Motherboards

For you guys that build your own systems. Which mobo do you prefer and why?
 
I will probably be building a new one soon primarily for Sonar and just curious what other people are using. I'm not stuck on any one brand, but was fond of Abit for a while. Since they're gone I've bounced around between Asus and Biostar.

TerraSin
 
This is what I'm building right now. Only missing a couple pieces I'll pick up this weekend like fans.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Y8hNt6

Wow Terra, that's a very nice machine......I didn't know they had 16GB RAM sticks available and you're getting 64GB's? (you can throw anything/everything into this DAW) Nice!! :)) 
 
The only thing that concerned me was if that mid tower case was big enough for the NH-D14 (I have this as well and have a full tower to house it), but I see that it's under the "compatible parts" list. It still might be a tight fit.......I didn't have much room in my Rosewill Thor V2 after installing that cooler (very close to the RAM slots). Excellent cooler BTW.
 
Pcpartpicker.com is a great site for DIY's.
 

That'll certainly looks to be one Super Daw!! (just compare that to the 4GB max RAM in an XP machine....lol).
You've got some serious sampling going on here......you should post some of your music in the songs forum.

Starise
That looks like a nice build. I am wondering about all of those fans though? Not sure about the Corsair case, but my case  has two fans and the temp in the case never  gets close to  critical. 
After my build you can  almost drive a small car into the case. Great for cooling though since there is plenty of room for things to breathe. 
The Noctua  offers push pull cooling . You can add an additional fan, but most say it isn't an extreme difference.
I can lay my hand on the cooler with one fan and it isn't even warm to the touch.
 
If you want to go with 128gb look at the mobo in my sig. Can't use that cpu though and video is modular. Not a bad thing if you wanted two monitors with the same connection anyways.

The computer will be going into an isolation cabinet eventually. You want to make sure you're pushing air when you have a computer in one of those. 5 fans will circulate better than 3. I thought about taking two of them off because the CPU will have 2 fans on it as well but I may replace one of them with one of these if it's quieter for the time being. If I feel I don't need the extra fans, I'll swap them out of my other computer because those are using SilenX fans which are more noisy than I would like them to be.
 
The ASRock Extreme 4 mobo has a 64GB limit on RAM as well. I wanted to futureproof this a bit and the best way to do that was with Skylake. Typically I go for previous generation releases on processors but the native support for Thunderbolt and more PCIE lanes for my eventual switch to M.2 drives were important if I didn't want to have to build a new one in 2-3 years. The Extreme 7 board I got has onboard video that will run 4K natively with Skylake as well up to 3 monitors. The 4K TV I picked up will be used for having more real estate to play with on my track screen. Especially where editing midi is concerned.
 
Everything will be connected through Synergy as a software KVM Switch so I can use the same keyboard, mouse and monitors on multiple machines. I've fallen in love with that program. ;)

TerraSin

Starise
That looks like a nice build. I am wondering about all of those fans though? Not sure about the Corsair case, but my case  has two fans and the temp in the case never  gets close to  critical. 
After my build you can  almost drive a small car into the case. Great for cooling though since there is plenty of room for things to breathe. 
The Noctua  offers push pull cooling . You can add an additional fan, but most say it isn't an extreme difference.
I can lay my hand on the cooler with one fan and it isn't even warm to the touch.
 
If you want to go with 128gb look at the mobo in my sig. Can't use that cpu though and video is modular. Not a bad thing if you wanted two monitors with the same connection anyways.

The computer will be going into an isolation cabinet eventually. You want to make sure you're pushing air when you have a computer in one of those. 5 fans will circulate better than 3. I thought about taking two of them off because the CPU will have 2 fans on it as well but I may replace one of them with one of these if it's quieter for the time being. If I feel I don't need the extra fans, I'll swap them out of my other computer because those are using SilenX fans which are more noisy than I would like them to be.
 
The ASRock Extreme 4 mobo has a 64GB limit on RAM as well. I wanted to futureproof this a bit and the best way to do that was with Skylake. Typically I go for previous generation releases on processors but the native support for Thunderbolt and more PCIE lanes for my eventual switch to M.2 drives were important if I didn't want to have to build a new one in 2-3 years. The Extreme 7 board I got has onboard video that will run 4K natively with Skylake as well up to 3 monitors. The 4K TV I picked up will be used for having more real estate to play with on my track screen. Especially where editing midi is concerned.
 
Everything will be connected through Synergy as a software KVM Switch so I can use the same keyboard, mouse and monitors on multiple machines. I've fallen in love with that program. ;)

You might have looked at an older version of the extreme 4. I think they make one for the older socket /chips too. My board does, in fact, support 128gb of memory-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157543
 
I had a typo in my sig which might be the source of the confusion..that mobo also supports thunderbolt and has an M2 slot. 
 
Since I've never used an isolation case I can't comment on that. It just looked like a heckuva lot of fans and I was curious.
 
Here's some pics of my build using 3 fans.You can't see the fan in the front. All of the compnents I bought are rated quiet, including the video card. If I had been building for looks I wouldn't have chosen the Noctua fan..still I like that the memory has the same color scheme as the mobo. I'm overclocked to 4.4ghz and my temps are coming in at 30c with the noctura on one fan. If I go back to 4ghz I could reduce that. 6 cores with hyperthreading are like having 12 cores. It boots fast..very fast :)
 




 
 

kitecrazy.  I agree. I think buying new hardware for me was more about preparing for a probable failure. Future proofing having more to do with hardware stability. I did think about getting more recent hardware though simply because it made sense :) I also agree about the bells and whistles...I don't need bluetooth or wifi on my mobo since I wire direct. I wanted to choose which video card so I didn't really want onboard video. I still wound up with onboard sound. Most of what I wanted a gamer also wants with the exception of video. I want good video. I don't need best video.
 
TerraSin- I am sure my mobo will take up to 128gb of memory.
 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157543
 
Maybe you seen another model? It also has M2 slot and has provision for thunderbolt. I probably won't ever need 128gb of memory. I could push 10 tracks of Kontakt on an older machine with only 8gb unfrozen...so 16gb should be more than ample. You must be into some heavy stuff there :) Most home studio users will find 16gb to be plenty.
 
I can't comment on isolation boxes since I have never used one of those. I primarily try to keep my airflow and cpu temps at decent levels with a minimal use of fans mainly to reduce noise levels in my studio, but that's me. I am only getting 30c on a 5820K clocked to 4.4mhz on my cpu with two case fans and the noctua cpu fan...so I seen no need to add more cooling.
 
 
 

Starise
kitecrazy.  I agree. I think buying new hardware for me was more about preparing for a probable failure. Future proofing having more to do with hardware stability. I did think about getting more recent hardware though simply because it made sense :) I also agree about the bells and whistles...I don't need bluetooth or wifi on my mobo since I wire direct. I wanted to choose which video card so I didn't really want onboard video. I still wound up with onboard sound. Most of what I wanted a gamer also wants with the exception of video. I want good video. I don't need best video.
 
TerraSin- I am sure my mobo will take up to 128gb of memory.
 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157543
 
Maybe you seen another model? It also has M2 slot and has provision for thunderbolt. I probably won't ever need 128gb of memory. I could push 10 tracks of Kontakt on an older machine with only 8gb unfrozen...so 16gb should be more than ample. You must be into some heavy stuff there :) Most home studio users will find 16gb to be plenty.
 
I can't comment on isolation boxes since I have never used one of those. I primarily try to keep my airflow and cpu temps at decent levels with a minimal use of fans mainly to reduce noise levels in my studio, but that's me. I am only getting 30c on a 5820K clocked to 4.4mhz on my cpu with two case fans and the noctua cpu fan...so I seen no need to add more cooling.
 
I have attempted twice to post pics but I don't think this forum likes my links so I'll attempt it on the next post.
If you don't see pics I couldn't get it to work :) 
 

For me, futureproofing means being able to use this build for about 4 years without running into issues. Things like the Hollywood series and even some patches in Omnisphere really put a strain on my existing system which is i7 3.5ghz w/32GB RAM.
 
I went with onboard video because the new Skylake has the ability to run x3 4K monitors natively rather than having to put in another piece of hardware with a fan. There were some options of fanless 4K support but I didn't like any of them and the build was expensive enough already.
 
You're correct, I was looking at the wrong board. Here's the thing about that one though: the only way you'd be able to get 128GB on it would be to use a Xeon processor which I was trying to avoid. The LGA 2011 has a maximum of either 32GB for i5-4670k/i7-4770k and 64GB for i7-4930k/i7-4960k.
 
One big selling point for me was more pcie lanes on Skylake which allows for more M.2 drives. I eventually want to dump some of my SSDs for them since they are quite a bit faster which is nice when working with large orchestra samples.
 
Fans, I'm going to drop down to 3 since the cpu cooler has two fans on it already and put the other two in my personal machine. I was actually re-evaluating the existing noise in here and found the majority of my fan noise was coming from my personal computer which at the same desk. The whole computer is going to my wife once this build is done so my personal computer will become my existing studio computer while the new build is the new studio computer. Both will have quieter cases but they aren't quiet enough IMO when doing any live recording with microphones.
 
I'll get some pictures of the new build once it's finished. Been waiting on the case to go on sale to see if I can save a few more bucks.