues this might cause.

When I start looking at $350+ MOBO it's only because I plan of 3/4-WAY SLI and 4.2~4.4GHz+ OC. Therefore, I look at either 1600 or 2000 Corsair GT; I KNOW I can OC the 1600 GT to ~ 1800 MHz, and I've found 2000 MHz to be a pain no matter what you do and BCLK ~190+ seems to be the best. Next, if you are looking at the locked i7 950 the BCLK will be at minimum 180-185. VERY HOT.

Scaling, the GTX 480 will NOT saturate the PCIe x8 ; so no performance issues a/k/a bottlenecks. You should read the fine print with the ASUS and the 'other' PCie slots. And don't get me wrong I like BOTH MOBO, but I have to look at the entire system.

I'd hate to see you waste money on either the H50/H70 to need to toss it out later{eBay or reuse}. For now keep it around ~4.0 GHz. Later look into Koolance and at minimum their blocks {CPU/GPU} are simply the best {Pumps, Tubes, Rads, etc aren't 'as' important}.

I prefer SLI {Scaling, PhysX, 3D Vision}; BTW try to find 'lifetime' warranties on Radeon, and I've toasted too many ATI - I'm dumb because I recently purchased 10 {not for OC or gaming}.

Scaling - http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_480_PCI-E...

RAM OC + Stock:
Comparison Module #1: Mushkin Redline 996805 6-8-6-24 1600MHz
Comparison Module #2: G.Skill Pi Series 7-8-7-24 1600MHz
Comparison Module #3: Mushkin 998687 8-9-8-24 1866MHz
Comparison Module #4: Corsair Dominator TR3X6G1600C8D 8-8-8-24 1600MHz
Comparison Module #5: Kingston HyperX T1 9-9-9-27 1600MHz
Comparison Module #6: Mushkin Blackline 998677B 7-7-7-20 1333MHz
Comparison Module #7: Patriot Viper II Sector 7 9-9-9-27 1800MH

To answer your question, I've had several issues, but the most annoying is the fact that the board doesn't recognize one of the two Ethernet ports at bootup - and which one is recognized varies with no apparent rhyme or reason.

Every time I reboot (which isn't all that often), it's a crapshoot whether the port where I currently have the router connected will be live/hot/recognized by the board. No amount of windows troubleshooting will resolve the issue if I get unlucky - the behavior is exactly as if the Ethernet cable were simply not connected to the NIC at all (even though it is, and was working fine before reboot). Until the next time I reboot and roll the dice again.

However, if I disconnect the Ethernet cable from the "dead" port and switch it to the other jack on the motherboard, that other jack is always active. So it's a relatively simple fix each time the "dead" jack happens to be the one I'm connected to upon boot, but it's still a pain in the butt.

And I'm perfectly willing to accept the possibility of user error or even ignorance. I'm no hardware expert. But if that's the case, I would have expected EVGA's support team to tell me what I'm doing wrong, but they just said "RMA it", which would not be great support in that case.

My vote is for EVGA for the boards you listed, but they are overkill for a dual card setup. Please do yourself a favor and pickup either the EVGA X58 FTW3 or ASUS P6X58D-E. Either board will meet your dual card setup requirements and the 4.0 GHz overclock.

As for the cooler, I'm a fan of the Prolimatech Megahalems Rev.B with two 120mm fans or the top dog... Noctua NH-D14 (IMO)

Read this post, it 'should' answer your questions and perhaps 'solve' the mystery - http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/281189-30-ep45-ud3p-e...

The 'short' answer it's because your ROUTER doesn't support your DUAL NIC; so the 'crap shoot' is whichever NIC inits first 'wins' -> gets the IP and the second is because your Router doesn't understand 'how' to protocol (2) NICs.

Suggestion, disable one or the other NIC.

Your EVGA 9.9/10 is fine!