Bolletje

Hi there,

I'm currently building a new budget system. It will probaly consist out of a Celeron 430, 2GB RAM, one harddrive and a 9500GT.

Now I also need a new motherboard. A G31 chipset is fine in this situation I think.

Now I've already looked for a new one but I can't make a choice between the following two:

Asus P5KPL-AM
Gigabyte G31M-ES2L

The con's and pro's

Asus:
+3 year warranty
+8 Channel audio
+Location of the motherboard battery

- 100 Mbit ethernet
- Brown color :P

Gigabyte:
+ 1 Gbit ethernet

- Only 1 or 2 year warranty


The Asus has an Realtek LAN-card and a VIA audio card. The Gigabyte has both Realtek. I don't exactly know which brand is better.

Some pics:

Asus:


Gigabyte



Which one should you choose? I already have an Asus and a Gigabyte and they both work quite well

Ooh, the price is the same (like 1/2 euro diffence (2 dollar)).

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It has come to my attention from sources apart from yourself, that you enjoy the water pokemon mudkip in some manner or form.

blibbax

They're both good brands, personally I'd go Asus.

May I ask what the PC is for?

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Bolletje

Budget download/server/office (and a little bit of gaming like CoD2, CoH etc).

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It has come to my attention from sources apart from yourself, that you enjoy the water pokemon mudkip in some manner or form.

Lowfat

I'd go w/ the Gigabyte. At least they have some sort of customer service. I also used that exact board in my HTPC for a few months. Only complaint was that you can't set SATA to AHCI. I believe it uses an old ass ICH7.

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i7 920 on phase change * EX58-UD5 * 6GB @ 1600MHz * HD4550 * X25-M RAID0 * Enermax Revo 85+ 1050W * Silverstone FT01BW

Q8200 @ 3GHz * P5Q Pro* 4GB @ 878MHz * 9500GT * Auzen Prelude * 30GB Vertex * 11.5TB * Seasonic 420 M12-II * Silverstone LC17B * LG GGC-H20L

mkk

I'd lean slightly towards the Gigabyte also. I'm putting together a budget HTPC with a wee bit pricier EG41MF-US2H(HDMI, UD3 build), but with the parts you're aiming at I also think that the G31 will be fine with a 1Gbit LAN chip. You might be able to find a HD4650 card for about the same as a 9500GT and it would perform noticeably better on overall.

Bolletje

I already have the 9500GT

And about the warranty: with the 3 years of Asus I can directly give it to the shop where I bought it. They do the rest. At least they did when i RMA'ed a harddrive.

And the AHCI function, is that really important?

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It has come to my attention from sources apart from yourself, that you enjoy the water pokemon mudkip in some manner or form.

DJ BIG T

asus all the way...

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comp_ali

I personaly prefer Gigabyte , It is very reliable .I have 3 Gigabyte Motherboards , the room temp is +30 and the computers are running almost 24/7 . But Asus has a good fame too.

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"It is doubtful how DRM could reduce piracy and there no way it can boost games sales either"

Lowfat

Might want to talk to the shop first. RMA'ing to Asus is the absolute worst. I am confident there isn't a company that has worse customer service.

No AHCI isn't all that important.

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i7 920 on phase change * EX58-UD5 * 6GB @ 1600MHz * HD4550 * X25-M RAID0 * Enermax Revo 85+ 1050W * Silverstone FT01BW

Q8200 @ 3GHz * P5Q Pro* 4GB @ 878MHz * 9500GT * Auzen Prelude * 30GB Vertex * 11.5TB * Seasonic 420 M12-II * Silverstone LC17B * LG GGC-H20L

Tipstaff

Asus has better service, imo. One of my worst customer service experiences was with Gigabyte.. recently in fact. The way that woman talked to me.. my blood pressure was through the roof afterwards, and all I was doing was asking for an RMA, which she didn't even do for me. The bulk of their tech support is done via their website, not by phone, so even the RMA request I wanted done was only possible via their website. With Asus I can just pick up the phone, and get the ball rolling for whatever I need done.

The other thing for me is that the authorized dealer for Asus is just up the street from my store, so I can easily take things back to them, or even one of the other suppliers that sells their products. With Gigabyte, unless I take it back to the supplier within a few days I have to mail it to the States at my expense (I've been waiting 2 weeks now for the RMA), and it ain't cheap to send a motherboard through the mail.

I admit, they make solid products, but when you have to RMA something.. no thanks.

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Bolletje

Hmm, mixed feelings I see :P

I have placed an ad on a Dutch website. Maybe an used one is also nice.

I can always buy one from a webshop. My other parts come in friday, so I have some time

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It has come to my attention from sources apart from yourself, that you enjoy the water pokemon mudkip in some manner or form.

Bolletje

Now there's a guy selling a P5KPL-CM. Do you guys know what the main differences are between t eh P5KPL-AM? Besides the 1Gbps LAN and the color scheme.

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It has come to my attention from sources apart from yourself, that you enjoy the water pokemon mudkip in some manner or form.

Tipstaff

The CM is their Corporate Standard board (a guarantee of sorts in which Asus has said they will make this board for 1 year). The CM is a revised AM board, with a slight design modification of the board itself, has a Gigabit Lan, has a larger chipset heatinsk (probably because they realized the one on the AM was insufficient), and uses less expensive capacitors and coils in places that the AM board used more expensive ones (comparatively that is).

What I don't like about either board is that it uses the VIA HD Audio chip. While that chip is fine for everyday audio needs, it's crap for gaming. So, if you buy this board, and intend to game on it, buy a sound card too.

Of note, the CM is the replacement for the 945 based P5GC-MX/1333 Corporate Standard board which is reaching it's 1 year life cycle.

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Bolletje

Aha, so in that case I could better go for the Gigabyte? It has a Realtek Audio chip; I'm planning to game a little bit on it.

I also got my Celeron 430 today

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It has come to my attention from sources apart from yourself, that you enjoy the water pokemon mudkip in some manner or form.

procupine14

I choose the gigabyte board. I have a bias against anything VIA for starters (I just don't like their chips).

Not to mention that I have used plenty of ASUS boards myself and I always have something wrong with them. Its never anything worthy of RMA but there is always something. Like my main rig's board is ASUS currently and all of the temperature censors are WAY off with every program I use. I've also had problems with their temp censors with the past three boards I've used. So I think im about to quit ASUS motherboards for good.

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Laptop: HP dv6000 - Vista Ultimate (32-bit) - AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60(2.0GHz) - NVIDIA GeForce Go 7200 256MB - 4GB Kingston DDR2 667 - 160GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive

HTPC: Vista Ultimate 64-bit - AMD Athlon 5200+ x2 - 4GB OCZ DDR2 800 - 250GB Seagate Barracuda - Samsung EcoGreen 1TB - Hauppauge single tuner HD - ASUS Radeon HD4550 512MB - ECS RS485M-M mobo - Creative X-fi soundcard

Other PC: Vista Ultimate 64-bit - AMD Athlon 4200+ X2 - 4GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800 - 250GB Seagate Barracuda - XFX 8600GT XXX - DFI Infinity NF570 SLI-M2/G

Takaharu

Do you need the gigabit LAN? If not, go ASUS.

Tipstaff

One thing I've noticed with Asus' low to mid-range boards (like the P5GC-MX/1333) is that they tend to mess up the fan header placements, or in some cases don't have proper bios support for automatic fan adjustments (so the case fans are always on, full blast).

I've also noticed that they've been altering the 'standard' positions of certain headers. Take for instance the front panel header for the power switch and such. One board I sold (and it was the only one thanks to this little gem), they moved it to the bottom of the board, and placed it 3-4 inches towards the back of the case. All of the cases I tried, their front panel cables wouldn't reach the header. My only option was to either buy an expensive full tower case that has longer cables, or hack a set together.

Edit: Now that I think of it, it was P5KPL-CM (I guess you can add that to another difference between the AM and CM) that I had this issue with. The AM has the header just to the left of the SATA headers at the bottom of the board (about an inch or 2 in total), but the CM has the header almost in the bottom-middle of the board.

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Bolletje

Aha, thanks for the info. I really appreciate it

I'm waiting for an answer from the guy that has the CM for sale. If that doesn't works out then I will buy a new one from a shop together with a new PSU. (current PSU is giving 13,3V @ 12V with no load and 11,6V when you plug in one fan. Yes, one fricking fan! :s)

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It has come to my attention from sources apart from yourself, that you enjoy the water pokemon mudkip in some manner or form.

Bolletje

Mailed a webshop about the G31M-ES2L. They raised the warranty from 1 to 3 year and they lowered the price to 40 euro (first it was 42 )

Now they also lowered the price of the GA-P31-ES3G to 37 euro. I think it's just a full-atx with a few more PCI and PCI-e 1x slots and no onboard VGA if you compare it to the G31. Am I right?

I still don't know which one to choose

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It has come to my attention from sources apart from yourself, that you enjoy the water pokemon mudkip in some manner or form.

Tipstaff

That's odd. Gigabyte has had a 3 year warranty on their boards since 2003. 1rst year has always been full warranty (labor and parts), with the 2nd and 3rd year being labor only coverage, and that covers both motherboard and graphics cards from them. Wonder why they had it saying otherwise before?

If your decision is between the Asus P5KPL-CM board, and the Gigabyte ones, go with Gigabyte. If you're trying to decide which Gigabyte board to go for, get the G31M-ES2L. Yes, the GA-P31-ES3G is a full ATX board, and you will get a lot more PCI/PCIE1x slots with it, the thing with the G31M-ES2L is that it has onboard graphics, and if your dedicated video card ever goes teets up you will have that to fall back onto until you can fix/replace the video card. Also, the onboard audio for both boards are based on Realtek HD chips, and given that it's a pretty decent chip I doubt you'll see the need to get a dedicated sound card. But, even if you do, you'll either get a PCIE1x or PCI card, so even though the other board has a lot more slots... will you ever need more than what's on the smaller board? Probably not, right?

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Bolletje

Just ordered these parts at a webshop:

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It has come to my attention from sources apart from yourself, that you enjoy the water pokemon mudkip in some manner or form.

blibbax

Good choice sir.

Enjoy!

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Bolletje

G31M-ES2L has a delay Will probaly come next week...

Now, the shop also has the MSI G41M4-F for the same price (which is in stock). It's a G41, has 1Gbit LAN and 2 year warranty. Should I go for the MSI or wait for the Gigabyte?
When I go for the MSI I will have the stuff this week (they already have the PSU).

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It has come to my attention from sources apart from yourself, that you enjoy the water pokemon mudkip in some manner or form.

Tipstaff

Pretty much the same board, however the MSI board has expanded audio connectors. I'm not too keen on MSI personally. What it really boils down to is their warranty, more specifically their RMA service in your area vs Gigabytes. Find out what you have to do in order to get RMA in your area, including finding out what level of warranty you get as MSI offers different warranty lengths depending on the region you are in (it'll either be 1, 2, or 3 years).

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Takaharu

I've only had bad experiences with MSI products, specifically their drivers.
When I had an MSI graphics card I had to uninstall and re-install a few drivers until I got ones that worked. Oh the horror of a CCC update...
A friend of mine used to have an MSI motherboard and an MSI graphics card. He'd reformatted quite a few times for the time he had it - not because of the motherboard (as far as I know) - because of viruses or pretty much any time his PC went bad, even if he just didn't like how it was performing or he didn't like the way the PC was set up. He'd spend more time trying to get the drivers to work afterwards than he did waiting for XP to install.

This is my personal experiences, however. If the manufacturer was really that bad they wouldn't still be in business.

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Bolletje

It's 2 years here.

The Gigabyte comes 22-09-2009. Well, at least the order says that (however, I also waited 2 months for a 8800GT 2 years ago since the delivery delayed all the time)

Tough choices :P

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It has come to my attention from sources apart from yourself, that you enjoy the water pokemon mudkip in some manner or form.

Tipstaff

I remember reading something about Intel having a G31 chipset shortage (it's being phased out). That could be the reason why it's delayed.

Have you looked at any of Gigabytes G41 boards? Also, since the i5 is out now, meaning that Intel will be phasing out the 775 socketed CPU, have you considered waiting, and picking up components based on the new CPU?

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Bolletje

Uhu, here's the link.

Yes, but the G31 is like 10 euro's cheaper. And I don't really need the IGP since I already have a HD3470 and 9500GT here.

I know, but a whole i5 setup is more expensive than a G31.

Well, I still had 2GB DDR2 here. There were also some CPU-coolers (reviewer etc) lying around here, so I exchanged one cooler for a Celeron 430 which a friend got. I also have 3 more S775 systems here so I can swap components easily.

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It has come to my attention from sources apart from yourself, that you enjoy the water pokemon mudkip in some manner or form.

Tipstaff

Just a note: the GA-G41M-ES2L is identical to the G31M-ES2L except for the chipset running it. You'd still be getting the exact same setup as with the other board, but you'd be getting a slightly better, and more current chipset.

Here's a suggestion: ask the company that you are considering buying from to see if they would sell you that G41 board for the same price, or for a few bucks.. err um.. Euros off. Never know.. they might do it.

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Bolletje

Uhu, even the lay-out is the same (rev 2.x from the G31 also has 2 oz copper and alu heatsinks)

They don't have the GA-G41M-ES2L for sale, but maybe I can just send an e-mail about it.

btw, this is the shop: Click!

I already selected the G31 and G41 boards.

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It has come to my attention from sources apart from yourself, that you enjoy the water pokemon mudkip in some manner or form.