KWSN Orbiting Fortress

[dedelee]

What is the best motherboard to use with an Intel Core 2 Quad Processor? I want to build my own system and need to know what type of motherboard goes best with the processor. I would like to know things like the brand (GIgabyte, MSI, etc.) and which type would be most stable?
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[Mildew]

This is more of a religious question.
Most manufacturers have boards in all price categories, and they're all pretty much the same.

Personally I use Gigabyte and Asus, and they work just fine, but I'm not saying they are better than anything else.

As long as you stay away from the cheapest variant of any brand, you should be ok.

[Nuadormrac]

I used to know someone who could eyeball the boards, but that was a long time ago. In those days Asus had better quality then some, but again read that was a long time ago, and things can change. I mean, those were the same day that Plextor drives rarely to never failed, and I've heard some more recent customer accounts that suggest some newer models they had declined on their quality somewhat.

Now as strange as eyeballing a mobo might sound, what he was really looking at was the respective boards layout, and he could toss em aside due to board geometry issues (distance and angle that htis component is from that, etc). He was a computer engineer for well over 40 years, so knew things they don't exactly teach in schools straight out...

The first thing you'll want to do, is look at the chipset which is used. The chipset will determine many of the board's features; and you can check reviews on various chipsets to see what's good, and what's bad. After that, you'll need to consider what form factor you want (for instance ATX or mini-ATX), whic his going to be determined by the case you need to fit it in. No sense trying to fit a full ATX into a mini's case

After this, you'll want to look at the sort of expansion slots you'll need (aka what peripherals you need to plug into the thing), and also keep in mind that if you want a really good gfx card that will give you decent output on those CUDA projects, it probably won't be an integrated gfx solution, look for a PCI-X slot to stuff one of these in also.

Different boards can have different features on over-clocking abilities, this might or might not matter to you. A 6-layer PCB can be better then a 4 layer PCB, though not everyone will tell you in the specs on that, some might. TBH, without a means to test the boards, or the knowledge on how to eyeball them, there's a bit of a coin toss involved. I say this, for instance because though for instance there's been good Asus boards (which at the time of the P2B-F didn't have a problem), I also had one of there first gen nForce 1 boards, which died in a year and a half, and having to replace it, and going back to the store found they ran into a high failure rate on systems using that board which they had sold before. Mine (which I built myself) lasted a bit longer then their average, but still, in the end... However same mfg, but the nForce 2 board I replaced it with held up till I got an Athlon 64, so take it as you will...

Times can change, and any company can have a crap board on a given run, also so....
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[Sir Papa Smurph]

What processor? Lga 775, 1156, 1366...


http://www.maximumpc.com/best-of-the-best


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[Hal9000x86]

The C2Q is a 775 or 1156 socket processor. 1366 is i3 though the later to be released i9.
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