Ok, as I'm in the midst of building my first PC thanks to the help from people here and Anandtech (am I allowed to mentioned that place here?), my friend is inspired.

He has had the same old beater for so long that now he wants to indulge.

So what is the best ASUS or Gigabyte (or someone else?) board using X48 and DDR3 in terms of stability? He likely won't OC anything other than the processor because the E8500/E8400 is quite easy to OC.

1) Best mobo in terms of reviews/stability
2) Best DDR3 memory to go with it (1333 or 1600?)

Cost should not be a consideration as that can be applied later.

Thanks!

1) ASUS P5E3 PREMIUM, Intel DX48BT2, Gigabyte X48T-DQ6
2) Any brand name DDR3-1066MHZ

Intel boards are made for stability. They run great at stock. Gigabyte is very newbie-friendly. ASUS takes a bit more knowledge to overclock.

http://www.intel.com/products/moth [...] /index.htm

If the cpu isn't overclocked, any ram is fine. The speed depends on the cpu. i.e. E8500 is 1333mhz. So divide that by 2, you get 666mhz. Any ram will run 666mhz unless you make change to bios.