# best intel motherboard for novice?



## doktrin (Oct 15, 2007)

I'm looking to be building my first PC and the motherboard is the most daunting item so far. 

My goal is to put together a high end PC for moderate gaming, graphic design and video editing.

Any help would be really appreciated - some basic criteria :

1. simplicity / reliability. I have to admit i don't know much about installing BIOS chips and whatnot, so the less I have to adjust, tweak, or fix up the better. 

2. Supporting Intel Core 2 e6750

3. Overclocking is not a real issue

4. DDR2 800 (seemed fairly standard on most of the mobos I looked at). I just can't afford enough DDR3.

5. SLI is not important, though obviously I would want support for a GPU (probably an 8800gts 640mb) 

6. How important is the chipset? I was looking at the p35 and liked what I saw, but I would let item (1) take priority over the awesomness of the chipset. 

Thanks!


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## damonhill0 (Jul 29, 2007)

Hiya

I would highly recommend the setup i'm using! I'm a little biased though!

I bought the Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R motherboard. It supports the E6750 (which i also have and can thoroughly recommend)

It also supports DDR2 RAM. I'm using Kingston Value RAM. I would only ever buy memory that is on the QVL for this board though, as i've heard reports of high performance memory not working properly due to voltage control issues.

It only has one PCI-E x16 slot though so you won't be able to SLI or Crossfire. You won't need to with the card you are looking at though. It's a beast!

Link to this motherboard on the Gigabyte website:

Link!

If you click "Memory Support List" on the right hand side you'll see a list of memory that Gigabyte have tested and that is known to work with board. 

I can also recommend the Kingston Value Ram. I have 4GB of DDR2 800 (PC2 6400). It's runs cool, is very stable and is dirt cheap.

Hope this helps.

George

*EDIT* Forgot to say, this was my first build aswell. Went absolutely fine. If you do go with this board i can post and tell you exactly how i got mine setup. I use Windows Vista Home Premium just to let you know.

This board also has lots of overclocking options, which i know you said you weren't going to do, but it's there should you ever change your mind.


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## doktrin (Oct 15, 2007)

nice George, thanks!
I'm definitely gonna check this out, sounds like your system is pretty much what I'm goin for.


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## damonhill0 (Jul 29, 2007)

How much were you looking to spend? 

My pc was quite expensive. About £900 all in all but i didn't have to buy a graphics card. I got my 7800gtx from a friend.

The processor and graphics card that you have chosen are probably the best "bang for your buck" options at the moment. Strictly speaking the Nvidia 8800gts 320mb is probably best for the money gfx card but they're both great deals.

The motherboard was quite expensive (about £75).


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## Kalim (Nov 24, 2006)

Something like Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R motherboard and Intel E6750 or E8650 is also what I would advise, along with some Buffalo Firestix PC2-6400 2x1GB kit RAM. GPU, best for that board is HD2900XT although it consumes a lot of power, so nVidia 8800GT (soon to be released) is probably the best bunch (if not, then I would go for an OC 8600GTS because of the hardware decoding support).


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## TheMatt (May 9, 2006)

The P35-DS3R and P35-DS4 are all good boards if you don't need SLi. Don't bother with DDR3 now; the P35 will not support any CPUs that will ever even be able to fully utilize DDR2-1066 MHz RAM. The P35C-DS3R is more expensive than the P35-DS3R but will not really provide any improvements in terms of the addition of the DDR3 slots.


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