Best mb for e8400

I'm building a new pc off the e8400, I'll be running a G92 8800 GTS, 2 250gb 7500rmp hd, and 1 150gb 10000rmp for the os, X-fi sound card, vista ultimate 64, and 4gb corsair xms2 ram (or best compatible with mb). I am just looking for the best board for this setup as I am mainly going for performance, sound and picture quality, but also gaming. So I was wondering from everyones experience here what board would be best suited for that setup and achieving some nice oc speeds and offers great performance and a lot of expansion ability.

And all of those are compatible right out of the box with this processor?

"Compatible right out of the box" as in "will boot". Flashing the BIOS may still be a good idea even if it works perfect - it might just fix bugs you haven't found yet, or make something go faster. Of course, it may mess up something that used to work, so read the notes carefully to decide whether to flash or not.

Are you planning to use a 24" monitor or bigger and play things like Crysis? If yes, I suggest an X38 or 780i motherboard and a large PSU, so you can do Crossfire or SLI.

Are you planning to use 3 or 4 monitors? If yes, the aBit IP35Pro is good because you can have two video cards in it, each with 2 monitors, but the GA-P35-DS3L and GA-P35-DS3R won't do. GA-P35-DS4 will do, if you like Gigabyte.

Are you going to have lots of hard disks, maybe a RAID array? GA-P35-DS3L is limited to 4 SATA and 2 IDE devices and doesn't support RAID.

If you want compatibility out of the box with sli you will need a nvidia 7 series chipset board.

What would be my best mb option to couple with this cpu for extreme performance, some internet gaming, high quality sound and picture...i could probably use my pentium 4 to flash the bios to a compatible driver if it wasn't out of box compatible.

yes going with 512

Why not a 680i board?

I bought the ASUS P5E to pair with my E8400 2 days ago and had no problem. It saw my cpu straight away. 1333 FSB. The only think i changed in BIOS was DRAM Frequency to 1200MHz for my new Transcend 2X1GB 1200MHz RAM kit (Windows XP FTW) and that worked with no hassle as well

are the 780i boards much better performance wise? like for OCing and stufff

Compared to 680i, they add PCI-E 2.0 (which may make a difference for 9800GTX and later, but it doesn't matter for current video cards) and Triple-SLI (currently supported by 8800 GTX and 8800 Ultra, nothing else). Apart from that, not much has changed...

OK, I'll list some of my favorite options and you check out the specs at newegg and Google for reviews.

If you only want one video card, and 3 hard disks (and I'm guessing also a DVD burner) and don't care about RAID or FireWire or eSATA, then you could get a GA-P35-DS3L for about $90.

Now, if you want RAID or the ability to add a 4th hard disk (and a 7th, in fact) you can get the GA-P35-DS3R for $130 or so. If all your disks and the burner are SATA and you don't already have the cables, this is a better deal IMO than the DS3L because it comes with 4 cables instead of 2.

If you need a second PCI-E x16 slot or FireWire or eSATA you can look at the aBit IP35 Pro or the GA-P35-DS4 (or GA-P35-DS3P) or the P5K Premium. These boards will not be great for Crossfire, and you're getting an nVidia card anyway, but they will let you add a cheap second card there and use it to power monitors #3 and #4 (while the GTS handles #1 and #2).

If you want Crossfire you need something like GA-X38-DS4 (or P5E) and replace the GTS card with an HD 3870 or HD 3870X2. If you want SLI look at eVGA 780i or XFX 780i. TBH I don't think you need to go this far for a 22" monitor.

Do you know if the cooling for the DS3R is as good as the DS3P? Is there much difference? I have a Quad Core Q6600 cpu and want to keep things as cool as possible and not worry about heat/power consumption issues. I might want eSATA if I ever got an external HDD. Does that mean the DS3R is out and I should consider DS4? I read that one can just buy a bracket for eSATA but how does it compare? It uses up a PCI slot?

I'm considering selling the Quad Core cpu to get a E8400/E8500 as well which might help ease concerns. What about that idea?

Having an extra monitor is interesting and might be quite useful for me. Thanks for bringing that up! LOL! So, the DS4 gives that option? How does that work? They are not for SLI or gaming but for adding an extra monitor?

Btw, thanks for answering the other questions. I think I might want either the DS3P or DS4 for improved cooling.

Also, thanks to Canadian pricing, the DS4 is $60 more than the DS3R and the DS3P is $40 more than the DS3R. I just need to confirm that the most recent revision of the DS4 can fit the Thermalright Ultra Extreme 120 CPU cooler. I believe that it can as I haven't read anything about the backplate being on the newer boards.

I feel better about having the Quad now, thanks. It's good to know that they are still popular and useful, though. It's still a good processor none the less but I have an option of replacing it with the E8400 if I prefer. Either way, my build should be decent.

Hi there! I have some questions about these MBs:

1) Is there any MB capable of recognizing DDR3 modules?

2) I see that some MBs have these specs: rev 1.0, rev 2.0 and rev 2.1 - how should I proceed (or the seller) to verify if the MB is selling is the rev 2.1 for example?

3) I need to use RAID 0 and probably 3 or 4 HDDs using SATA. I also need to do Crossfire.

4) I need some MB that can accept PCI-E slots for using a capture card (Blackmagic Intensity Pro). I think all of them have this feature, just to confirm.

And for the last, if more than a single model fits all the following 4 items above, what do you recommend?

I need a new MB to use with E8400. Thanks!

If you want to do Crossfire then two PCI-E x16 slots will be occupied by the video cards. What kind of PCI-E slot does the capture card need?