Rant C2D motherboards

[quest55720]

My PC went to heck this last weekend. It was a athlon xp 3000+ nforce 2 chipset with a x800xt PE it served me well I figured this would be a good time to upgrade. Picking out the processor,hsf, ram, powersupply were very easy but when it came to the motherboard it was furstration. My budget would not allow more than 140-150 USD for a motherboard. It seemed every time I would find a new mother board to check out it would have some major issues. A lot of the issue were because of intel ditching the IDE controller and mother board makers putting in the cheapest they could find. If it was not the IDE controller issues it was cold boot issues or some kind of other issue like being really picky with ram. I just did not have it in my budget to ditch my IDE optical drives especially my DVD burner which works great for SATA drives or spend the extra 100 dollars for expensive ram. The only motherboard I could find with out some kind of issue or quirk was the bad axe2 and that was out of my budget by 50-60 dollars. I settled for the biostar P965pt it seemed to have the least amount of issues since it is the only P965 motherboard I could find that does not use the jmicron controller that has caused so many issue.

I have been with amd for a while this is my first intel system since my p2-300. I can remember having the same frustration with via amd based motherboards. I always assumed that intel was the king of stablity and trouble free systems. It is almost funny the roles are revered ATM IMO intel has performance AMD has the rock solid stable platforms. My expectations are pretty damn low right now if my new system is 1/2 as stable and trouble free as my old one I would take it right now. Just a shame intel had to ruin a kick ass CPU with such crappy motherboards. I also think it is garbage these motherboard makers are getting away with selling these 150+ dollar motherboards that have issues.

Here is the run down of what I am getting.
E-4300
Arctic 7 freezer pro cooler
Biostar P965pt
Gskills DDR2 800 2x1 gig sticks
sunbeam 550w modular powersupply
ATI 1900 GT 256meg PCI-X 16

The reason I chose the 1900GT is I got it for like 130 after rebate a good stop gap till the prices of the direct x 10 video cards goes down and the bugs get worked out of vista.

 

[Skrying]

Why'd you go so low on the CPU, the E-4300, is that even dual core?

EDIT: Nevermind, apparently I am the uninformed one on this!

Anyway, I notice the Sunbeam PSU. I have the same exact one, I love it and for the price it really can not be beat. Its extremely stable, its very quiet, and the fan control is a nice quality touch.

 

[quest55720]

Why'd you go so low on the CPU, the E-4300, is that even dual core?

EDIT: Nevermind, apparently I am the uninformed one on this!

Anyway, I notice the Sunbeam PSU. I have the same exact one, I love it and for the price it really can not be beat. Its extremely stable, its very quiet, and the fan control is a nice quality touch.

I was a little leary at first because of the price but the stellar review by jonnyguru sold me on the sunbeam. The sunbeam sounded to good to be true 550w modular and comes with a fan speed controller all that for 54 freaking dollars yes 54 freaking dollars. I went with the 4300 so I could over clock with cheaper ram it has a 9x multiplier. The price was high enough with out adding 100+ for ram that could do DDR1000 when over clocking. That and I plan to either had 1 or 2 more gigs of ram when I go to vista. Everything I have read says it is very hard to get 4 sticks of ram to a high FSB. I figure it should not be to hard to get 4 sticks of budget DDR2-800 to a 300-350 FSB. I don't plan on over clocking big I hope to get in the 2.5-2.7 range on stock voltage and call it a day.

 

[Skrying]

I was a little leary at first because of the price but the stellar review by jonnyguru sold me on the sunbeam. I went with the 4300 so I could over clock with cheaper ram it has a 9x multiplier. The price was high enough with out adding 100+ for ram that could do DDR1000 when over clocking.

Actually, the jonnyguru was the exact reason I went with the Sunbeam myself. I am very glad I did. Overall its been my "favorite" PSU I've ever owned just simply because it is extremely well priced, extremely stable, and very quiet.

I myself went with a E6300 and the Gigabyte 965P-DS3 when it was on sale, I grabbed it for $120 off of Newegg. I had considered the Biostar (reviews hitting at 500+ FSB, etc) but the Gigabyte sale just made me jump all over it. Its been a solid motherboard for me and my E6300 can really OC if I want it to. I keep it at 2.8GHz for every day operations, its more than enough and I am very please with its performance. I upgraded from a Athlon64 2800+ and I must say that I was rather shocked with the performance improvement in even single threaded applications, overall the Core 2 Duo lineup is great. The value end chips OC like crazy and other great performance for the money.

 

[Albuquerque]

I'm here just to add my love for the Sunbeam NUUO 550w powersupply. I toasted my previous SuperFlower 550w unit not long ago, and I was really wanting a modular PSU that would be able to support my current S478+AGP rig and yet still be useful when I upgrade in 12 months.

Quiet, powerful, good features and excellent performance thus far. My voltages have never been this stable, and I'm pushing a 3.0E to 4.2ghz on top of ram running at DDR560 1:1 and my power-hungry 7900GT-on-AGP video, two 7200RPM 250gb drives and two optical drives. I can't say enough good stuff about this unit...

 

[quest55720]

Finally got it up and running but 2 time sinks kept me from getting any games on the system. But for my normal use I was shocked at how much faster and more responsive the system is. Dvdshrink is around 2-4 times faster and the system is not doggy when trying other apps at the same time. I can't wait to try out some games once I finish loading the last few apps, cable management and imaging the system. I am very impress intel did awesome job on the C2D. I am also very impress with the budget biostar motherboard and sunbeam powersupply. I can't wait to start over clocking it next week after I am sure it is rock solid at stock.

 

[Skrying]

Finally got it up and running but 2 time sinks kept me from getting any games on the system. But for my normal use I was shocked at how much faster and more responsive the system is. Dvdshrink is around 2-4 times faster and the system is not doggy when trying other apps at the same time. I can't wait to try out some games once I finish loading the last few apps, cable management and imaging the system. I am very impress intel did awesome job on the C2D. I am also very impress with the budget biostar motherboard and sunbeam powersupply. I can't wait to start over clocking it next week after I am sure it is rock solid at stock.

Glad to hear!

I was myself rather shocked, my last three processors where AXP 1800+ -> A64 2800+ -> C2D E6300. So yeah, each was a huge upgrade over the other. The C2D is just so impressively responsive in general activity and in games I can have other programs running and not worry at all of a performance hit (unless that game just happens to be heavily multi-threaded).

 

[BRiT]

Glad to hear you're up and running. You would have noticed a big improvement even by jumping to a lesser capable AMD X2 3800+ system. The AMD XP single core systems just cant compare to dual-cores, let alone a single-core socket 939 cpu. No doubt you'll be very happy with the Intel C2D line. It's really the best there is out there right now.

 

[quest55720]

Glad to hear you're up and running. You would have noticed a big improvement even by jumping to a lesser capable AMD X2 3800+ system. The AMD XP single core systems just cant compare to dual-cores, let alone a single-core socket 939 cpu. No doubt you'll be very happy with the Intel C2D line. It's really the best there is out there right now.

I was on a socket A or else I would of just upgraded the CPU. I was looking at a new video card, ram, motherboard and CPU so I was like what the hell spend the extra money and get the x-4300.

 

[Maintank]

I got the Gigabyte DS3. It has been pretty solid but the MB chipset runs warm. Not a problem for me as I dont overclock.

btw what issues are you hearing with the JMicron SATA controller?

 

[Skrying]

I got the Gigabyte DS3. It has been pretty solid but the MB chipset runs warm. Not a problem for me as I dont overclock.

btw what issues are you hearing with the JMicron SATA controller?

My DS3 has been fine even up all the way to 450Mhz+ FSB speeds, near 500Mhz benchmarkable. Of course I owe the added cooling to my huge 250mm panel fan. It is a nice little fan.