I'll be going off to college soon, and I'm planning on making a new computer for myself for gaming. I would really not rather spend over 150 dollars, and yes, I do realize that I won't be getting a top of the line board for the price, but I just want something that will last for a while, run the newest games at a good speed (not necessarily Crysis) and just keep me happy. I was thinking of picking up a ECS A780GM-A Motherboard. For the price and from the reviews I've read it seems pretty good. If anyone has any comments on the board or any suggestions about something that may be better, please let me know. I'd prefer a PCI-E 2.0 slot and 4 slots for RAM.

Thanks in advance, I'll check back later.

For AMD : get this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813128335
ECS doesn't have a good reputation.

For Intel : wait for P45 next month. If you can't wait get P35.
But you don't care about that.

I would go with the ECS because it is cheaper & alows you to spend more on graphics cards, cpu .etc

lots of the new AMD mobos don't suport high wattage CPUs, so you have to look hard at them if your thinking of running one. it probably also a good indicator of wether or not it will OC well.

The gigabytes don't suport the 9850, but they do suport other 125 watt CPUs

You should probably look at the SLI or Crossfire chipsets, just because they are oriented more toward enthusiast than more basic ones, even if you don't give a crap about those features (like me)

Thanks for the advice. Think i'll be trying out the gigabyte board, cause after looking at it and reading reviews it seems a bit better i think. Thanks for the other opinions as well.

MSI makes the only 780g and 8200 I could find that can run the 9850.

I guess a new chipset is on its way too, the 790gx, basicly a tweeked 780g

That is really good. You selected good mother board and add game card like nvidia or ATI. Also have around 2 gb ram to make your system fast so, that you can play without any disturbance.