Building up an Duo E6400 machine - motherboard conundrum

Lashout_UK

Lashout_UK

Lashout_UK

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Joined
2 Mar 2004
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Location
SE England
Greetings!

After finally setting on a Core Duo as my next CPU, I've wondered into the minefield that is motherboard choice.

Basically, I have not the foggiest idea what to go for. Ideally I need a minimum of 2 PCI slots - unless someone can really vouch for the quality of the onboard sound (Seeing as most seem to be 7.1 hardware these days) and that's about it.

I've been browsing a selection of Gigabyte, Asus and Abit boards and really am not sure what I want or could utilise. I'm not keen on SLI due to the number of issues that seem to surround it at the time and as more of a casual gamer (using the machine more often than not for graphic design and editing) it doesn't really matter too much.

Having two PCI-E 16x slots doesn't really bother me either - as I can't see myself using more than 2 monitors.

So, do you have any prime recommendations? Memory will be Crucial DDR2 PC6400 and I might clock it up a little but not much.

I'm quite tempted by the DS-3 but am uncertain as to wether it'll support a Duo straight out of the box :)

Thanks!
 
Having experienced a DS3 and an Asus P5B amongst others over the last few months, my preference is for the Asus board.

That's only because I was interested in overclocking though, and the DS3 just wouldn't budge FSB wise, not stably anyway. I appreciate thats not been everybodys experience as you will know if you're just back from the DS3 thread!

Both Mobos booted up with my E6300 straight from the box with my Value RAM, but at stock speeds, only the Asus was completely stable with my DS3 crashing a few times. I thought it might have been the a faulty DS3 board, but the replacement did exactly the same, so it must have been something else in my setup. (Although it's nothing extraordinary!)

The Asus for me has been a great overclocker too, and even clocked up to 3Ghz, I've yet to have it crash on me. (Fingers crossed I haven't just cursed it!)

For a no frills, and few thrills board, the Asus P5B gets my vote over the DS3.
 
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