Mother board and case question...

Sconsey

Hi,

I'm half-way there with ordering parts for my build, so far I have:
- E8400 boxed (from ebay),
- BFG OC NVidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB
- 4GB OCZ DDR2 PC2-8000 Platinum XTC (5-5-5) Dual Channel kit

I don't know much about motherboards but having looked at a few and being limited to what komplett have in stock (my budget is arounf €110) I am looking at MSI P35 Platinum, P35, Socket-775, DDR2, Firewire, 1333FSB, ATX,GbLAN, 2xPCI-Ex16 or else ABIT Fatal1ty FP-IN9 SLI,nForce-650i SLI , DDR2, Socket-775, GbLAN, 2xPCI-Ex16
I want a board that will support SLI. The ABIT board looks good to me but the MSI board got some nice reviews. Anyone know what the big difference between the boards is? is it worth paying a few extra quid for the MSI board.

The other thing is the case which is described as 'ATX', the MSI board has ATX form factor but not sure about the ABIT board, am wondering if it will even fit?

What do you think?

(btw I am limiting myself to Komplett because I have a lot of bits and pieces to get and want to buy them all from the same source)

Spear

Sconsey wrote: »

The other thing is the case which is described as 'ATX', the MSI board has ATX form factor but not sure about the MSI board, am wondering if it will even fit?

What do you think?

(btw I am limiting myself to Komplett because I have a lot of bits and pieces to get and want to buy them all from the same source)

Click the additional info button on the Abit and you'll see it's also ATX. If it's an ATX case they'll fit fine.

The MSI doesn't support SLI though.

DanGerMus

komplett are relatively expensive. if you havent already ordered those parts try www.hardwareversand.de. if you have get the rest off this site it's cheaper by far you will save hundreds on a full build. There are other places to look also. I really feel that komplett is mentioned and reccomended far too much. Just because they have a .ie web address does not mean they are based in ireland. they ship from the netherlands AFAIK.

www.dabs.ie might work out cheaper or even sometimes www.overclockers.co.uk (sometimes)

bandit197

DanGerMus wrote: »

komplett are relatively expensive. if you havent already ordered those parts try www.hardwareversand.de. if you have get the rest off this site it's cheaper by far you will save hundreds on a full build. There are other places to look also. I really feel that komplett is mentioned and reccomended far too much. Just because they have a .ie web address does not mean they are based in ireland. they ship from the netherlands AFAIK.

www.dabs.ie might work out cheaper or even sometimes www.overclockers.co.uk (sometimes)

+1 on this. Buying from here meant I could build a much higher spec pc for the same budget

toco123

The Abit one will do.

Fnz

AFAIK the P35 boards are not the ones to go for if you intend to go SLI. The PCI-E slot will only run at 4x speeds. I'm not sure if it's 4x for both slots or just one.

The cheaper Nvidia boards (like the 650i) will run both cards in SLI at 8x PCI-E speeds... which is much better.

The P35 board is supposed to be a better board if you are only going to run a single graphics card.

Sconsey

I went for Gigabyte GA-N650SLI-DS4, nForce-650i SLI in the end, I saw it get a few mentions on other posts on this forum so that's good enough for me.

Thanks for the feedback, I fully understand what you are saying about alternatives to Komplett, but have had bad experience with Pixmania, and had looked round at a few others but I am lazy and wanted to place the order last night.

...Thanks again.