Hello, bought this board a while back planning to mildy oc a e21XX and throw on a 8800gts. glad i waited these months b/c i see prices have dropped, and seems the ati 4850 is now the favored vid card.

so how will the p35 ds3l board with 7200 stock cooled (mild oc to maybe 3.2???) and 4850 card in an antec 900 case work? will run on a 24" monitor i already have.

or is a e2180 with aftermarket cooling and same rest of setup better.

I am building this as a college student on a budget . . . will do mostly Adobe CS3 work and some CAD and some gaming as well but no crysis.

thanks

oh and i forgot to add i want to run 2 x 2g sticks of ram . . . but would also appreciate some recommendations that will run good on this gigabyte p35 board

oh and also wanted to add that will get an corsair power supply . . 550w should be fine??

I would say go for the e7200 stock cooled. Even though its got a wimpy dinky stock cooler on it, your antec 900 should make up for it.

As for you video card, if your doing alot of 3d rendering and what not, maybe a workstation video card would be better? Like the nvidia quadro series or the ati firegl stuff? Im no expert though so idk just a suggestion.

I see you have ds3l board as well - - do you like that patriot ram??

I love both the Motherboard and the RAM. I have my RAM OC'ed @ ddr2 900 100% stable. Even with the tight timings of 4-4-4-12. Pretty good. It does run pretty hot though, since its voltage is 2.2 instead of the "standard" 1.8
And just being picky here, but it doesn't look as good as the G.skill's lol. Whew have you seen the G.skills in person? Those sexy red Heatsinks look way cooler then the sort of boring Patriot ones.

O and about that PSU, yes 550 watts is perfect for you system.