Alright, since I have recently acquired some money I have taken into consideration Big B reccomendation that I upgrade my PSU first which I did (from a no name crap one to an FSP350-60PN) now the next thing is motherboard. I haven't done really any reasearching on what's really good right now, but I was looking at reviews of the MSI PT880-LSP (VIA PT880 chipset) and this thing is only $60 on newegg, and it seems like the chipset is on par with the intels i875P but much cheaper. What do you guys think? ~Temporal~
I haven't used it personally, but MSI tends to be of pretty good quality without breaking the bank. They also tend to be able to make a pretty good board with even a poor chipset like the KT600 chipset. The available CPU voltage is kinda low, topping out at 1.6V. Soltek's PT880 has better CPU voltage, and doesn't overclock too impressively over 200MHz (x4), but neither does the MSI. If a massive overclock is your bag, you'd be better off with Abit's IS7/-G/-E. The IS7-E is running something like $80-85 at Newegg. Both PT880 boards offer more features for less though.
If you can dish out the extra cash to get a board w\ an intel chipset, do it because they are the best chipset makers for intel cpus, period, and the chipset is the most important part on a motherboard.
