Asus P5Q-pro has one big mistake in silent enthusiast perspective, whiel chasiss 3-pin fans can be controlled by bios, the CPU header cannot be controlled unless you're using 4-pin PMW fan. It has no control over 3-pin fan, which sounds bit... odd.

*sighs* Damn xigmatek fan attachment, now I have to remove motherboard simply changing S-flex into Kama-PMW

With my ASUS P5K WS, I can set CPU fan type from PWM to DC and then control fan speed from BIOS. So sounds like a BIOS issue or you missed this option (is there something like this?)

After I put Q-fan enabled in P5Q-Pro and I updated latest BIOS. I get CPU Q-fan: Enabled, Disabled
Enabled-> Standard - Silent -> Turbo

and then next option is Q-fan for Chassis.

I know P5K has the DC / PMW control. Gigabyte boards too have. But not P5Q-Pro. It seems its basic complain for P5Q-series that only CPU fan bios can control is PMW fan and both chassis fans it controls same time dropping both voltages.

But its minor detail which can be corrected with Resistor or getting PMW-fan.

Not sure if it helps anything, but have you tried modded BIOS from XtremeSystems?

No i haven't. I am not sure if its worth of the risk. Kama PMW is around 15€'s so its not that bad price... after all I "needed" new 120mm fan anyway ^^

How about electro-mechanical noise from inductors or other onboard components? My Gigabyte GA-P965-DS4 rev 1.0 has a beeping noise 50% of the time it is on, and a several different chirping noises when i run prime 95 blend mode torture test. My father have a AOPEN I965GMT-LA that chirps when i roll the mouse over the start menu computer, documents, music etc semi transparent links .

For what its worth, in the legacy pentium four section...

I have found the 875p socket 478 with a prescott, and 4 gb of ram to be some kinda miraculous with windows 7..this march 2010.

skip right over vista if you have the last of the big agp vid card installed...mine was riddled with goofy mistakes and ram usage. It was the ati 3650 with vista.

3 rd os, 5th year...and better than ever. the fans need nothing but a monitor. power regulation all functions faultless in windows 7.

I mention this,as I just repiared a machine with a new retail 865 chipset, onboard graphic, socket 478 with vista premium..the last xpdm graphics driver available to it, by oe install. that too...is better than ever.

live and learn patiently.

How about an update for socket 1155 motherboards? Thanks

i somehow doubt that there's tons of experience with them yet.

Hi,

Nothing much posted since 2010 so could anyone reccommend a current range?

I have been looking at Gigabyte GA X58 USB3 (~£140 on amazon) and Gigabyte GA EX58 UD5 (~£400 on amazon).

These two boards are vastly different in price - can anyone comment on either from the point of view of building a silent PC - or recommend one. (I am going to use an i7 CPU and 2000mHz RAM with Win7 64bit).

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Andrew.

The Asus Sabertooth TUF X58 Motherboard from sources such as http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-sabertooth-tuf-x58-intel-x58-s1366-pci-e-20-ddr3-1866mhz-usb3-sata-6gb-s-sata-raid-atx should be on your list. True, memory speed is limited to 1866 but I suspect the 1866/2000 difference in real terms is slight. The Sabertooth TUF X58 features the Asus BIOS fan speed controls which include a number of pre-set profiles including Silent. It also has a number of constructional features which should aid silence such as "....TUF Chokes, also known as, 'Alloy Choke', is made of a compound of various types of metal instead of standard iron. This enables the support of up to a massive 40A rated current, 25% higher than a conventional component. Furthermore, the single piece packaging also eliminates the emission of vibration noise....".

Is this thread really deadsville, or the site as a whole?

I'm surprised no real updates on recommended MB's for about two years.

It's not dead but I would add a few points.

It's pretty rare to find a mobo with a heatsink fan nowadays most have passive cooling and I can't say I've had any concerns with recent boards I have used (AMD or Intel based)
There were some issues a few years back with in particular (but not exclusively) Asus boards only supporting PWM fans and not voltage control. This appears to have been sorted out Gigabyte have been offering PWM and Voltage controls for some time now and I belive Asrock should not cause any concerns either. I can't comment on MSI because I've not used one of their boards for some time. Last I looked I think they're not supporting Voltage control for 3 pin CPU fans but I could be wrong.

In any case I would suggest checking the user manual for a board model you are considering using to check and see what the PWM/Voltage or smart fan control situation is.

Most recent boards I have used have very low profile heatsinks on the southbridge (so no problems with larger graphics cards) Northbridge seems to have got larger heatsink wise but not to the point where I've found problems with coolers I have used. Again if you're using a very big CPU cooler you'll want to check that out.

I'd like to see this too.