Mobo for E6700

I may be biased insofar as that is exactly what I have. I bought it for the RAID flexibility. My requirements were a little different in that I didn't give a hoot about overclocking. I needed 5 SATA ports, ESATA and 1 IDE channel. I bought the P5B Deluxe based on reviews and it met my requirements. Turns out it is an excellent overclocker and now I'm hooked, buying all manner of heat sincs and thermal goo to get the temps down and the clocks up. Overclocking is evil.

Anyway, the big negative on the P5B is the on board sound. It works adequately for 2 speakers, but anything more and it turns phsychotic. If you decide on this board and need fancy sound, disable it and get an add on sound card.

The e6700 is a peach, even at stock speeds. I'm not a heavy gamer, but now that I have this chip, I might have to start I have had this chip up to 4.0GHz with the stock cooler. It won't stay cool enough to go to 100% with the stock HSF, but it runs. It runs real nice @ 3.2GHz. I'm getting a Scythe Infinity HSF today, so we'll see if it can go to 4.0GHz and stay cool. I have had the FSB as high as 475MHz and the memory @DDR950 and stable. The benchmarks at 3.2GHZ with a 400 FSB put the e6700 well past the Intel quad core at stock speeds. I have read folks running 4.0GHz and 400 FSB on air, so that is my goal. So, bottom line: stock cooler will get you to 3.2GHz, 400 FSB (DDR800), I'm hoping a super cooler will get me to 4.0GHz, 400 FSB (or higher).

Tom

It's a wonderful board as long as you don't plan on using two vid cards in SLI. Even then, it's a wonderful board but unless it's a 680i motherboard, you can't get true 16x in each pcie slot. Instead, you get SLI at 8x in each pcie slot. If all you're ever going to have is one video card, then you might not care. And, if you're not a performance freak, you might not care either. This is just an FYI. Asus boards rock the house, though I'm going with the evga 680i motherboard for SLI reasons. That board has been getting very good reviews, though since it's still quite a young product, there are a few bugs being reported. Want a solid board that runs fine right out of the box, go with the P5B.