I'm gunna get a q6600 when intel drops prices and was wondering what is the best OC motherboard for quads. I would also like it to be under $300, and I don't need SLI. The only thing I would want is good onboard sound.


Hear is the futures I want in order from needed to just a nice thing to add.

OCing, nice accesories that come in the case(cables and stuff), save money, onboard sound, easy use, well reviewed, SLI.

Thank you for reading!!!!!

nobody really likes to talk about mobos i guess...

P5N32-E SLI Plus (650i) springs to mind.

I also like these, but they're probably more than you want to pay:

P5N32-E SLI (680i)
Asus Striker Extreme
Gigabyte N680SLI-DQ6

I don't think the MB will be the issue as it's not going to OC like a e6600. Cooling is likely to be more important. I have the same plans and all my research is on building a custom water cooling solution.

I'm interested in what others say though.

would those mobos be better than the evga 680i A1 SLI that I was origionally getting. I probably would not go for the striker, but how about the other 2?

The eVGA A1 is great too. Haven't tried it myself but lots of people in forums have it and love it.

The P5N32-E mobos are very similar to the Striker, they just lack some frills and have less ambitious cooling.

The Gigabyte N680i-DQ6 is excellent but very expensive. You pay for quality I guess. It has all solid capacitors, eSATA ports, etc. - the richest set of features of all 680i mobos according to an Anandtech review.

If you care about sound quality you should get an X-Fi card, not rely on onboard. Just make sure you have a PCI slot for it. It adds a few fps in some games too, apparently.

how about the ASUS P5K deluxe v.s. the EVGA A1 SLI. They are about the same price so I was wondering what would be a better mobo.

The Asus P5K is great, if you don't need SLI. So is the Gigabyte P35-DS4.

Read this:

http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=644

They got a E6700 to 3.80 GHz using P5K 8O

Avoid P5K3, you don't want something that requires DDR3.

trust me i got my BFG N force 680i SLI i think u can get for under $250
runs up to DDR 800 8 gigs max duel channel and socket 775,

This baby rocks for Ocing can unlink the memory and FSb got my duo 2 core from 2.4 to 3.0 GHz (still keeping my ram at 666 MHz) Easy and thats with stock cooling got lovely voltage controls can raise the FSb to massive amounts cant remeber how high but its massive,

6 sata's built in RAIDs 0,1,5 set ups , comes with new link boost tech from n vidia that boosts the power to ya board to PCI-E giving right out of the box 25% performance boost to your G cards

built in HD ##audio##

duel gigabit ethernet with new tech from n vidia first packet and duel net
basicly u can link to connections together for one super powerful internet connection ! even get a fan for ya board to keep it cool .

best board i ever had an i meen ever , alot better then my last asus i had

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/pro [...] uid=124173

see more info of this like where a guy says how toms hardware recomend thsi board

whats a p5k3

So the p5k only supports DDR2!?!?

i wouldnt worrie about DDR 3 for a while yet i really wouldnt DDR2 is fast enuff for the moment

Ok so then what other features does the P35 have over 680i other than the awsome OC.

RE: Striker Extreme
http://vip.asus.com/forum/topic.as [...] uage=en-us

A P5K3 is "Asus P5K3 Deluxe", a mobo that supports DDR3 and not DDR2. Avoid it because DDR3 is not a good investment this year. Maybe a year from now.

Asus P5K supports only DDR2 and it's good.

That BFG board sounds good, I'd better research it. Thanks dannyboy! The problem with all 680i boards is they seem to have a bug when all RAM slots are in use. It's in the chipset, not BFG's fault. I'm still trying to figure out if it has been fixed by now.

P35 is not that good compared to 680i. Support for DDR3 is the only interesting advantage of P35. On the other hand, P35 does not support SLI or LinkBoost, while 680i does.