SPCR

I will be buying a Core 2 Quad in about a month and I'll be needing a new motherboard. After months of indecision, I settled on buying an Intel DP43TF motherboard.

I have two nagging questions before I make the final decision:

1) It's got lots of coils. Will I have problems with coil whine? I browsed through the DG45FC and DG35EC reviews at SPCR, which also have lots of coils, and didn't see any mention of coil whine.

2) There is a tall capacitor near the CPU socket and it has a very tall northbridge heatsink. Does it have enough cleareance for one of the following heatsinks: Scythe Ninja 2, Xigmatek S1283, Thermaltake HR-01?

Please check the pictures at Newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813121351

danielG wrote:I will be buying a Core 2 Quad in about a month and I'll be needing a new motherboard. After months of indecision, I settled on buying an Intel DP43TF motherboard.

I have two nagging questions before I make the final decision:

1) It's got lots of coils. Will I have problems with coil whine? I browsed through the DG45FC and DG35EC reviews at SPCR, which also have lots of coils, and didn't see any mention of coil whine.

2) There is a tall capacitor near the CPU socket and it has a very tall northbridge heatsink. Does it have enough cleareance for one of the following heatsinks: Scythe Ninja 2, Xigmatek S1283, Thermaltake HR-01?

Please check the pictures at Newegg:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813121351

One thing I would suggest is looking at Intel's "Technical Product Specification" document for the board. (found here: http://www.intel.com/support/motherboar ... 029161.htm)

Page 55 shows the VRMs as a "localized high temperature zone" and warns that they must have air flow. A tower heatsink wouldn't do that. I don't know what that means for you.

I'm about ready to give up here. I can't find a motherboard that doesn't suck.

Could someone show me how a VRM looks like? I suspect how it looks like, but I'm not sure.

Would that problem be fixed by applying heatsinks to the VRMs? I have a few spare ones from my Accelero S1. Or should I just splurge on a high end motherboard such as an Asus P5Q-E, which has a lot of stuff I don't need and has a crappier LAN chip? Would those large VRM sinks be better for low airflow? An expensive motherboard eats into my CPU budget.

I don't like Asus. I've had 3 Asus motherboard and they all broke something. My current one has a dead LAN chip and needs to be RMA'ed. Gigabyte motherboards aren't an option, since they only have ACPI 1.0b. I'd like ACPI 3.0.

i feel your pain - no such thing as a perfect motherboard.

i've got recently a p5q-ws (don't ask ) and spent a month trying to figure out why it was booting only one time out of three...

good board otherwise; now that i got it running, it's pretty sweet but, i have no illusions - something will go south at one point or the other.

get the board according to your priorities - seems like you need good networking chip or enough slots to put good network cards in / ACPI 3.0 and power management? - and don't worry about the rest.

oh yah, don't get any board with tall-ish looking sinks pre-installed on the components around the socket if you are planning on getting Xigmatek sinks...

danielG wrote:I'm about ready to give up here. I can't find a motherboard that doesn't suck.

That Intel board might be fine with a tower heatsink. They're probably being conservative in the tech manual.

FuturePastNow wrote: Page 55 shows the VRMs as a "localized high temperature zone" and warns that they must have air flow. A tower heatsink wouldn't do that.

Sure it will if the heatsink has a fan on it, plus the rear case fan will provide airflow. While they do blow down, it's not like Intel's OEM heatsinks really cover the VRM area either.

I have this board, and I've verified that the HR-01 will fit. I haven't heard coil whine but my PC isn't SPCR-level quiet so I might not hear it even if it's there. I don't think I've ever heard coil whine on anything so perhaps I just don't notice it.

Since Core 2 Quads were mentioned, note that the older B3 stepping Q6600 isn't supported on this board due to its higher power requirements:
http://processormatch.intel.com/CompDB/ ... ame=DP43TF

Sorry for the probably too-late reply but I only saw this thread now.