i need a good board for a e6600 cpu which my friend wants to overclock to 3.2 ghz or so for less then $150 please

also it needs to be an ATX board not MATX

i checked out the gigabyte ds3 but all i heard was bad ratings on the ram and how its only compatible to 1.8V rams another other suggestions?

does not have to be using sli mode hes running 1 card only
also may i ask whats the bang for the buck memory? ddr2 800 or ddr2 667
for overclockin

P5B-Deluxe is $45 out of your price point, but from what I've read will be an excellent board.

with a 9x multi you only need 400fsb so plenty of boards will do (my fave is the abit QuadGT @ $160 from Newegg after MIR but it's really overkill for what he needs).

As for the DS3 & 1.8V RAM:
the JEDEC industry standard is 1.8V - any RAM requiring more than that technically doesn't meet the industry standard.
However, the DS3 etc. (& pretty much all other similar mobos) will allow you to supply more than 1.8V.
Usually it's just a case of installing 1 DIMM to get into the BIOS, increasing the Vdimm settting, save & shutdown, install 2nd DIMM & away you go

Gigabyte DS3...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128012


I have one and definitely recommend it if you don't need a lot of bells and whistles from a motherboard.

EDIT: Whoops, didn't see your paragraph about the DS3. I had read about the same problems and was worried about this board. However, I got it anyway, and made sure the RAM was 1.8v compliant and haven't had any problems whatsoever.

I have a DS3 with an E6600. My ram is OCZ gold. It's all I've had in it and it works great. It oc's past 900mhz. My only problem with the board is it's a single pci-e slot, so I can't run sli later. For now though, I'm very cool with it.

thanks so much for the replies guys!! you help me so much!