Is Gigabyte EP35-ds3 the way to go?

hiower · Post by **hiower** » Sat Mar 29, 2008 3:45 pm

I am putting together a new system and is getting a D2C E8400 among other things. I was first thinking about getting an Asus P5N-E SLI motherboard, but I've found that the Gigabyte EP35-ds3 is only about 10â‚¬ more expensive, but newer and quite common among people in this forum.

However, I have read here viewtopic.php?t=46239 that there has been some problems with controlling fans? Could someone put it clearly what works and what does not? (using latest bios)

Does anyone have any experience with the asus P5N-E SLI?

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Sun Mar 30, 2008 11:10 am

hiower wrote:Does anyone have any experience with the asus P5N-E SLI?

Not personally but I wouldnâ€™t recommend an SLI board unless you actually require dual VGA card support due to the higher power consumption of these chipsets.
Nvidia chipsets for the Intel platform tend to be a bit slow to support the latest CPUs so make sure you research carefully what the P5N-E SLI supports.

Das_Saunamies · Post by **Das_Saunamies** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 5:04 am

--offtopic
I'm getting a DS3R (appreciate the 6 SATA ports with Intel's controller).

I'm personally fed up with the quality and settings of Asus boards: A7N8X-X had video card bracket and a CPU cooler retention claw break off and my current A8N-E overclocks memory by default, leading to heat and previously instability, plus the chipset fan broke in a few months (this was a pre-SPCR acquisition). Asus customer service was sluggish responding to my queries about the A8N-E's fan - never received official comment on the default +2 MHz overclock, but read in contemporary reviews about the tendency of Asus boards to have tweaked settings so they can beat competition in tests. Switched PSU, sold a pair of OCZ overclocking memory sticks and RMA'd two perfectly good Kingston sticks, just to confirm it was the mobo that refused to play nice.

Gigabyte advertises - and has a reputation for - quality boards with long-life components, good compatibility, extensive testing (see their memory listing and compare to nothing by Asus), better customer care and a more enlightened attitude in general towards computing, from power control phases to environment to warranties.
--/offtopic

What I gathered from the reports in that thread, you get control for two fans on a basic DS3.

fwki · Post by **fwki** » Mon Mar 31, 2008 6:47 am

I concur with Das about Asus' slippage and now I am on to Gigabyte. Asus burned me with the N4L-VM and customer support is so bad that flame artists use their forums for practice.

This weekend I completed a Q9450 build with the Gigabyte DS3L Rev2...successful POST first try, flashed BIOS from USB no problem, installed XP MCE and updated all drivers from Gigabyte website, successful all-night memtest on A-data 2x2 GB. The BIOS defaults were all correct and we'll see about Prime95 stability and temps later this week after the AS5 cures.

hiower · Post by **hiower** » Tue Apr 01, 2008 1:17 am

Thank you very much for your feedback. I ditched the asus motherboard.

JVM · Post by **JVM** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 9:54 am

fwki wrote:I concur with Das about Asus' slippage and now I am on to Gigabyte. Asus burned me with the N4L-VM and customer support is so bad that flame artists use their forums for practice.

This weekend I completed a Q9450 build with the Gigabyte DS3L Rev2...successful POST first try, flashed BIOS from USB no problem, installed XP MCE and updated all drivers from Gigabyte website, successful all-night memtest on A-data 2x2 GB. The BIOS defaults were all correct and we'll see about Prime95 stability and temps later this week after the AS5 cures.

How many fans/fan headers/fan sensors on that board can be read by a utility like Hmonitor or Speedfan?

Greg F. · Post by **Greg F.** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 12:29 pm

http://www.dfi.com.tw/Product/xx_produc ... LP&SITE=NA

You might consider this board before you buy. three fan headers, six SATA, etc. etc. I mean, I'm just sayin'

fwki · Post by **fwki** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 1:49 pm

JVM wrote:How many fans/fan headers/fan sensors on that board can be read by a utility like Hmonitor or Speedfan?

Funny you should ask because right now I am trying to figure how to get Speedfan to make sense. It's monitoring two fans but giving me crazy speeds in the hundreds of thousands rpm. The MB has 2 four-pin and 2 three-pin headers. I am using the four-pin headers with three-pin fans hoping to control them with Speedfan. This thread implies it should work: viewtopic.php?t=46239&highlight=gap35ds3l

I'll post an update if I get it working right.....my eyes are going fast, so it could be my pin placement.

Is Gigabyte EP35-ds3 the way to go?

Is Gigabyte EP35-ds3 the way to go?

Re: Is Gigabyte EP35-ds3 the way to go?

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