Hey thanks for the info decided to go with this mobo and a 8800 GTS from EVGA I think it will do the job for awhile since im building this system for a friend I dont know if he'll do SLI right now since you cant run dual monitors in SLI or so I've heard (Please let me know if this is correct).

Thanks again

I am interested in overclocking software other than what comes with the mobo to overclock vid card. I've read that you can do 4ghz on the 8400 easy with air cooling since Im running water cooling mabe I could push it even more let me know what you think thanks.

Nice write up Jim.

Shame about the OC results...no shock tbh tho.

I am interested in overclocking software other than what comes with the mobo to overclock vid card. I've read that you can do 4ghz on the 8400 easy with air cooling since Im running water cooling mabe I could push it even more let me know what you think thanks.

For the graphics card I would suggest:

Rivatuner

and

ATI Tool

For the cpu, no overclock is guaranteed so you just have to try it and see. From what I've seen, people are getting 4ghz on that chip, as you've got a 9 times multiplier it seems pretty obtainable.
Hope thats some help.
Cheers!

I like the reviews, but I'm just curious: why would you benchmark an nvidia chipset using an ATI card? I can think of arguments which make sense for using the same card for every test, but it also makes sense to me to use an Nvidia card with similar specs to the ATI one. Also, because it's a PCIe 2.0 supporting board, why not use a GeForce with the same specs but with 2.0 enabled, so we can see what the actual difference is?

Anyway, just my two cents.

Well i got everything put together and started her up and the north bridge fried its self before i could instal an OS anyone else have this problem because I've read reviews that it's been happening on 1 out of 6 boards. Should get new board tomorrow guess I'll have to get all of my 7 fans running before I start up.

Let me know if anyones had the same problems.

should of waited for the 790I oh well its only money.

thanks

If it fried itself you can RMA, just contact your retailer.

Yeah I sent it back I guess I was wondering if I should check anything before I start it up for the first time. A buddy of mine said that the heat sink could have poped off the chipset. Who knows.

Well got the second one back from zipzoom and it ran for awhile but then it basicly craped out. SO BACK IT WENT. I got the evga 780i board and it runs fine. GO FIGURE!!!.

Please dont by this board its crap!!! :cussing::cussing:you'll be lucky if it works wait for the 790i to come out this summer sound like a big improvment.

...wait for the 790i to come out this summer sound like a big improvment.

Bad luck on your run with the motherboard mate, that would be frustrating.

I just pity the people who bought the 780i or 790i (when it comes) to have it made somewhat obsolete by Intel's next offering for Nehalem (on-die memory controller). I think the 790i will only be offering a slight increase in speed over the 780i and the emergence of DDR3 support which is nothing revolutionary. I may be wrong however.

I think a 780i motherboard, a 45nm proc, some fast DDR2 1066Mhz RAM or faster and a couple of decent gfx cards (if you have to have SLI); your system will hang right in there with the 790i systems of the near future.

hey cillinjim.. you still here? I know it was a long time ago when you asked if anyone else had experienced a NorthBridge frying before they got windows installed and it happened to me last thursday 02-04-2010 with a MSI X58 Eclipse. the board started rebooting before windows got 50% installed... on about the third reboot I went into bios and saw a 89 Deg C Temp on the N Bridge. so, I bought two active coolers for the N and S bridge at frys electronics the next day and it was too late.. the only thing the board will do now is a continuous reboot without even getting into POST.

I had assembled another MSI X58 Pro for my chiropractor pal for his office barely a week earlier and he had complained last tuesday that it seemed even slower than the 4 year old machine I replaced... so I went over there yesterday and did a reboot into the bios hardware monitor and it displayed a 76 deg C temp on the northbridge after 15 minutes idling on the bios page. I am sure it is higher than that when it is processing a digital xray ... answering a fax, communicating with the patient files on the server, and printing a report all at the same time. I am surprisd it is not fried yet too. tomorrow I am going toput artic silver under the stock chipset sinks until the active onesshow up in the mail about wed I hope.

when I took the N Bridge cooler off of the fried one here at my house it had zero paste betwen the cooler and the chip, as it was all squished outside the periphery of the flip chip core, and the paste was so dried and hard that when I chiseled it off with a razor knife it made powder...

MSI gtold me there is no known problems with their heat sinks installs but when I searched I found many pages explaining the exact same issue with MIS X58 boards and sveral with pics. I also took pics and will be putting the whole story on my youtube page in a few days.

one thing I hoped toget fromyou chillin jim was a url to any of the reports youfound describing the high N Bridge failure rates ?? if I show enough of this to my chiropractor pal I might get to do the systems for his other machines still

regards... Tom in dallas