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 Electronics : EVGA 132-CK-NF78-A1 nForce 780i SLI 3xPCI-Express x16 PCI-Express 2.0 Socket 775 A1 Version Motherboard |
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Rating:  - EVGA 780i SLI motherboard
This is my first Intel build in many years. For the past few, I was an AMD fan, living on ASUS mobo's. I am impressed with EVGA, i'll be shopping for their videocards next. The mobo was packaged nice and neat. It came with every accessory and cable I could want or need. The round IDE cables were a nice touch, not to mention LOCKING SATA cables. I had purchased my own round IDE on my last build and spend probably $50 in addition to a $250 ASUS mobo, which had only plain non-locking SATA. Now for less than $250, I get a much nicer mobo, with a cleaner, more sensible layout, and incredibly nice cables to go with it. Vista64 home premium SP1 install to RAID O+1 array with 4 80GB SATA2 drives was flawless and without any incident. I had run RAID 0+1 on my two previous ASUS boards and they gave me nothing but grief and dropped drives every day. The EVGA might have dropped a drive 2x in last 2 months, which auto rebuilt within minutes anyway. This was my first serious overclock machine too, and I (read NOOB) was able to easily hit 3.0GHZ on an aircooled Q6600 that runs 2.4GHz stock. It's fast, clean and quiet, i can't wait to get my hands on some other EVGA products. I highly recommend this motherboard.
Rating: - Highly rec.
This is the best product out there far way better than asus card for a lower price, tech support is great, strongly rec. to everyone.
Rating:  - Wow... Hope you get lucky if you buy this board
Well let me start by saying you really need to be lucky to get this board stable. I RMA'd 3 times before I got one that even booted up past the FF error. After that, I can only overclock my Q6600 to 2.7ghz. And that's with an OCZ Vendetta 2 heatsink. Be smart people, if you're looking to overclock, do your research. DFI is the next board company I'll be purchasing from. Seems they're the board of choice.
Rating:  - A Short Summary
[...] This board is one of the best due to memory options for DDR2. Overclocking is extremely simple to set up. Memory changes are pretty stable. The board has Tri-Sli capability but there doesnt seem to be much need for it. If you want a high end system, this board is essential. It is one of the few boards able to run ddr2 at its highest settings while running the latest processors.
Now for the bad. The board does have a few flaws. From what I understand, Foxconn makes all of the boards. The first board I received had a problem with the SM Bus Controller. once the drivers were installed it would blue screen upon reboot. It had also experienced the 'Rainbow Artifact' problem some people have experienced. All 3D applications and videos would scramble making running them impossible. Within a few minutes, the system would blue screen. I spoke with EVGA and had a new board RMA'd within 2 weeks with normal shipping both ways. EVGA has great customer service, but lack on the technical expertise. The new board has been running smooth for a few weeks now. No Artifacts have come up on the new board. The MCP runs extremely hot and blows directly towards the Pci/PciE slots. It is forcing my 9800GTX to run very hot (around 60c). It would run the system fine with a lower card, but if you have a high end card it will heat up very fast.
Rating: - Very Pleased
This replaced an Asus M2N32-SLI 680i that croaked after I added a 2nd EVGA 8800GT. I haven't noticed the heatsink fan blowing on the graphics cards being a problem, but I have a Thermaltake CL-G0102 VGA Cooler on each one. I have 5 drives and 2 opticals running off this board & no problems whatsoever (so far; it's about 2 months old). It handles my Q6600 just fine, and the 4 gigs of Corsair Dominator ram. CPU & board temps idle at around 37C & <48C on Crysis at full resolution & options @1067 FSB. I took off a star only because the floppy port's dead; I don't even get a post when it's connected (3 floppy/cable combos tried) but I rarely use a floppy anyway. I haven't OC'd it yet but the BIOS has all the capability if I tried it. Good board!
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