The BEST x58 motherboard with no dual or triple GPUS

I am wondering which x58 motherboard with out Crosfire or SLI is the best. I am thinking of the MSI platium which supports 1600 mhz ddr3. What would be better? the cheaper the better.

Would the corsair 3x1gb 1600 mhz dominator be the best ram for this Motherboard?

The Asus Rampage II Gene is available for around 210 € and does very nice in the tests mentioned. It's only a Micro-ATX mainboard, but YOU won't need to think about board-layout since you won't be using dual video-cards, although the board will allow you to run both Crossfire and SLI.

If you wan't to install a PCI X-Fi card, you're in trouble unless your videocard has a single-slot cooler.

http://www.cpu3d.com/review/7456-1 [...] ction.html

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews [...] herboard/1

At http://www.memoryc.com/index.html - check out memory offers. Go for lowest timings - ie. 7-7-7 at 1600 MHz like these: http://www.memoryc.com/products/de [...] index.html

That's only around 350 € for 6GB 1600MHz DDR3 RAM and the ASUS Rampage II Gene - a very good overclocking bundle.

To find out if the ASUS Rampage II Gene motherboard will run with the OCZ mem, you should check out ASUS' homepage for the specific product and take a look at the QVL (Qualified Vendor List) that will tell you which memories have been tested and deemed compatible.

The cheapest motherboard i can find is a Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R at 180€ - but I would spend the 210€ on getting a very good overclocking board, like Gene.

And maybe later, going SLI or Crossfire will be tempting, who knows. The Gigabyte mentioned above "only" has Crossfire support.