Need motherboard, processor and memory

[Jon12345]

I currently have an ATX system with a P4 CPU and old nasty RAM. The PC is used as a workhorse, where it does regular number crunching and also acts as a Server for the office Outlook email client.

So, I am thinking of going for the following spec:

- ATX motherboard supporting SATAI or more.
- 2Gb DDR2 RAM with dual channel support.
- Q6600 Quad CPU.

A graphics card is not that important since I am not using it for games or anything like that. Do most motherboards nowadays come with graphics built in that would run at 1024x768? Do they all have on board sound?

What motherboard would you recommend?

I have a ATA hard drive and so will be using this with the new system. But since I will be doing a chipset change, I might need two IDE channels on the new motherboard due to needing both a Optical drive and my IDE hard drive and they can't run effectively on the same IDE socket. Are two IDE channels rare nowadays on a motherboard that would support a Q6600?

What memory would you go for?

Thanks,

Jon

 

[Jon12345]

Isn't it best to get 2 x 1GB ram instead of one 2gb ram?

 

[Jon12345]

Just checked it out and yes, it does seem idea.

So, are we saying that if I go for a P35 chipset with one IDE channel that I can use my IDE hard drive and dvd writer at the same time for a Windows Repair install, if needed?