It's been my understanding as well that the Gigabyte hardware is technically better, however Asus seems to be better at getting the front end (software, bios, user friendly-ness, etc) done correctly. I'm still not completely sure which route I'm going to go. I'm just sitting on my hands until I can make a decision. Perhaps when the P8Z68 Deluxe releases and I see the price I'll be able to decide. A few factors I'm considering right now...From what I've read on xtremesystems, Gigabyte released a new bios version for the UD5 and now the LLC options are all messed up, resulting in voltage spikes and such. I'm not sure how you manage to take something that was actually working REALLY well and break it like that.[This is a rant I posted regarding the lack of EFI from the overclock.net forums, so excuse the change in tone]Why the heck didn't they replace their BIOS with the new GUI? I was fine with Gigabyte showing up late to the table with EFI because everyone else's (Asus' EFI to be specific) was buggy and I figured Gigabyte wasn't going to release it until it was solid. Wrong! I know it's not that important, but come on - it's time to come out of the stone age! On top of that, I'm pretty sure they promised EFI for P67 users, but now it's looking like that's not going to happen. So why am I supposed to believe their claim that the touch bios will eventually replace the DOS style BIOS on the Z68 boards?! I'm getting the impression that they're just incapable of making it happen![end rant]Finally, I'm still waiting to get confirmation of whether or not the Z68X-UD5 can use the onboard GPU for QuickSync. I do video encoding every so often and it would be nice to take advantage of the hardware I have. If the UD5 can do QuickSync, I may go with that. Otherwise, almost surely not.I'm not really a "a really excited user" of anything... though I've noticed that I've begun to really take a strong liking toward Corsair products. Anyway, I had a small issue with a previous Asus motherboard and I wasn't exactly pleased with Asus' customer support.

Totally agree with you here & completely understand the level of frustration with Gigabyte on their Uefi BIOS decisions.I too am not a 'a really excited user' of any particular brand, which is why I'm trawling forums like this to try and get the best 'bang for my buck'. I want to overclock and maybe use extra discreet GPU's and have the flexibility there on every aspect of my OS and hardware. I'm questioning whether or not the newer Z68 motherboards from both Asus and GB are the bee's knees there or does one stick with the older P67's or better still wait for the next lot to come out next year (cant remember what is coming next, but I believe that overclocking to 6Gb possible - but not sure if I can wait that long).I'm really liking the GB UD5 motherboard, but cannot for the likes of me figure out which would be the equalivalent Asus board? Does anyone have some suggestions on a fully featured Asus board? I'm still trying to decide on a case as well. I really like the new Corsair 600T case, but not sure if it will fit everything in, but love its filtered fans, and cable management (dust a huge issue in my house that many cases dont cater very well for).Love to everyones views on all of the above.Cheers,David

Just as an addition to this discussion on which motherboard to go for, I thought I'd paste a small part of the conclusion from an examination of the X58 Vs. P67 motherboards to see which had the advantage over the other.I have to admit to coming out of this more confused than ever, and would like to get the members of this forums take on it all.This conclusion came from Toms Hardware guide (just making sure than all credits due to them are made0.What I found interesting was that despite the X58 having three dedicated lanes/pathways for PCiE cards the fact that they still thought that "...andy Bridge processor’s superior performance and overclocking capabilities, slams the lid on the coffin for X58 gaming." That would surely mean going for a pure P67 board with and i7 chip would still be the go?Am I coming to the right conclusion on this? I find it very hard to get my head around all this.Once again really interested in yr comments on this too.------------------------------------Article pasted for info below;

Conclusion;

We already knew that the fastest processor available for the P67 platform offered better

than the fastest processor available for X58 in games, but the winning CPU can also hit higher clock speeds by virtue of the 32 nm process used to manufacture it, too. We also knew that the newer Sandy Bridge architecture is faster

at the same frequency

than its quad-core predecessors based on the Nehalem design. The overclock we used today should have diminished CPU bottlenecks, though.

All things being equal, the P67 platform

should

lose any triple-GPU gaming test due to its limited PCIe pathways compared to X58. Then again, all things are never equal. If nothing else, the settings we used to overclock the X58 platform’s processor

might

even be considered cheating in its favor. After all, we used a 200 MHz base clock compared to the competing platform’s 100 MHz base clock, and gave the X58 platform 2 GB more memory to enable its triple-channel function. We even encumbered our P67-compatible processor with an artificially-low overclock (compared to what we know it's capable of running at), just to keep it within the limits of its elder competitor.

[/color]

Even though our attempts to make both platforms equal gives LGA 1366 an even greater bandwidth advantage, LGA 1155

still

wins. Were we to remove the artificially-low O/C limit imposed upon our P67 platforms and run them at the 4.4 or 4.5 GHz we know they'll take, it would simply win by an even greater margin. And if that reasoning isn’t enough to negate the newer platform’s PCIe limits in the eyes of extreme gaming enthusiasts, adding Nvidia’s NF200 to LGA 1155 enables X58-style x16-x8-x8 connections.While the NF200 doesn’t completely solve the dearth of PCIe lanes available on LGA 1155 platforms, its ability to send identical data to multiplemakes it perfect for SLI and CrossFire. That benefit, when combined with the Sandy Bridge processor’s superior performance and overclocking capabilities,

slams the lid on the coffin for X58 gaming

. Anyone who needs the added flexibility of X58 to host other devices, such as high-end drive controllers or six-core processors in a workstation environment, must bow to the gaming superiority of NF200-equiped Sandy Bridge motherboards like

Asus

' P8P67 WS Revolution.

Phreddy,Your conclusions are correct! Sandy Bridge has been the talk of the hardware forums since January now. For FSX... and a wealth of other things... it's unquestionably better than 1366 as confirmed by many people here on the forums who even switched from 1366 just to see what 1155 was all about. As far as 1155 motherboards are concerned, I wouldn't worry too much about getting a board with the NF200 chip as 8x doesn't really hinder any graphics cards and the NF200 solution isn't without its own inherent flaws anyhow. You just can't create more PCI lanes where they don't already exist! Also, the i7-2600k isn't even necessary. I would actually recommend saving your money and picking up an i5-2500k instead.Regarding 1155 motherboards, I've read very little on the new Z68 boards, but I've heard a couple reports about a miscellaneous quirk or two from the P67 series being fixed on Z68. That alone warrants going Z68 instead of P67. I'm still waiting around for the P8Z68 deluxe, but my patience is wearing a little thin as I may have received a new toy today... which brings me to my next point...As far as cases are concerned, the 600T is great... aside from the fact it looks a little chubby, it's really high quality and has plenty of room for most of the things I would need. For my birthday today, my wife got me the Corsair 650D! Too bad I don't have a motherboard to put in it right now. Here's a good 650D review, but I will warn you it's expensive and hard to find right now. It's extremely nice, though. Another case I would recommend checking out is the Fractal Design Arc Midi. It even comes with an internal USB3.0 header!

As far as cases are concerned, the 600T is great... aside from the fact it looks a little chubby, it's really high quality and has plenty of room for most of the things I would need. For my birthday today, my wife got me the Corsair 650D! Too bad I don't have a motherboard to put in it right now. Here's a good 650D review, but I will warn you it's expensive and hard to find right now. It's extremely nice, though. Another case I would recommend checking out is the Fractal Design Arc Midi. It even comes with an internal USB3.0 header!

OT, so how do you like it? I will say it's the roomiest "mid" tower case I've worked with. I've only done two builds now but I've had my paws in many different cases. The cable management is simple, but I did notice the other side panel is sorta bowed out because I hid a bunch of cables behind the mobo, and they weren't very organized haha.p.s. 650D in stock at Newegghttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811139006&Tpk=650d

Phreddy,Your conclusions are correct! Sandy Bridge has been the talk of the hardware forums since January now. For FSX... and a wealth of other things... it's unquestionably better than 1366 as confirmed by many people here on the forums who even switched from 1366 just to see what 1155 was all about.

OK I don't "wanna" start a debate, here is a full very good and complete review between the 990X and the 2600K (980x included and also one AMD) this review was done at stock speed on all CPU with the rams at 1333MHz 7-7-7-20 on all board, please pay attention to the Test Setup And Benchmarks (hard drive, rams) and all that good stuff....I will not tell you about the conclusion, read it, games are also included in this review.Here is my 2 cents on this subject, is the SB platform a better choice price wise for a new system as of today for FSX "you betcha" , BUT if you have the money to spend and you want the absolute best the 990X/980x is the way to go, AGAIN I'm not talking about how much money you'll have to spend comparing both CPU, I'm talking about pure raw power, some peoples are on a budjet some peoples do have the money but won't spend it on a 990X and there is the others that don't care how much it will cost to get the best. http://www.tomshardw...ftown,2874.htmlEDIT: The socket 2011 will probably take care of the 990X and the 2600K....:Bring It On:

OK I don't "wanna" start a debate, here is a full very good and complete review between the 990X and the 2600K (980x included and also one AMD) this review was done at stock speed on all CPU with the rams at 1333MHz 7-7-7-20 on all board, please pay attention to the Test Setup And Benchmarks (hard drive, rams) and all that good stuff....I will not tell you about the conclusion, read it, games are also included in this review.Here is my 2 cents on this subject, is the SB platform a better choice price wise for a new system as of today for FSX "you betcha" , BUT if you have the money to spend and you want the absolute best the 990X/980x is the way to go, AGAIN I'm not talking about how much money you'll have to spend comparing both CPU, I'm talking about pure raw power, some peoples are on a budjet some peoples do have the money but won't spend it on a 990X and there is the others that don't care how much it will cost to get the best. http://www.tomshardw...ftown,2874.htmlEDIT: The socket 2011 will probably take care of the 990X and the 2600K....:Bring It On:

Not again man,

But if your workstation is responsible for making you money; if it’s a true workhorse that you know for a fact muscles through threaded software like Premiere Pro, 3ds Max, and MainConcept (among others), then there’s a legitimate business case for buying the highest-end processor possible. And if you’re in that position, you can probably calculate exactly how long it’ll take for the Core i7-990X to pay for itself.

And tell me something. If you consider memory speed such a big thing, how is the 990X better when it's memory performance is much worse than Sandy Bridge's?

Not again man, And tell me something. If you consider memory speed such a big thing, how is the 990X better when it's memory performance is much worse than Sandy Bridge's?

I'm not arguing with that statement Dazz, we can pick and choose bits of this review and turn it to our advantage, I'm just saying (not because I have the 980X) that if money is no object and you want raw power the 990X is the CPU to have, and again I said earlier that the 2600K is a better choice for FSX."…granted, it’d be a lot more fun to win Intel’s six-core flagship in a random giveaway, wouldn’t it?" I did not write this review.....:Peace:

Phreddy,Your conclusions are correct! Sandy Bridge has been the talk of the hardware forums since January now. For FSX... and a wealth of other things... it's unquestionably better than 1366 as confirmed by many people here on the forums who even switched from 1366 just to see what 1155 was all about. As far as 1155 motherboards are concerned, I wouldn't worry too much about getting a board with the NF200 chip as 8x doesn't really hinder any graphics cards and the NF200 solution isn't without its own inherent flaws anyhow. You just can't create more PCI lanes where they don't already exist! Also, the i7-2600k isn't even necessary. I would actually recommend saving your money and picking up an i5-2500k instead.Regarding 1155 motherboards, I've read very little on the new Z68 boards, but I've heard a couple reports about a miscellaneous quirk or two from the P67 series being fixed on Z68. That alone warrants going Z68 instead of P67. I'm still waiting around for the P8Z68 deluxe, but my patience is wearing a little thin as I may have received a new toy today... which brings me to my next point...As far as cases are concerned, the 600T is great... aside from the fact it looks a little chubby, it's really high quality and has plenty of room for most of the things I would need. For my birthday today, my wife got me the Corsair 650D! Too bad I don't have a motherboard to put in it right now. Here's a good 650D review, but I will warn you it's expensive and hard to find right now. It's extremely nice, though. Another case I would recommend checking out is the Fractal Design Arc Midi. It even comes with an internal USB3.0 header!

Thanks Correy,You got a 650D from your wife!? Thats fantastic... not all wives like us spending hours or even days in front of a PC. My wife doesnt see the point of it. So I tend to pace myself - dont get much achieved. Building a new system and justifying it is going to be a tough one this end. I just forked out for the Electronic Flight Bag last night (25% off - which I thought was a good deal).650D certainly looks like the goods - however the lack of front Panel USB3 from the motherboard and its enormous size have put me off. The smaller model 600T Graphite, looks a little better for my build. But it's not a firm decision yet.The Fractal design has some nice features as well, very minimilist look. Not sure about that yet.This subject seems to easily ignite debate. Good in this case I'd say. I'm so glad I didnt fork out for a 1366 system now. No doubt it would handle FSX+add-ons ok, but 1155 certainly looks better. I'm amazed at how few people on these forums go with Gigabyte motherboards. There seems to be a very distinct Asus following.But the Z58 boards have not yet grabbed me, there is something I am worried about with them but cannot put my finger on it... not sure if its something to do with overclocking and crossfire support or what, but something I read somewhere had me thinking they may not be suitable.I want the ultimate flexibility (which means higher costs) in my performance and build in a PC. Hard to achieve on a budget.Lots of food for thought here.Cheers,DavidI would be very interested in a survey of members to see what make and model is the most popular for FSX.

David, the 650D is actually smaller than the 600T. As for USB3 headers, that fractal case is the only one I know of with the internal header. I imagine Corsair will eventually come out with a USB3 internal header kit and sell it for cheap. Until then, I plan to hide the USB3 front panel box that comes with my mobo somewhere in the case and plug the front USB3 cables into that. Overall I'm very happy with the 650D. I haven't had a whole lot of time to play with it as I'm out of town this weekend. The only minor complaint I have is that the side panels don't sit perfectly flush with the case and I'll have to replace the noisy fans that come with it. Anyway, really excited to install all my hardware. I imagine I'll make a decision on a motherboard this week.

d I'll have to replace the noisy fans that come with it. Anyway, really excited to install all my hardware. I imagine I'll make a decision on a motherboard this week.

I replaced the rear fan with the one from the H60 but the rest are pretty quiet. The main one on the top needs to be run at highest rpm it's actually quieter than way.

Ryan,I was aware of all the fuss about the fan controller causing buzzing. I tried all three speeds and then tried hooking the 200mm fans directly up to a separate 12v power source, but they buzzed just the same. It's no big deal as I had already anticipated replacing them to begin with. I eventually plan to have a radiator up top, so I'll replace that fan with either 2x120mm or 2x140 fans. For the front, I'll probably install a Silverstone AP-181.

I must have gotten lucky on that... whew... the top one definitely buzzes on low or med settings, but not on high.

The buzzing is simply some sort of interaction caused by the airflow through the mesh. Not only that, but it was only a problem on the intake side of the fan. The top fan is unaffected because the mesh is on the exhaust side of the fan. Removed the front mesh and bang, the buzzing is gone!

David, the 650D is actually smaller than the 600T. As for USB3 headers, that fractal case is the only one I know of with the internal header. I imagine Corsair will eventually come out with a USB3 internal header kit and sell it for cheap. Until then, I plan to hide the USB3 front panel box that comes with my mobo somewhere in the case and plug the front USB3 cables into that. Overall I'm very happy with the 650D. I haven't had a whole lot of time to play with it as I'm out of town this weekend. The only minor complaint I have is that the side panels don't sit perfectly flush with the case and I'll have to replace the noisy fans that come with it. Anyway, really excited to install all my hardware. I imagine I'll make a decision on a motherboard this week.

Correy,Have to admit I'm still a bit confused as to what case to buy. I did drop into a local shop yesterday to look at the 600T and was shocked at how 'big' it is. So It should be adequate for my requirements (FSX etc). The part I am a little worried by is the reports of poor GPU cooling for this case and am wondering if going down a water cooling path for a GPU or addiing more fans than comes with the case.Motherboard decisions are still difficult for me too. Gigabyte's UD5 is looking good as i like the beefy power supply side of things in the use of lots of mosfets etc. I actually like the heavier duty layout and circuit board.Cheers,David

David,For $30, Corsair sells an additional 600T side panel that comes with both a windowed and a mesh insert with four 120mm fan mounts. They have claimed that they will eventually sell a mesh side panel insert for the 650D as well. That ought to take care of your GPU concerns, however the mesh is not filtered and obviously it adds to the price of the case. Honestly, I don't think you will have much trouble keeping a GPU cool with the 200mm front intake fan. I should also mention that running a pre-built liquid cooling unit like the H60 can improve GPU temps as you can set it up to exhaust the heat directly out of the case, thus lowering case temperatures. Corsair only recommends running their liquid cooling units as intake so that you're getting fresh air from outside the case. Makes sense in theory, but the last time tested both ways, I saw no measurable difference in temps.I'm actually going to run my hard drives in my 5.25" bays and completely remove the 3.5" bays. Not only should this give the front intake fan plenty of freedom to toss some air towards the GPU (not that a GTS250 gets very hot), but it also allows me to install hard drive silencers on my 7200 rpm drive. Check these things out! They snap right into the corsair tool-less 5.25" bays! The rubber is very soft, so I have high hopes for these things being extremely effective. Here's a couple pictures.Scythe Hard Disk Stabilizer II:Installation of Scythe Hard Disk Stabilizer II on my Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TBAs for the Z68X-UD5, I read a brief but scary review from a reputable member on the xtremesystems forums. Additionally, the ASUS boards provide better fan control and for whatever reason, EFI bios has suddenly become really important to me. Needless to say, I'm waiting for the Asus P8Z68 Deluxe, which hasn't actually been released here in the US yet. I've been without FSX for a couple months, so what's another few weeks?! It's giving me plenty of patience to properly set up my case after all! I've had a really good time hacking up a $200 case, snipping wires on my PSU, and other things... I think when I'm finished building I will post a thread of how to assemble a computer - something for those guys that don't think they're quite ready to make the jump to building their own. Hopefully some of my modifications don't inadvertently scare them off. I'm trying to snap a lot of photos of the process so that it can be done completely with pictures and no words.