Geeb_

Ebay listing, would be a bargain if I bent the pins...

What, two USB 2s, two PS2 ports, if you think I can easily add more I/O through PCI cards, for me at least it is a non issue.

(Original post on Lvl1techs, but I figured I'd post here also) So step one, I'm asking for help to decide a motherboard + CPU combo for around the £200 ($125) mark, the plan is a new Linux build, and as I've been struggling on with my G3258 for two almost three years now I would like a good upgrade, VT-D would also be nice, as you know, games. Currently I have spied this deal on Ebay: SUPERMICRO X8DTL-3F DUAL SOCKET LGA1366 WITH 8 CORES 16T 24GB RAM INTEL ATX VT-d... 1 x SuperMicro X8DTL-3F ATX Dual-Socket LGA1366 motherboard! (with backplate). Standard ATX fittings, will fit any ATX or E-ATX case. Each CPU clocks at 2.66GHz but turbo's up to 2.80GHz even when at full load. | eBay! Sure its quite old, but dual X5550s will give me a real performance boost, the CPUs and motherboard support VT-D, it comes with 12GB of RAM, has a PCI-16x slot and best of all 'fits' in a standard ATX case. For £189 I feel you cant go wrong, as the ability to utilise both CPUs in VT-D usage would be great, and having these extra threads would be a treat for audio production, and of course just general use. However, I am concerned that the age of the platform may result in some issues, for one the power consumption is huge near 200W for the CPUs alone, which despite not being a deal breaker, keeping the bills down would be nice, also my upgrade path is pretty limited, as this motherboard does not support the newer E**** series 1366 Xeons, I'm not too bothered by that however It would be nice to have a bit more freedom in that sense. So I ask for your help, good people of this forum, please bless me with anything which you think could be a suitable contender for this Ebay listing, and falls in or around the same price range whilst also still maintaining the features I would be after. Any more info wanted? Just ask! Thanks! TLDR: Recommend £200 CPU + Motherboard combo

Oh right, thanks on both accounts! nice to get some feedback from someone other than my friends for once. and those monitors look pretty safe, ill take a proper look at them. EDIT - 'Speakers' switched to monitors

So basically I'm after some help. Recently I've been using Fl studio to make music, Im no expert and have been running into some problems and uncertainty. My main problem is the Mastering, Im concerned about my mastering skills and whether I'm doing it correctly, more so I'm worried about my latest song and the rest of them having too much bass on the EQ, thus I don't know if they actually sound any good. I dont have any monitors so I am stuck wondering what my tracks actually sound like. If you could give this a listen and maybe also recommend both in ear or studio monitors that would be much appreciated. Thanks!

I think the answer to a bad what you see is what you get is to just improve it, look at TekSyndicate for example, there system is excellent. Deleting it is not viable as there are no alternatives.

Whoa, interesting issue. Looking at your issue and your specs my mind leans toward an issue with your WiFi adapter, as if I'm to believe a fast internet connection causes crashing, so very probably either a software issue (drivers, some software for the card etc), or it might even be a hardware issue, such as a broken component on the PCB of the WiFi adapter. I hope you get this fixed as this is a killer issue

Hmm, well me and my friend did it with an X5450, seems like a pretty good little CPU, just check its compatibility with this graph: http://www.delidded.com/lga-771-to-775-adapter/2/#chipset-compatibility-table

Basically I have shown this video to my friends, and they claim that I should be be in a much higher rank than I am at the moment or was. I am currently silver 2 and the highest I have been is GNM, however my friends claim based upon this that I should be much higher, I disagree as I don't know the skill of higher ranks, so I would like second opinion! thanks!

Slide the latch thing at the back to the left (if you are looking at it from behind)

hehehheh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtI5HM7GVGY

IKR

Anything up to a GTX 1060 would probably do well, as for Ethernet cables have a look at office suppliers as they often do bulk purchases.

Me and my friend got a Steal on this board on eBay, http://www.evga.com/articles/329.asp probably the best 775 socket board available at that time on eBay, and supports SLI so is a good platform for gaming, and we did the 771 mod on it, so is capable of housing Xeons :3