I'm putting together a new system and have a really hard time selecting the right motherboard .

- The system will consist of:
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
- Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
- MSI GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB
- 1GB x 2 (2GB) PC6400 DDR2 CL4 (Kingston KVR6400D2N5K2/2GN)

some personal requirements:
- I don't want SLI/Crossfire.
- I will need 2 PCI slots free (so not blocked by vid. card cooler or some bad lay-out that prevents me from using 2 PCI slots). 1 slot will be used for my Creative X-Fi and the other for IDE Controller (see below).
- pricing range: low - 150
- It should deal with some overclocking (planning on putting the E6600 from 2,4 to 3,0 GHz; I want to keep the Vcore as low as possible).

I guess a mobo using P965 will be best. Or are the 680i / P975X a good option as well considering my system/requirements? What are your suggestions?


One other small question: These new mobo often only have 1 IDE slot. I have 4 IDE devices (2 HDD, 1 DVD-writer, 1 CD-writer). I guess I need some sort of IDE controller PCI-card. Any good suggestions on such a card? 2 devices will most likely be linked directly to the mobo IDE slot so this card can only have 1 IDE slot for the other 2 devices.

Any ideas?

upgrade to SATA for the harddisks, and put the optical drives on the single IDE channel as master/slave

I use the ECS PN2-SLI2+, its been a good board for me
I'm stable @ 3.33Ghz on a E6400

I don't wanna upgrade my HDDs to SATA because they are good and big enough atm and don't wanna have extra costs.

It also seems that the ECS PN2-SLI2+ is not coming out in Holland.

Here the Gigabyte DS3 Its hightly stable and great for overclocking with one PCIe slot and plenty of room between it and the PCI slots.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128042