I'm considering either the DQ6 or the P5B / P5W Deluxe for a new conroe build, and since its been about 6 years since my last build, I'm not quite sure what kind of bios fan control is offered by each.
Ideally I would like my fans to be controlled by the bios based on temperature. Which option would be better - Gigabyte of Asus, or would they both offer pretty much the same options?
Gigabyte or Asus for new Conroe build
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I had a DQ6 for a few days, and was very disappointed in the BIOS features: they are all aimed at overvolting and overclocking, and there wasn't any provision for undervolting the CPU or DRAM or fiddling with DRAM timing. It had decent fan control in the BIOS, but no knobs.
I now have a P5W DH Deluxe, and am happier with the feature set. It also has BIOS fan control, but very few knobs (silent/optimal/performance switch with no fine control). The silent settings work ok, although the Scythe fan I currently have on the CPU has trouble starting.
SpeedFan provides much better functionality for fan control than the BIOS does. The P5W DH has five headers in three groups that can be individually controlled based on the CPU and MB (south bridge) temperature.
A word of warning about the 965P boards (DS3, DQ6 and P5B): there are no DRAM control knobs other than voltage. It selects the highest clock rate from the SPD; the SPD settings are very conservative. My G.Skill memory would be a waste of money on any of these boards.
The P5W DH has a 975X which allows DRAM control, undervolting, and also supports Crossfire (if you care about that).
I suggest you go to the manufacturer sites (easy to link through Newegg) and download the manuals. They have all the BIOS screens in them.
I now have a P5W DH Deluxe, and am happier with the feature set. It also has BIOS fan control, but very few knobs (silent/optimal/performance switch with no fine control). The silent settings work ok, although the Scythe fan I currently have on the CPU has trouble starting.
SpeedFan provides much better functionality for fan control than the BIOS does. The P5W DH has five headers in three groups that can be individually controlled based on the CPU and MB (south bridge) temperature.
A word of warning about the 965P boards (DS3, DQ6 and P5B): there are no DRAM control knobs other than voltage. It selects the highest clock rate from the SPD; the SPD settings are very conservative. My G.Skill memory would be a waste of money on any of these boards.
The P5W DH has a 975X which allows DRAM control, undervolting, and also supports Crossfire (if you care about that).
I suggest you go to the manufacturer sites (easy to link through Newegg) and download the manuals. They have all the BIOS screens in them.
I have the P5B Deluxe, which is a pretty good board, if you don't care about SLI/Crossfire. I think there are several options, such as Q-fan to control fan speeds, though I haven't played around with it much yet. However, if you feel the need to have the SLI setup, I would wait a few weeks for the Nforce 5 570/590 SLI boards to start showing up from Asus and other manufacturers.