PC Mobo question...

[abyssinianson]

Here is a mobo (motherboard) question for those more enlightened than I: Does it really matter whether you upgrade to a better motherboard that is NOT Intel? Now, I have been a pretty satisfied Asus and Abit fan for a while. As far as I am concerned, both mobo companies do the job well for my needs. However, I was posting some questions about compatibility between RAM sizes, RAM brands, video card choices, and resource speed on a forum and I received quite an amount of scoffing for needing to upgrade to a "real" Intel board instead of using other third-party vendors' products. I don't know if there was any basis for the scoffing, and frankly I don;'t care, since I HAVE been a satisfied user of Asus and Abit products for years now. But what others said about "real" Intel boards and 3rd party mobos did make me think: are Intel boards really better? I have no experience with this so I am posting the question to other tech savvy forumites here that , hopefully, might be able to shed some light on this matter. The way I see it, if Intel boards are better in the long run then, I might be able to justify switching if the resources for the dual core structure will be utilized much more efficiently with a matched mobo. The problem is, I don't know jack about who makes a better mobo, or IF it even really matters at the end of the day. KitC, any words of advice?

For your background info, here is my prospective upgrade kit. I am still researching the compatibiity and durability of each item so it is a tentative working list:

-Asus P5WD2-E Deluxe Mobo (LGA 775, 975xx chipset) with an Intel Conroe E6600 processor.
-4GB DDR2-800 Corsair RAM
-3 SATA II Samsung Spinpoint Drives
-XFX 7800 GTX Video card

[KitC]

abyss,

If it makes you feel any better, even Intel boards are made in Taiwan, China, Indonesia, etc., and I believe they have the same failure rates like any other brand.

Intel boards have not been a favorite among the enthusiast crowd probably because they didn't offer much by way of overclocking. The upside to that is that it probably makes the system more stable. Like when was the last time you saw a 'feature-rich' Intel mobo? About the last thing I read about an Intel board was their inclusion of HD Audio.

One thing I hate about non-Intel boards, though, is their use of cheap, nondescript capacitors that have unusually high failure rates. One of the things I do when I buy a new mobo is to check the capacitors; I make sure they use japanese Rubycons and other similarly branded caps - the cheap chinese caps used some electrolytic that would bubble when it got too hot causing the caps to burst. Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte used to have that problem (supposedly addressed already a couple of years back), but I have never read of an Intel board having that problem... yet. In any event, I believe mobo manufacturers have already avoided that cap supplier but you never really know if there's that unnamed cap out there waiting to blow.

Those are nice specs, dude! And I can see you have a fondness for Dr. Izzie Stevens.  

[abyssinianson]

Yes - I have been quite smitten by Dr. Stevens, and one can only hope that one day, my fellow residents are just as alecky and bloody hot. Heck, how much god-damn-ness can you fit into a pair of surgical scrubs?! Apparently, quite a lot. I wonder how Salma Hayek would look if she paired a pair of scrubs.

Anyhow, its good to know the ups and downs of the Intel boards. I am aware that all of them are made in China, Taiwan, or some other Asian country that has long been a subsidiary of mobo manufacturers/ OEM vendors. However, my worry was, are they really much more hardy that the Asus or Abit boards. Its true that Intel doesn't have very many doodads on their boards but, at this point, I am looking for the basics really like SATA, a good BIOS, and the guarantee of good working parts. The extend of how good an Intel board is, wason the top of my "worry" list, I guess you could say.

I don't overclock as well too so that isn't a big problem. I just need the thing to be efficient, reliable, and priced pretty well:)

Thanks for the clarification!

[GerardSalonga]

Good specs indeed.  Great avatar as well.  I stumbled upon a site that might be of help if you're putting together a PC DAW:

http://www.pcaudiolabs.com/default.asp

May I also suggest you have a look at Western Digital Raptor SATA disks for your audio.  The only problem is that they tend to run hot, as would be expected from a 10,000RPM disk.  I have four and couldn't have been more pleased with their performance.  I'm lusting after the new 150GB one.  Happy hunting

[abyssinianson]

I have looked at the Raptors before but quiet PC enthusiasts recommended the Samsung Spinpoints or the 500 GB Caviar SE16 from Western Digital for much better performance-to-noise ratios. These days, the 500GB Caviar is the quitest high capacity storage drive out there, employing new platter arrangement technologies to make data storage much more efficient.

The reason I am picky about the drives and going with low noise recommendations is because I would really rather not have an ISO box built for my PC. These ISo boxes are huge, annoyingly space consuming and expensive. I do a lot tracking at home (since I do a lot of the recording on my own) and if I can help cut down the noise so I can do acoustic recordings within the reach of my DAW, it would make recording music ideas much easier in the long run. Sometimes when I use a ribbon mike for acoustic stuff and sampling, the mics can pick up faint humming in the background coming from my PC, especially when I use the older gain-hungry ribbon mics. With the upcoming PC upgrade, I am trying to design a quiet DAW that can allow me a lot of freedom to record without having to worry about ambient noise.

Thanks to you both for the recommendations and links!

[KitC]

Wow! Sir Gerard is in the house!    Welcome aboard, Sir!

The Raptors are good but kinda noisy (as well as hot). If you're doing audio only, they would be a bit too much; although I do agree those things are fast! They would probably do extremely well if you're doing video post production.

Over at the PC forums, someone posted a link to a 1.5 terabyte drive!  

[abyssinianson]

Wow! Sir Gerard is in the house!    Welcome aboard, Sir!

The Raptors are good but kinda noisy (as well as hot). If you're doing audio only, they would be a bit too much; although I do agree those things are fast! They would probably do extremely well if you're doing video post production.

Over at the PC forums, someone posted a link to a 1.5 terabyte drive!  

kit, its a good thing you mentioned heat concerns as well because i was looking at ways to enclose HDs in my new system to serve a two-fold purpose: to keep them quiet, and to dissipate heat better using heat management enclosures. there were a few choices I started looking at but my research on them has not brought my to any conclusions about whether or not they are REALLY worth the effort and money. I will keep you updated on this if it seems like a viable solution.

[KitC]

abyss,

I just read that there are some 975XBX mobos that don't support Conroe: look here.

There are also Intel 965 mobos that support Conroe. Click here for details.

[abyssinianson]

kit, thanks for the note. I was just beginning to get a note of this when I started shopping around for alternative Intel boards. Apparently, in some Intel mobos, a BIOS upgrade is even required for Core 2 compliant boards that were released towards the beginning of 2006. I was not aware of this until I started reading the forums and noticing a lot of notes from people who are currently involved in testing Core 2 processors. again, thanks for the heads up.