I'm planning to upgrade my htpc. The new one will be build around a E4300 or perhaps E4400 with 2 gb of A-tech ram (price being an issue). The gpu wil properly be a 7600 GT because of the purevideo functions. The machine is build for vista and HD. If I oc the 4300 it should run HD fine, but the 7600 GT will need to be upgraded, maybe to the 8300 that is rumored to come out later this year, and hopefully is capable of handeling full hd. But that is a different story.

So far I have narrowed it down to a P965 based mobo, as these seems to be resonably priced and still can oc the 4300. I would need at least three fan headers. The rest doesn't really matter all that mouch I guess.

P965 based:
ABIT AB9 - DKK910
ABIT IB9 - DKK860
ASUS P5B AiLifestyle Series - DKK950
ASUS P5B-E AiLifestyle Series - DKK1030
Biostar T-series TForce 965PT - DK920
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 - DKK970 (The gigabyte only sports 2 fan headers as I understand)
Gigabyte GA-965G-DS3 - DKK965 (cheaper than the above with onboard graphics...maybe worth to consider)
MSI P965 Neo-F -DKK835

Nvidia 650I based:
ASUS P5N-E SLI - DKK860

Any experience/recomendations with these boards? I haven't checked them for NB-fans and the like...

Rgds.
/Schroinx

After some hours of research, I came up with the answer. The Asus P5B-E seems to be the best choice. It oc very well and enough of its many fanheaders work with speedfan.

Rgds.
/Schroinx

You should also consider the Abit AB9. Its µGuru-utility is great for overclocking and fan control.

As far as I can see, the Abit boards have minor problems and also does not sport enough fan headers.

Rgds.
/Schroinx

I can't find any consistent information about speedfan supports P5B-E or not. Any one who can confirm this?

Rgds.
/Schroinx

Hi, I just got a P5B-E plus (black PCB version) and SpeedFan (4.31) works with it fine. There are (I think) 3 fan header and the CPU fan header. The CPU fan header is 4 pin (PWM) and I'm not sure if it will control a 3 pin fan, can check if you like. The other thing to watch out for is that all the case fan headers are on the same speed control circuit, ie they all receive the same %speed. The CPU is on separate speed control circuit. The BIOS "silent" fan control profile seamed good for CPU fan but only brought case fans down to ~50% (too fast in my case)
SpeedFan can set any % I like, case fans (Noctua 80mm) stop below 35%.
Not sure how far the P5B-E over-clocks, pretty good I believe but there is talk of newer revision (G???) that's better still, I've had my E6600 / P5B-E Plus up to 3.6GHz (400 x 9) and 3.5GHz (7 x 500) so far!
Hope this helps, Seb

Hi,

It helps very much indeed! Thx.

There does not seem to be much difference between the plus and non-plu version except the pcb color and polymer capacitors, and good knows that the non-plus is fugly as hell. But then again, once in the box I'm not the one to look at it. Have had a few asus boards and never a problem with the capacitors. My CUSL runs steady as a rock in my file server.

Can't find any info on the revision. The 1.01 and 1.02 should perform alike as far as I know.

Rgds.
/Schroinx