Q6600 Pairing! What MoBo?

[Capper]

If you are wanting SLI, you'll need an NVIDIA chipset, at least for the foreseeable future.

As to chipsets overall, the NVIDIA 790i is very good, and the 680i and 780i are decent as long as you don't overvolt the memory

[MontanaFX]

I think I will play it safe and stick with Intel. SLI is probably a little extravergant for my set up anyway. I will give it another look in a year or so, once the 790i has dropped its price or a new, cheaper option is available.

Which is the best Intel chipset to go for?

[Boy'nBlack]

Originally Posted by MontanaFX

I think I will play it safe and stick with Intel. SLI is probably a little extravagant for my set up anyway. I will give it another look in a year or so, once the 790i has dropped its price or a new, cheaper option is available.

Which is the best Intel chipset to go for?

x48 is the best, but not the most recommendable. The P35 they've all been recommending is more than great!

I have strong feelings against aiming for SLI just for having SLI. It's a name tag and not THE solution. It's much more advisable IMO to build a great system aimed at your usages first before getting caught up in taglines. SLI/Crossfire have their purposes just not a must have out of the gate and suffer elsewhere.

Originally Posted by drew and not u

If you're looking for an Asus board (I prefer them too) you might check out the P5K-E. It's a little pricier than some of the gigabyte boards but it's a great board all around. Plenty of OCing options, built in wifi, Asus's crash free BIOS. I'm using it an I love it. Had several other boards in this PC before I settled into the P5K-E

That's exactly what I chose to retire my past main rig with. I ordered up an openbox from newegg for about $90 and it's been more than great! I mentioned it elsewhere before, but the one I got was the "P5K-Premium", a board easily going for $260 when they were out in force (perhaps still are). Since then, I've learned that not all of these P5K-E's have the "PREMIUM" silkscreened on there, but they're still the same board. The board just didn't get a high validation score in some fashion and get binned down to an -E.

As purchased (notice the white sticker):


Under the sticker:

The box it came in was black with gold labeling. The later revisions have blue lettering on the box and are not so obvious in their roots with the official -E board labeling.

The problem I have with these flaky boards that need a BIOS to run so-and-so CPU is this: you need a functional CPU to flash, and that's not what everyone just happens to have on hand. In this case, yes there's a CPU available to use to get it up to flash and then switch over...but that's a pain in most cases.


Really, there's nothing wrong with an openbox purchase. All we really want is the board and not the fluff that might be missing (but seldom is). Most boards come with like 4 S/ATA cables which is more than enough for TWO builds, useless IDE/Floppy cables, and odd software on disk. That stuff is not worth the extra Retail asks for. I think the common fear of openbox is that it's refurbished and that's not the case at all. Refurbs must be sold labeled as such.

[Capper]

I don't typically recommend "Open Box" stuff if only for the reason I've had some bad experiences lately with Newegg and Fry's electronics.

I RMA'd a dead P5E3 Dlx a few weeks back, and they sent me an open box replacement, I open it up and its the vanilla P5E3 in there....someone had switched out their board and returned the cheaper board.

At Fry's I bought a board, got it home, and it was a return that had been completely destroyed, whomever took the board back hadn't even checked it....it was an old s479 crammed into a LGA775 box.

[Boy'nBlack]

That's horrid! For them (newegg) to not actually check the product isn't right. I DO see others doing this shifty returning in other places and don't agree with it at all. I'd be OK if the vendor actually verified that it's the right product, and better if they'd list what it's missing against the known included list. But that's vendor specific I guess more than anything.

I've had great luck I suppose. I had initially gotten the retail Premium off zipzoom and got gouged (after loving the gimme board). I saw it later pop up on Newegg as an openbox and took a shot. Not a thing was gone and took a bill off the pricetag. Heck, it could be missing everything and as long as the board's there I'd be happy. I have bags and bags of Asus and Abit connections and don't use the WiFi, sound, etc solutions and roll that dice.

In my own use, I have used it for just the hardware as I don't need the fluff in the box, and it's always turned out well. I do believe the price reflects the amount of stuff that's missing though. I see the P5E3 Deluxe in 3 open box price ranges. If someone really needs that sound riser, I wouldn't go for the cheaper of the three. I guess it goes back to shopping etiquette...however fully agree that there should be a bold disclaimer with openbox. In this case of the P5K-E? As long as it's the P5K-E that you get, the price is great!

I do see the vegas gambling that can occur when doing these, and agree with the egg's disclaimer that these are for those in the know. The only close call was in the P5K-E itself where the s775 cover was not on the board. Coulda been bad, but wasn't...the pins where fine.

[One4yu2c]

It can add up to juicy savings for those with both the time and knowledge to test the part within the, what is it, 15 day window? My last open-box purchase was back a few years ago - picked up a 9800 Pro AIW (that's All-In-Wonder for you newer enthusiasts). Got a heckuva deal, and it came with the entire retail package, with most of the goodies still sealed in their respective baggies.

Unfortunately, the card was defective and artifacted right from the get-go. Rather than return it to Newegg and risk losing the retail peripherals, I RMA'd it with ATI, who accepted the return.

But wait, there's more! FedEx somehow managed to lose my package. Do'h, right? Wrong! I purchased insurance for it on the retail pricing, and ended up making a profit on FedEx's SNAFU.

I'm not Harvey, but I am Paul, and now you know the rest of the story.

[MontanaFX]

Moments after reading the previous posts, the delivery guy dropped off my Q6600. I took it out of its little OEM box to have a ganders and i noticed marks on top of the processor. Its blatantly been used before, what a pain.

This week has been effing annoying as far as PC components go. I ordered a Northq 3313 last Friday while I was drunk, thinking it was the 3312 model (Which is much better and costs only £5 more but was/is out of stock). After sending that back, I decided to order a Big Typhoon VX, because it seems to be the best Air cooler ATM (according to some recent benchmarks) Anyways, I took delivery of my Big Typh yesterday only to realise, I had been sent the standard model opposed to the superior VX model. And now this, with the Q6600. Arrhhhhh!! *Turns red*

[drew and not u]

No worries man, every processor I've ever gotten has had some marks on the heat spreader. It's more than likely from when they tested it at the factory to make sure you don't get a DOA unit.

And I had to learn not to order stuff while drunk as well, otherwise you end up with $20 cheeseburgers being delivered...

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by drew and not u

No worries man, every processor I've ever gotten has had some marks on the heat spreader. It's more than likely from when they tested it at the factory to make sure you don't get a DOA unit.

And I had to learn not to order stuff while drunk as well, otherwise you end up with $20 cheeseburgers being delivered...

Dude, if only I was getting cheeseburgers when I'm drunk. Last time I was drunk I was hanging on HL replying to someone about the Scythe Ninja being an alright cooler and saying Capper knew his stuff, that his advices were great. It was pretty wild.

j/k Rich :P


Sorry to hear about your woes though MontanaFX. The original TT Big Typhoon isn't bad however, if you decide to keep it.

[MontanaFX]

Originally Posted by drew and not u

No worries man, every processor I've ever gotten has had some marks on the heat spreader. It's more than likely from when they tested it at the factory to make sure you don't get a DOA unit.

And I had to learn not to order stuff while drunk as well, otherwise you end up with $20 cheeseburgers being delivered...

Mmm cheeseburgers! *In a Homer Simpson voice*

I can accept a few marks, but it was in pretty bad shape. It looked like it had been moved from machine to machine a good few times. Its all good anyway, coz I have a new 1 coming monday and their gonna exchange them at my door.

Originally Posted by polobunny

Sorry to hear about your woes though MontanaFX. The original TT Big Typhoon isn't bad however, if you decide to keep it.

.. I have already posted it back. I wouldn't have felt comfortable with the knowledge, I could have had something better! In the future while overclocking, I'd be thinking, I wonder how much more I could of got out of this processor with the VX.