recomend a motherboard

[gilljoy]

upgrading my pc in a few weeks time when i finish my exams..

gona get

Intel e7200
Corsair 550w psu
4gb corsair pc 6400 ram
coolermaster elite 330 £25
waiting to get a 8800gt but im gona see what the prices of the new radeon cards are like when they come out before i make the plunge

motherboard needs to be :
decent for overclocking
support raid
have built in lan
sli/cross fire would be a bonus but not a necessarity

also i need a aftermarket cooler to go with it so recomendations will be sweet

budget all in for motherboard, ram case, cpu, psu and cooler is around £300

so either a mobo recomendation or a system for around £300 - the graphics card

[MSIC]

Hi there Gilljoy, if i understand you correctly you want a motherboard recomended for the above.
I'm not quite sure what you are asking about the graphics card in that last sentance.
I havent calculated what your current components cost, but you need to be spending in the region of £55 to £80 on a decent motherboard to do what you want.
The intel P35 chipset is a very easy one to recommend as
a) it'll do what you want
b) is proven reliable
c) it's cheaper than the new P45 series, which is really only a minor refresh anyway.

So looking at the options available, Abit, Gigabyte, maybe ASUS or even MSI might be up your street.
The Abit IP-35, Dark Raider is a good buy at £67, without SLi or Crossfire.
The Asus P5KC, iP35 at £72 has 2 PCI-E slots, but from memory does Crossfire only (AMD / ATI).

I'm not a multi-graphics card fan, i see it as a sly marketting tool that too many people have been sucked into.
I f you really want SLi (and therefore nVidia) give this ASUS nforce chipset (Asus P5N-D, NF750i SLI) a whirl at £83.

Edit: I havent even bothered to check about the RAID options as nearly every motherboard comes with it on these days. That doesnt mean to say that it's a good RAID option however. I'm no RAID expert, but my experience is that motherboard chipset RAIDs are fine until they go wrong, and then you lose your data. If you buy a new motherboard with RAID, you can't necessarily get your data back because it'll probably be a different RAID chipset.
If you really, honestly want RAID, and care about keeping data in an emergency, buy a cheap RAID PCI card that you can easily move between motherboards if needed. Have a look here
Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK
although i can't recommend any one in particular.

[not_my_ip]

Abit is better choice as it comes to raid. Asus did very strange thing and raid is created using one Sata socket o MB and one on back plate (very strange) when Abit have it in normal way. Both v. good for OC and v. stable

[gilljoy]

ohh what I meant was £300 not inculding the cost of the graphics card in a few months time.. looks like its the dark raider. any heat sink recomendations

[staffsMike]

Got a Scythe Ninja on 3 of the PC's I built this year, one of which is on a dark raider (which is running RAID very nicely ) works a treat with very low speed fans and can cool up with the big boys like thermalright which are a bit too expensive for my taste.

Xigmatec also make a very nice tower cooler with direct touch heat pipes. Cooling is near the thermalright extreme 120 and it only costs £20 odd quid and comes with a fan. Also seen that on the dark raider no problems

Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK

[eric-N]

So looking at the options available, Abit, Gigabyte, maybe ASUS or even MSI might be up your street.
The Abit IP-35, Dark Raider is a good buy at £67, without SLi or Crossfire.
The Asus P5KC, iP35 at £72 has 2 PCI-E slots, but from memory does Crossfire only (AMD / ATI).

i too bought the p5KC, i wouldnt recommend it to be honest, its a very budget board.

there are too many problems with this board, as mentioned RAID is all messed up, the HD run in IDE mode even if they are SATA and you cant change it whatever you do! Asus removed the Sata interface in a bios update claiming it was unstable

1066 ram refuses to work no matter what option u put in the bios, dd3 ram is also pretty unstable! avoid the p5kc and pay the extra 20-30 for the p5k wifi ap

[shaneyp]

On the point of you getting an 8800,

i wouldnt bother unless your going to Sli to have the same effect of a 9800 GT2

If your not going to SLi i woul get an 9800gtx, or wait and get the new 10 series,

providing your budget allows it

[smithy1158]

I would recomend the Asus P5Q-E iP45
Scan Link

It supports high speed (1200MHz) DDR2 Ram, has 2 highspeed LAN ports, supports HD audio and supports SATA Raid.

It is also Crossfire altough I thoroughly recomend the NVIDIA 8800GT its an awsome card and is great value for money...