I am planning to build 2 PCs for my friends and I am at the motherboard selection stage. One PC will feature the Core 2 Quad Q6600 or Q9450 while the other will feature the Core 2 Duo E7200 or E8400.

The Core 2 Quad PC will be used mainly for web authoring, internet, some video editing and general office work. The Core 2 Duo PC is for a school going kid who will be playing some games (not heavy duty).

I checked out the Asus http://www.asus.com/products.aspx? [...] 3=710&l4=0 as well as the Foxconn http://www.foxconnchannel.com/prod [...] -us0000396 motherboards and I feel that the same Intel P43 chipset is ideal for both machines. Furthermore the cost is not exhorbitant. I know the P35 motherboards will also suffice but most of them do not have both eSATA AND FireWire on them - its either one or the other.

Has anyone here used one of these motherboards or is it best that I look elsewhere?

Either choose is fine if your only looking for the features you've mentioned, but overclocking with be better suited with a p45 if you even care about that. From what I quickly read was the Foxconn has the ICH10 southbridge which has no raid function while the Asus has raid with ICH10R. If you don't care about overclocking or raid, just go with the cheapest btw the Asus is better suited for a quad with the 8 pin CPU plug and 8 phase power.

Yes, my thoughts are similar to yours, the Asus for the Quad and the Foxconn for the Duo if we want to keep costs reasonable. The main priority is to get value for money and to get the job done.

There is no point future proofing as the Nehalem processors that will be launched later this year will render all of today's IA PCs obsolete. Overclocking will be mild 0 maybe taking the Core 2 Quad Q6600 or Core 2 Duo E7200 just beyond the 3 GHz mark. I think the P35 boards are better optimised, if extreme overclocking is needed!