Asus P6T Deluxe V1 ($250) v. ASRock X58 Extreme ($170)

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darunium
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Asus P6T Deluxe V1 ($250) v. ASRock X58 Extreme ($170)

Post by darunium »

Hey All,

Thanks in advance for any advice.

I don't care about the USB3.0 (as I don't really plan on taking advantage of it) or the SATA3 (as Marvell's SATA3 controllers seem limiting right now), or anything more than 3 DIMMs. Given that I'm only really looking for a solid MoBo that I can do some reasonable OC'ing with air cooling on, I was pretty much sold the ASRock X58 Extreme. I toyed with the giga UD3R ($200), but out of nothing more than personal preference and price difference I ended up picking the ASRock Extreme (NOT the Extreme 3). This is, btw, my first totally self-built rig. I definitely want dual CF/SLI capability (I'm not going to take advantage of it for now, but I want to have it, mainly with the idea of getting two cheap cards as opposed to a single-GPU solution, I want that to be an option), and want to be able to reach a solid CPU OC (don't really care about the memory speed/timings, but the two go hand in hand so I'll of course have to deal with those too. Planning on running 2x3GB Patriot Viper CL8 DDR3 1600).

That said, there's been one board that's been nagging me from the beginning, since I saw it win Anandtech's mid-level comparisons, and the xbitlabs review of it, the Asus P6T Deluxe (which I found for $250, V1). Despite loving everything that was said about the board, I couldn't see how it's worth $80 more than the ASRock X58 Extreme unless someone really wanted to push their CPU and RAM as far as possible (in which case they might probably go for an even more expensive board anyway). Still, it comes back to mind, and here's why:

While the ASRock Extreme reviews have been incredibly positive, they've been impressed by the fantastic value it is, with solid potential at a low cost, and an important note is that many reviewers have had stability issues overclocking that they were able to fix through careful adjustment. The P6T Deluxe, however, beyond I imagine having greater overclocking potential, lower board latency, and better power regulation, seems to be easy to overclock without much effort, the Anandtech and Xbitlabs reviews both commented on how it just works. For a first-time builder like myself, that was a real attraction, especially coupled with overclocking software that seems to be actually effective and useful (although Anandtech commented that while it works great for quick, easy, and mild overclocking, the system does end up devoting more resources than it should just to the app).

So all told, I'm having a tough time deciding between these two boards, even though they are seemingly so different. Really, my question us:

What kind of usage would make the P6T Deluxe a better choice at $80 more than the ASRock X58 Extreme? Or is it never really worth that price discrepancy?

Thanks in advance for any input!
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Re: Asus P6T Deluxe V1 ($250) v. ASRock X58 Extreme ($170)

Post by Apoptosis »

The P6T is solid, but I agree with you that it's not $80 more solid...

I'd recommend the P6T if you wanted to do overclocking to the max or wanted to run SAS drives... about it.
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