MATX motherboard recommendations

[Philip]

I have been having some trouble with a new build I recently did on a C2Quad system. Anton has been very gracious with his time over the weekend and helped guide me to narrow down the problem. It appears the Motherboard has something wrong internally. WHen I playback a timeline it will drag every minute or so for a second or two. I even put a sound card in it and disabled on board audio and it didn't fix the issue. I also tried playback from Windows Media Player and the same thing happened with regular audio files. This tells me it is unrelated to Edius.

Anyone have a good recommendation on a Micro ATX motherboard. THis build was in a SFF case that people take to Lan Parties. I wanted something portable but better than a laptop. Full motherboards will not work. THey have to be the MATX form factor.

I initially wanted the Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R but it appears to be out of production and out of stock. I ended up with an ASUS P5E VM-DO. I was attracted to these MBs because of the 6 SATA connectors and the rear panel FW connector.

For the new motherboard I would like at least 4 SATA connectors (more is better though), and the ability for 4 RAM sticks for future upgrade to 4GB or 8GB or RAM. I can do without the rear panel FW as long as there is the ability to plug a cases front panel FW connector on the MB. I see a few out there that just don't excite me much. The Gigabyte was supposed to be a pretty sweet one but they are gone.

Thanks for any recommendations.

[antonsvideo]

I find the Intel very good, and they are Edius approved

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz 8Mb CPU
Intel D975XBXL2KR ATX Aud Gig Firewire Motherboard
Macase KA380BAH 500W 2 fans Case
2Gb (2 x 1Gb) DDR2 667MHz RAM
Nvidia 7600GT 256Mb PCI Express Video Card

[Philip]

I find the Intel very good, and they are Edius approved

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz 8Mb CPU
Intel D975XBXL2KR ATX Aud Gig Firewire Motherboard
Macase KA380BAH 500W 2 fans Case
2Gb (2 x 1Gb) DDR2 667MHz RAM
Nvidia 7600GT 256Mb PCI Express Video Card

But is it a MATX form factor to fit in one of these cases.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133035

I need the MATX size for this build.

[antonsvideo]

they do have many MATX boards

http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/motherboard/index.htm?iid=mbd_body+dt_all

I never tried MicroATX board so I can't be sure

[Lazerus]

How bad do you need the board?

http://www.epctechuk.com/components/motherboards/intel-motherboards/lga775-/gigabyte-ga-g33m-ds2r-.html

£55.00 in the UK and this is not inshort supply..........

[Philip]

How bad do you need the board?

http://www.epctechuk.com/components/motherboards/intel-motherboards/lga775-/gigabyte-ga-g33m-ds2r-.html

£55.00 in the UK and this is not inshort supply..........

Well the shipping from UK would probably make it a much more expensive proposition and would take much longer to arrive. I tried the check out to see how much shipping would be and it appears they wouldn't ship to US anyway.

[GrassValley_BH]

MicroATX is always tricky because of the lack of slots and limited power supply in SFF cases.

[Philip]

MicroATX is always tricky because of the lack of slots and limited power supply in SFF cases.

The fact I don't need an NX board installed makes it much easier. :-) I got a Thermaltake LanBox case that holds a full size power supply and I put a 500W Thermaltake PS in it. Pretty decent quality....not top end but far from $30 cheapos that weigh about one pound. The Thermaltake SFF boxes are pretty sweet setups with full modular construction so building it is easy. They are quiet and have plenty of cooling fans front and back that aren't noisy. When I had it on I could barely hear it compared to my big AMD X2 system that sounds like a plane taking off. I wanted to get an Intel board like Anton recommended but all the reviews I read about them mentioned some AHCI drivers were a pain to get initialized so it would read SATA drives. I didn't want to deal with all that.

I ended up replacing my bad one with an MSI board that I had already built a system with for a webcasting machine. It worked great in there and has all the capabilities I wanted in this machine. Here is the board I got.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130120

Some reviews said the onboard Lan and drivers are bad which is ok since I will be using a wireless USB connection for the few times I need internet. There were a few complaints about sound being a little flaky but I have a sound card to install. Other than that the reviews seem pretty favorable. The fact I have already built one machine around this MB makes it easier as I already trust it. I did some extensive editing of an HQ project on the other one and it worked great so I trust it. With a Quad processor it should be pretty good.