The ASUS Maximus III motherboard & EAH5800 Series graphics cards are an overclocker’s best friend
Name:Pietro De Luca
Age: 20
Location: Florence, Italy
Occupation: Student
Interests:Pietro loves social networking, travelling and gaming
Pietro is studying computing at university, but he’s a keen gamer in his spare time and likes to tinker with his PC to get the best performance. He’s never really tried his hand at overclocking, though, and now he’s keen to build a new high-performance PC that will allow him to experiment with different ways to get the best results for games. Pietro has settled on an Intel® Core™ i5 processor and plans to reuse some old components, but he wants some advice on the best motherboard and graphics card combination to suit his budget.
Different motherboards work with different types of processor, so it’s important to choose one that matches your Intel® Core™ i5 chip. You’ll need a motherboard with an LGA1156 socket for this reasonably priced quad-core ‘Lynnfield’ processor, so we’d recommend ASUS’ new Maximus III Formula motherboard for your new gaming PC.
ASUS Maximus III Formula
Better performance of your system often means higher possibilities to pin your opponents down. However, is buying a more expensive processor the only way to achieve this? In the past that might have been the case, but the situation has now changed with the arrival of the Maximus III Formula motherboard.
With ASUS CPU Level-Up, simply choose the processor you want to be upgraded to and the motherboard will tune the original processor to run at the appropriate speed.”
With its CPU Level Up feature, a list of upgradable processors appears on a drop-down menu in the BIOS. Simply choose the processor you want to be upgraded to and the motherboard will tune the original processor to run at the appropriate speed. You can also adjust the overclocking settings within Windows using the CPU Level Up interface, removing the need to reboot. ASUS MemOK technology also helps ensure that memory modules don’t cause instability by automatically adjusting their timings to the most stable settings — perfect for getting the best out of old or mismatched DIMMs with a new motherboard.
As for a graphics card, we suggest something from the ASUS EAH5800 Series. Powered by Radeon HD 5800 Series graphics for incredible 3D performance at resolutions up to 2560 x 1600, these DirectX 11 cards offer their own easy overclocking options that can boost performance by up to 38% with exclusive Voltage Tweak Technology.
ASUS EAH5850 Graphics card
Gogo Ubari
Gogo has been working in the marketing industry since 2003, and has a deep love for online marketing. She prefers delivering straight-to-the-point messages, and refuses to compromise her principles even when faced with commercial pressures. She aspires to describe technology in simpler terms — through language that everyone understands. She fancies herself a gamer, but close friends will tell you her gaming experience only extends to Zoo Keeper on the Nintendo DS Lite. Her next gadget? The ASUS DR-900 E-Reader, which will sate her book-buying obsession while saving her hundreds of pounds whenever she has to relocate for work.