Which board should I use

[H0R53]

I have an mBTX and a pBTX board for use in an Optiplex I am modding the heck out of for a client build and I am literally waiting for paint to dry.

 

The mBTX board is ready to use and uses DDR2.

 

The pBTX board would require me to buy a PSU cable adapter but uses DDR3.

 

They both support my processor of choice, a Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400.

 

Because it's BTX, the GPU will be fan-up in-case and either way I'm buying a PCI extender to move the GPU to the bottom two slots so I don't have to take off the cooler shroud of my GPU of choice, a GTX 550Ti.

 

So either way I'm ordering the PCI adapter, it's just a matter of ordering the PSU adapter with it.

 

Will I notice any difference in performance for the DDR2 vs the DDR3?

 

I know the southbridge heatsink on the mBTX board is missing, I'm waiting for the paint on it to dry.

 

Please read my post and the rest of the thread thoroughly before posting, I hate repeating myself.

[Navbryce]

I'm not sure which you should go for.

 

With DDR3, you might gain a little bit more performance over DDR2. 

 

On the other hand, you can usually buy DDR2 cheaper on the internet than DDR3.

 

[H0R53]

Just now, Navbryce said:

I'm not sure which you should go for.

 

With DDR3, you might gain a little bit more performance over DDR2. 

 

On the other hand, you can usually buy DDR2 cheaper on the internet than DDR3.

 

I should mention that I already have DDR2 and DDR3. All I need to do is let paint dry, choose a board, and buy said adapters.

[Windows7ge]

Just for the sake of future proofing I would use the DDR3 motherboard. If it uses DDR3 I would also expect it to have more up to date features like SATAIII and pci_e express 2.0 or higher. There's also the matter of more up to date controllers on the board which may result in better performance. More strictly speaking the performance gain you would notice would be dependant on the use case.

[Navbryce]

2 minutes ago, H0R53 said:

I should mention that I already have DDR2 and DDR3. All I need to do is let paint dry, choose a board, and buy said adapters.

Go with DDR3 board then. Also (depending on your chipset and cpu support), the max amount of RAM on the DDR3 board should be greater. You can buy 8 GB DDR3 sticks, but there are no 8GB DDR2 sticks. I think the max size for a DDR2 stick is 4 GB. 

[H0R53]

Just now, Navbryce said:

Go with DDR3 board then. Also (depending on your chipset and cpu support), the max amount of RAM on the DDR3 board should be greater. You can buy 8 GB DDR3 sticks, but there are no 8GB DDR2 sticks. I think the max size for a DDR2 stick is 4 GB. 

That's "high density" memory and requires either motherboard support or AMD chipsets.

2 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

Just for the sake of future proofing I would use the DDR3 motherboard. If it uses DDR3 I would also expect it to have more up to date features like SATAIII and pci_e express 2.0 or higher. There's also the matter of more up to date controllers on the board which may result in better performance. More strictly speaking the performance gain you would notice would be dependant on the use case.

Yeah, and the DDR3 board also has a second fan controller so I don't need to use the PSU for the front fan.

[LienusLateTips]

1 minute ago, H0R53 said:

That's "high density" memory and requires either motherboard support or AMD chipsets.

Yeah, and the DDR3 board also has a second fan controller so I don't need to use the PSU for the front fan.

high density = ecc not really

 

amd platforms supported ecc back then