Motherboards and PSU's oh my!

[nath]

So my dad has me building a new office pc for him. No biggy, but there's two fairly substantial gaps in my knowledge when it comes to hardware. Motherboards and PSU's.

Firstly, motherboards. Ffs there are so bloody many of them! How the hell do I decide which to get? I started aiming for an Asus P5 something, given that I've got a P5b deluxe and was very happy with it, but beyond that I've no clue. Any advice appreciated.

PSU's: what's a good wattage and manufacturer to go for? I'll be going for a quad core intel processor and since he uses SolidWorks (a 3d cad program) an Nvidia Quadro. I was thinking something in the region of 600watts. Is that enough? Too much?

Finally, on the quadro front - I don't suppose anyone knows about them and how they compare to the standard gamer range. I know it used to be that they were exactly the same cards, just with one bit soldered slightly differently to tell the chip to claim it's one or the other, but it doesn't seem that way now.

Thanks in advance!

 

[kirennia]

As an office PC, I presume you wont be getting a powerful graphics card so the wattage for your PSU can be lowered some; unless that is, you'll be thinking of getting said graphics card later on... future proofing yourself and all that.

Motherboards, I still have yet to hear anyone say bad things about Asus motherboards and personally I would go for one everytime. The P5Q range are very good (I'm presuming you'll be going for an Intel CPU) and if you're keeping the bundle quite basic,

Asus P5Q Intel P45 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard : novatech.co.uk : ASU-P5Q

Wait for someonelse to confirm this; I'm sure it's got all the right bits though.

As for PSUs, don't skimp on them as when one goes it's mighty annoying. You'll end up spending more by buying a cheaper one, in the long run anyway.

Personally I like the thermaltake ones but after seeing Kryten post against them, I'd wait for someonelses opinion


edit:Just noticed you said you're going for a quadro graphics card. Personally, I'm not completely sure about them but at a guess, the power consumption is going to be pretty similar to a GeForce card so I'd go for a 650+watt PSU (more then enough but always better to have more then less...).

 

[nath]

I actually found that the power consumption on the Quadro 570 that we're looking at is just 38watts, vs a whopping 175 watts on my 8800ultra so quite a difference.

 

[razeredge]

You can use Newegg - Power Supply Calculator to calculate the wattage needs of your machine, just go with a good brand name, as you tend to get what you pay for with some psus. As for the motherboard, asus are generally pretty good, look at overclockers and other such sites, which have reviews with their products, just make sure the sockets on the mobo match the other bits you buy

 

[Trem]

PSU's are not important at all, use the smallest you can find.








*waits for Kryten*



*runs*

 

[nath]

PSU's are not important at all, use the smallest you can find.

Just because it works for your c0xx0r doesn't mean it'll work for psu's.

 

[Trem]

Just because it works for your c0xx0r doesn't mean it'll work for psu's.

 

[Kryten]

lol

I still suggest against using those moronic PSU calculators, they're about as accurate as a darts player after his 80th pint of Tennants XXXX. Get a high quality supply, 620w will more than suffice - hence suggesting the Corsair, bearing in mind it's manufactured by Seasonic - a trustable name especially as they specialise in server and high end workstation markets.