Hi Stephen,Could you please explain your mobo choice?Thanks <_<

The MSI board Stevo has chosen has proved to be one of the very best P67 boards out there. Also its price makes it something you cannot refuse!

And last, but not least...Hi David,There is no real deep and significant reason behind the decision to go with the top MSI board this time around. jjjallen (of this board and FTX) bought the same board and has been able to achieve a stable 5.0 GHz OC and really praises the "Military Quality" components. There has been some problems reported with ASUS P67s and I am leery of some of the lesser players I have not had much experience with. Besides that, the MSI seems to have nearly all the features of the top Gigabyte board at almost half the cost in Canada.I hope that lightning strikes at least twice and I have as good a CPU and motherboard as the others that reach 5.0. I will know soon enough I guess. Are you thinking of making the leap?Kind regards,

Well... I am really waiting forward to seing your results Steph! :biggrin:Is this OC Genie II feature really powerfull?

The MSI board Stevo has chosen has proved to be one of the very best P67 boards out there. Also its price makes it something you cannot refuse!

Here they are all rather expensive and in the same price range except the Maximus IV which is prohibitive.

Stephen,I'm also looking forward to your review. I'm sure that it will be informative and enlightening.I'm not sure yet, but I'm leaning toward the 2011 socket, but that could change depending on your results.BTW, MSI has been making quality boards for a long time. IMHO You can't go wrong with MSI.

Stephen,I'm also looking forward to your review. I'm sure that it will be informative and enlightening.I'm not sure yet, but I'm leaning toward the 2011 socket, but that could change depending on your results.BTW, MSI has been making quality boards for a long time. IMHO You can't go wrong with MSI.

Jose,Are their BIOS updated frequently?(I have been an Asus guy for almost a hundred years ..)

David,I can't answer that from experience, because I have also been an ASUS user for centuries. LOLBut, I have read so many good things over the years that I will conclude that they probably do.

Well, I'll probably go for an MSI mobo next time I'll upgrade (speaking very low, my wife is around..):--)

Been ASUS user now for what, 15 years now? Never did Asus disappoint... Why change a winning team? :)

My first was the original 486 board where Intel couldn't ship their own....DX33 and DX66 cpus had them both. I wouldn't switch either..don't care about the price.

Stephen,Did you reload your system or were you able to boot up directly after the build?

Stephen,Did you reload your system or were you able to boot up directly after the build?

Hi Brad,I have not touched anything as all the parts have not arrived yet. If they are here by Friday, I expect to have this computer stripped down and rebuilt as a Sandy Bridge by early next week and to have FSX testing completed a few days after that, and then a report compiled and published as soon as possible. Most likely I'll have a fairly good idea whether or not it was the right thing to do within a couple of hours of finishing a completely new OS and FSX install. The thing is, this machine already is an FSX rocketship so how much better can it really be with Sandy Bridge? I don't know, but hope to find out real soon.Kind regards,

"There is no real deep and significant reason behind the decision to go with the top MSI board this time around. jjjallen (of this board and FTX) bought the same board and has been able to achieve a stable 5.0 GHz OC and really praises the "Military Quality" components. There has been some problems reported with ASUS P67s and I am leery of some of the lesser players I have not had much experience with. Besides that, the MSI seems to have nearly all the features of the top Gigabyte board at almost half the cost in Canada."I hope you are right Stephen but I recently read a tech report on the the P67 boards (http://techreport.com/articles.x/20190 ) and the conclusion was the ASUS was the best of them all and the MSI was the worst (see the conclusion page: "slowest peripheral performance and higher power consumption under load"). It's just one review of many out there though and perhaps they are wrong and you'll have better performance. Thanks for taking the initiative and doing this review.Best regards,Jim

Out of those 4 boards I'd pick the Intel... just for the Texas Instrument firewire.

Oh Well, I have made mistakes before, so if this is one, it won't be the first, the last or the worst. On the other hand, as you say, there are a lot of other reviews, many of which have praised the MSI board for its value and good performance. Better to go with any one of the better namebrand's top versions of motherboards for that matter, because they are all very good, than not go with any of them because of differing balances between strengths and weaknesses. That is the way I look at it.GURU 3DTom's HardwareBit-TechHardocpKind regards,

Hey where did you find your Mushkin ram ?

Stephen: how could you make a mistake... you'll be getting the 2011 board in 6 months no doubt.