Quote Originally Posted by Astratuner View Post
Anyone?
You aren't clear what you have, what your budget is, or what you are planning to do.

If you have an R2E and a 500w PSU and plan triple SLI, you need a PSU. However, if you have a $400 MB, are adding $750+ in video cards, who cares about the cost of a PSU.

If this is a first Core i7 restricted budget build, the DFI would be a great board IMHO (my experience limited to the UT P45). However, the Corsair EX1000 PSU, often available with rebate for $200-250 would be more cost effective.

Another factor is if you are overclocking and your experience. Everyone looks at the max overclocks. I also look at the work that went into them, and how many people have trouble achieving low overclocks. That is, are there lots of posts about being unable to reach 200bclk or 4Ghz.

Even worse are lots of NewEgg posts about DOA boards. A problem with Gigabyte in general according to the NewEgg posts; on the popular EP45-UD3P, they had 5 consecutive different (lengthy) posts about DOA boards at the top of the list. It is easy to be lulled by often unused features or reports of 600Mhz FSBs.

The DFI board seems, by my observation, to require some expertise to OC because it doesn't always default as expected and may have some nuances at specific speeds and combinations. However, it also seems to have both the fewest reports of failing to make acceptable OCs and a large number of reports (relative to the total number of reports) of people making high OCs. Or even EVA2000's outrageously high OCs, matching some cascade phase change people while cooling with air.