Motherboard

Got a free mobo coming my way (only from Misco, one of our suppliers) and have about £75 to play with...

seem to be mainly Asus and Gigabyte stocked and i need it to be AM3. Not too worried about SLi capabilities as its a waste of cash on the 2nd card, nor USB3 is high on my list of wants

anyone fancy making a recommendation of whats on offer or any advice on which chipsets to avoid these days (havent bought a board for myself in about 4 years, only ones for customers who specify budget above anything else)

will also need to get some ram as soon as it gets ordered as i have ddr2 and will need ddr3 for the new board so will need a decent level of support for PC10600

I would go with either one of these boards. The gigabyte 880GM-UD2H being my 1st choice because it is newer.

Gigabyte 880GM-UD2H

Asus M4A785TD-V EVO

Gigabyte MA785GMT-UD2H

What chip are you going to be using? it should work on either board, but i would go and make sure 1st.

Do you want to OC the chip?

i am running the Gigabyte MA785GMT-UD2H with an AMD x4 620 oced to 3.4 (from 2.6) with no issues.

I have the Asus Johnny recommended and it's good, very stable and full of features. I'm not so sure about it's overclocking potential though, as my system becomes unstable at high frequencies (although it's difficult to narrow down the culprit)

It runs my RAM flawlessly at 1600MHz 9-9-9-24

at present i have an AMD X2 6000+... will be looking at a Phemon X6 soon

not going to be overclocking at all