I'm buying a new PC in the near future, what mobo should I get?

[CobaltViper]

I know absolutely nothing about motherboards however it has to support at least 4 GB ram.
Specs so far:
Graphics card: Asus GeForce 8800GTX (I'll probably buy a 9800 instead of this though, but this is a placeholder)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 6850
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 320 GB *2 (Raid 0)
RAM: Corsair 2048MB,DDR2,64MX8, 5400,C4,Twin2X,4-4-4-12 *2

This puts me on 1085 euro by the way.
Lots of things will probably change because I'll have to wait for the 9800 to come out but I want to know how much this hardware will approximately cost me.

 

[kirock]

The ASUS P5K series is a good board. Are you going SLI with that? Did you want to wait until DDR3 mobos come down in price or just opt for a DDR2?(what the P5K series is)

Basically you're looking for any socket 775 mobo. Mobos come in so many flavors because they have various features:
Raid with IDE, no IDE etc.
1 Lan/2 Lan
On-board sound: good/bad/crappy.
SLI or not
and very important if choosing SLI mobo, the chipset like IC9H for example.

 

[CobaltViper]

As I said I know nothing about mobos, and even only a little about other parts, so I'm not really sure what DDR3 (other then that it's an upgrade from DDR2 that is). I'd prefer a SLI mobo because I might get an additional GPU later. I'd like the on-board sound to be good also. The 9800 should be out by christmas so things will obviously have changed I'm just looking how much this will all cost and what web-site to go with etc. So I don't have to figure that all out and make an overhasty decision.
(I have a ~1600 euro budget so if you want to recommend me anything go ahead, cooling etc.)

 

[Dabears]

Take a look at this sites guides and reviews. Also take a look here because it is a decent comparision of motherboards. All these motherboards are Core 2 Duo compatible. Most of them are sli compatible, you will have to check if they have 2 PCIe x16 slots. Here are some questions you should answer when looking for a motherboard.
1. Do you want your sound integrated, or do you want to buy a sound card. Buying a sound card will give better quality but you may not need it.
2. Do you want integrated LAN connection, or do you want to buy a NIC card?
3. What type of Hard Drives and DVD/CD drives do you have, Serial ATA or Parallel ATA? If you have 3 or more Parallel ATA drives you will need more IDE connections.
4. Do you want a mobo that supports RAID? (if you have no idea what RAID is don't bother with this one it rmatters only if you are going to put inportent files on your computer).

 

[kirock]

DDR is Double Date rate memory, it transitions a "bit" on both the Up and Down clock pulse. DDR1 is 1st generation and it operates at 100/133/166/200 Mhz. DDR2 is faster RAm and operates from 100/133/166/200/266MHz. DDR3 (used in Video cards for the last 2 yrs) is now coming out as the main motherboard RAM. the main difference between DDR2 and DDR3 is not so much speed as power. The DDR3 RAM uses 1.5V as opposed to DDR2 at 1.8V and DDR1 at 2.5V. This means they can run cooler and even be pushed to higher frequency and still be stable. (Over clocking).

SO a DDR3 mobo is different then a DDR2 mobo, b/c of the diff b/w 1.5 and 1.8Volts.

DDR3 RAM mainboard RAm is just coming out and is a little bit more expensive then DDR2.

Get a SATA mobo, anything else is just dumb. All SATA come with RAID ability, usually 4-6 SATA ports.
Get a PCI-E board and prob even SLI or Crossfire. (nvidia or ATI) (X2 PCI-E x16 ports)
USB 2.0 and now they have 3.0. How many ports you want? (more =>$)
On-board LAN? Sure why not.
PCI X1 slots are needed too. (the NIC card mentioned above or even the sound card) How many you need? (more =>$)

One thing to mention, if you go SLI, then read about the chipset. For AMD 64 (socket 940) the best chipset is the 590, it runs both X16 slots at FULL X16. Other chipsets (ie. 570) run SLI at X16 and X8 (i.e 2nd slot get only X8 speed).

I'm not so familiar with Intel boards when it comes to SLI or Crossfire, so you need to do some homework on those boards and their chipsets.

If you plan to build own PC, you really need to read up on this stuff first and get to know the products available. There are just TOO many for us to recommend this or THAT.

Hope that helps.

Cheers.

 

[raybay]

Gigabyte os a good board, with better tech support than the ASUS.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

The GigaByte P35-DS3L is a great board. The ASUS P5K Deluxe is an excellent one as well. Both support DDR2 and DDR3 and will support the 45nm Penryn CPUs when they release. Also, they include native support for Crossfire. For SLI, the MSI K9N Platinum is the best buy.

 

[CobaltViper]

So will I be able to use SLI with the ASUS P5K Deluxe? It seemed a good choice to me because it supports DDR3 and the new Penryn CPU's (Which should be out when I'm going to buy my PC), but I want to be able to use SLI as well...

Thanks for all the comments by the way, really helpfull and constructive community you've got going here.

 

[Rage_3K_Moiz]

No the P5K Deluxe only supports Crossfire. For SLI, look at the MSI board I mentioned earlier. You could also get a 680i-based one like the ASUS Striker Extreme but a 650i-based mobo offers similar functionality and speed as 680i-based ones without the hot northbridge. If you're looking at the SLI x16+x16 thingy, don't bother. There's no performance difference between SLI x16+x16 and SLI x8+x8.