Proposed Sandy Bay Build - Any Comments before I press go?

[Catbert6]

Hi all - I have been monitoring the development of Sandy Bay builds and think it is time to go (plus its my birthday - always a good reason to buy myself a present!). The following has been put together as a mATX build, for WoW, Aperture, video conversion, etc:

Lian Li PC-A04
Gigabyte GA-H67MA-D2H-B3 Mini-ITX Motherboard
Intel Core i5 2500K
Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD5770 Ultra Durable 1GB
Seasonic M12II 520W Modular PSU
Sony AD7240SGB 24X SATA DVDRW OEM
G.Skill Ripjaws F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3
Noctua NH-C12P SE14
Maxtor 3H500F0 x 2


Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Bob

 

[Rankel]

Nice choice on the cpu cooler and psu! haha. The only possible substitution I would consider is the mobo. not that there is anything wrong with it but the Asus P8P67 is having the best luck with sandy bridge at the moment. the P8P67-M pro would be ideal as a replacement for your gigabyte board.

 

[Catbert6]

... the only possible substitution I would consider is the mobo ... the Asus P8P67 is having the best luck with sandy bridge at the moment ... the P8P67-M pro would be ideal as a replacement for your gigabyte board.

Any other views on GA-H67MA-D2H v. P8P67-M?

There appear to be a number of significant differences:

ASUS pros: Supports over-clocking, faster FSB (2133 v. 1333), extra PCIe x 16 slot, 2 extra eSATA headers (7 v. 5), Firewire 400, 2 extra fan headers, 2 extra memory slots (max 32GB v. 16 GB).

Gigabyte pros: on-board graphics are possible, AU$50 cheaper.

Different audio chipsets are used, but the LAN controller is the same.

I have seen a few people on the boards having problems with the ASUS, but that may be because more people are using it.

Anything else I should take into account?

 

[nikzGfx]

If you are going for the H67 board you won't be able to overclock the K series of CPUs which are for overclocking, the H series allow to use the onboard GPU on the chip and has features like QuickSync, the P series allows you to use the K series of CPUs which are made for the P boards for overclocking and you loose the onboard video.

 

[Catbert6]

Different audio chipsets are used

Any views on this issue? The ASUS uses ALC892, for which there is a beta enablerhttp://www.tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?t=14725 that works for some but not all, while the Gigabyte uses ALC889 for which there seems to be more established support

 

[Rankel]

Different audio chipsets are used

Any views on this issue? The ASUS uses ALC892, for which there is a beta enablerhttp://www.tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?t=14725 that works for some but not all, while the Gigabyte uses ALC889 for which there seems to be more established support

I think there isn't much in the way of audio trouble with that board. Ill do a sweep of the forums to check it out a little better though, so don't take my word for it yet.