Buying Advice

[xheathen]

Hi all,

I was hoping to run a build by anyone experienced in using components and ask for some help deciding on others. I'm not 100% sure how compatible the motherboard is but it sounded like some others had mentioned it should be.

i5 2500 (Sandy Bridge) - I have this already so it made sense to use it.
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-I Deluxe (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131840)
Case: BitFenix Prodigy (mini ITX)
Video: Asus GeForce GT 520 2gb (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121557)
Memory: 16gb Corsair Vengence 1600 DDR3
Corsair 480 PSU
Drives: Western Digital 640gb Black SATA HDD | Samsung 128gb SATA III SSD (my planned boot drive)

Not looking for a monster, just a good work machine for my office.

I was wondering how the motherboard looked. I was thinking of going with the Gigabyte boards but all the reviews seem pretty clear fail rate is high. Will this motherboard work? Or should I just go with the Gigabyte ones?

Thanks!

 

[Jamesbond007]

Hi all,

I was hoping to run a build by anyone experienced in using components and ask for some help deciding on others. I'm not 100% sure how compatible the motherboard is but it sounded like some others had mentioned it should be.

i5 2500 (Sandy Bridge) - I have this already so it made sense to use it.
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-I Deluxe (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131840)
Case: BitFenix Prodigy (mini ITX)
Video: Asus GeForce GT 520 2gb (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121557)
Memory: 16gb Corsair Vengence 1600 DDR3
Corsair 480 PSU
Drives: Western Digital 640gb Black SATA HDD | Samsung 128gb SATA III SSD (my planned boot drive)

Not looking for a monster, just a good work machine for my office.

I was wondering how the motherboard looked. I was thinking of going with the Gigabyte boards but all the reviews seem pretty clear fail rate is high. Will this motherboard work? Or should I just go with the Gigabyte ones?

Thanks!

I am not sure where you got the impression that Gigabyte motherboards have a high failure rate. I think the existence of this board recommending Gigabyte motherboards is evidence enough to show Gigabyte motherboards are quite reliable. I only bought Gigabyte motherboards in the past few years and every single one of them is still working.

However, if what you want or need is an ITX motherboard, then Gigabyte at present does not have a lot of options.

If you can accept mATX or ATX then I believe Gigabyte motherboards are still the best for use with OSX.

 

[xheathen]

The two that I looked at on the Mini build were:

Gigabyte
GA-H67N-USB3-B3

Gigabyte
GA-H61N-USB3

The top one isn't offered any more by either NewEgg or Amazon, and just looking at the reviews it's 50/50 between failed board and awesome board I know reviews are not the end all, but it was a cause of concern seeing so many with bad boards.

Does that mean the Asus is a poor choice and I really should just plan on using the GA-H61N?

 

[SMHI]

Audio and network works. Wifi and bluetooth is another story. This is what I had read in the forum.

The integrated 4000 GPU will be supported. It seems that Mac OS X v10.8 will be the big step for Ivy Bridge and fully integrated support for 4000 GPU. You do not need to get a extra graphics card in I think max one month when 10.8 is released.

H61 and H67 boards are Sandy Bridge boards. I would recommend a Ivy Bridge board because it has integrated USB3 support in chipset = Less problem. I have a machine with GA-H57M-USB3 board and I had a external USB3 sound card that I had problem with on this extra chip USB3 ports that locked the machine when the card was disconnected from the machine.

 

[Going Bald]

Intel® Socket 1155 for 3rd/2nd Generation Core™ i7/Core™ i5/Core™ i3/Pentium®/Celeron® Processors
Supports Intel® 22 nm CPU
Supports Intel® 32 nm CPU

The board will support the 2500 cpu with no problem.
It is a nice little board.
First con: The wifi/BT card is unsupported and won't work
Work-around for con: you can replace it with an Atheros AR9280 - http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dl ... 157wt_1026
According to toleda it shows up as an airport card, same as the card in his MBP in system profiler.
Second con: The MSR is locked in the BIOS, (there are people working on a fix for this, but nothing yet) - therefore, no native speedstep or sleep.
Work-around for con: You can use NullAICPUPM or the latest patched AICPUPM for 10.7.4 from MultiBeast. Just be aware that it will need re-patching or replaced with NullAICPUPM before you update to 10.7.5.

 

[telzion]

Toshiba laptop model P755 S5385? great price 649. so I tried the retail snow leopard install since i have the dvd and spare HD wont up date even with sandy bridge update helper but will boot with iboot cd and thats a start what now ???

Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM Processor
o 2.2 GHz (3.1 GHz with Turbo Boost Technology), 6MB L3 Cache
? Mobile Intel® HM65 Express Chipset
? Mobile Intel® HD graphics with 64MB-1696MB shared graphics memory

 

[ayng]

awesome choice for a case btw. the bitfenix prodigy is a slick looking mini case.