Hi guys, need your help this time. I just bought myself an I5 2500K. However, i still haven't buy a motherboard yet coz i dunno which one to pick.I dun wan regret later since P67 boards are so freakin expensive. I'm aiming to run 4.5ghz 24/7 settings. I've shortlisted a few mobo in my mind and yet i've difficulty on choosing the one.Please dont suggest me MSI mobo, i had a bad experience with them during my pentium 4 days.

Gigabyte P67-UD3
Asus P8P67

I dun need many features of the mobo, just need it to have good OC capabilties and the EFI bios is not important for me (i'm not going to meddle with it everyday ). I only need to operate 1 GC with the mobo, SLI /CFX capability is just optional. The motherboard must have enough clearance for my Xigmatek S1283 cooler. Btw, any shop in LYP sells the crossbow kit for it (for LGA1156)?? (the bolt-on kit, instead of using intel push-pin)

Please advise on the pros and cons of both the motherboards. I only noe the asus has 12 digital power phase but i cant find any info abt the gigabyte one.

RM690

i already checked their website. If you compare ud3p and ud3, it only stated that ud3p has 12 phase power design but did not mention anything about ud3

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Added on January 9, 2011, 7:13 pmDont take the Asus LE version, not worth it, non LE only RM599 but 12 phase power vs LE is 4 phase power design.
Refer here

The Asus you listed there should be same cfx speed as gigabyte since the more expensive non LE version also 16x/4x

This post has been edited by k!nex: Jan 9 2011, 07:17 PM

http://support.asus.com/download/download....SLanguage=en-us <---dis is for P8P67Pro , you browse for your own Deluxe BIOS.

You go download the version 1053 Beta BIOS from this site. Go figure out your way to update the BIOS,i update it though EZFlash inside the BIOS itself. You have many options on the way to update the BIOS, reading the motherboard manual will do.

I too have a problem with the original BIOS that came with the board. I update BIOS then ok already , the multi can go higher. Remember 1 thing from Asus. In order for you to overclock your K proc, Turbo Mode must be enabled!!!! You off Turbo Mode, you disabled your OC capability. Speedstep can off.

To test whether you have successfully OC your proc , launch CPU-Z and look at the frequency (but disable SpeedStep first)

This post has been edited by k!nex: Jan 18 2011, 02:47 PM

This happens coz the board already out in the market last year. I remember the original bios was dated in september 2010 .
Idle around 40C , load with Intel Burn Test around 66C. Speedstep disabled.

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Added on January 18, 2011, 4:36 pmYou may try your luck. However, as we're early adopters, dont go above 1.58V with your RAM voltage as intel recommend RAM voltage should be 1.5V +-5%. Your CPU PLL better keep at 1.8V. Wait for other westerners to try first

I think if you cant POST if set RAM too high, you can reset it by pressing the MemOK! button near your RAM slots right?

Inside the UEFI BIOS, there is EZFlash, you can flash your BIOS from there, it can read the BIOS update file from your HDD.Make sure your system is stable/stock clocks when you doing it.

This post has been edited by k!nex: Jan 18 2011, 04:36 PM

It's just like Core2Duo E8400 few years ago. Demand too high till everyone no stock because it was a good Overclocker especially the E0 revision. In the end, the price go up till RM800 matching/equals to the price of the quad core Q6600 though E8400 is only a dual core.

i dont think intel will raise the price of processors, so far never happen before. Only the distributors/dealers will raise price to take advantage of the high demand.

My i5-2500K idle around 38C . Load below 63C . Mine is overclocked though.

It wont have any difference than the quads unless the software developers make heavily threaded software to make use of the 5th and 6th core.

Look at this 2600k vs 3960X. 2600k is still so damm strong against the 6 core 3960X in games.

This post has been edited by k!nex: Sep 14 2011, 03:17 PM

I dont get it. What PCI-E 3.0 got to do with the Z77 chipset. Supposingly its the processor itself which determines whether it supports PCI-E 3.0 or not, which Intel clearly says it will support. Then its up to the motherboard manufacturer designs to enable PCI-E 3.0. What the people is looking for is native Thunderbolt support for the laptop market as what Apple did with this year's MacBookPro and native USB 3.0 support. Intel didn't mention anything about having more SATA 3 ports for new chipset. Come on Intel, AMD has done it with 990FX chipset

If Thunderbolt is appearing in most 14 and 15 inchers, then external graphic card using ViDock can better make use of them. Using desktop class GPU on a mobile platform is so brutal for small resolution screen

This post has been edited by k!nex: Nov 20 2011, 03:07 AM