Asus vs Intel vs Evga?

I am getting a custom made computer from avadirect and need help in picking out a motherboard. I know pretty much nothing about them. I don't do much gaming at all but I do a lot of multi-tasking and need a fairly powerful computer that runs fast and smoothly.

What brand and model would you recommend?

It's going to depend on what features you need.

eSATA? Raid? Would you use ASUS Express Gate? (It's a very fast little Linux OS/websurfer/picture viewer thing that's built into ASUS boards, kinda. For when you don't want to wait to boot fully to get email or check a site.)

Those are some examples... how many hard drives? How many USB devices?

See, it's hard to recommend a specific board without knowing more

Since you aren't a big gamer I'll just suggest the ASUS P5QL -E. It's inexpensive and has all the features I listed. It's P43 not P45... the only difference is it costs less and does not support multiple graphics cards or DDR3, neither of which you need.

Intel boards are well built but usually they don't allow much OCing if any. ASUS makes very good quality boards along with Gigabyte. EVGA makes excellent 780i boards.

If you get a NVIDIA board, consider buying from XFX. I've never had an issue with their boards, and i think a lot of the issues with the 780i's are mainly EVGA's fault, and not the board design itself...