What mobo to buy?

[cakofony]

I am currently working building a system for my brother, so far I have decided on an E8400 and 2gb of g.skill 800mhz 4-4-4-12 ram, and my old 8800gtx (as soon as I upgrade).

I am trying to decide on a mobo for him, and I would like it to support pcie2, maybe crossfire for the future (dont really need it though), and oc well (for the E8400, and my Q6600 if I ever give that to him). The intel x38/48 chipsets look good, but they are a little over what I want to spend (preferably $150 or less, and it cannot be over $200 under any circumstances. I would like good oc bios, that always makes things easier.

[ChuckM]

You're a DFI guy I see, how 'bout this;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813136045

[cakofony]

I try not to stick with any one brand in particular just because of its name. That said, that board looks nice! On my current board, I have my Q6600 on water, and cant get anything over 3.6 (9x400) and that isn't completely stable anyway, because my current board isn't all that great. The board you linked me doesn't appear to have a nb cooler in the pic, do you know what type it has? thanks :-D

[ProStreetCamaro]

Asus P5Q

Rock solid board with the latest chipset and a great clocking board. I have my E8400 at 4.0 and it will go higher if I want. Its also $120 at zipzoomfly or you could go with a higher end P5Q model to suit your needs.

[iTravis]

PCI 2.0: P43, P45 or X38/X48 but X48 is out of your budget and the only X38 costs less than $200 is the DFI ChuckM listed above, they have another version with the northbridge cooler on it so you might wanna consider: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813136051
If not then either P43 or P45 but P43 doesn't support CrossFire and I don't recommend running CrossFire on P45 since you only run at x8/x8 versus full x16/x16 on the X38/X48. As for P43 I'm not that famililar with it but I have heard good things about the Asus P5Q ProStreetCamaro mentioned above and looks like it has a good rating on newegg too so you might wanna take a look at it.

[updawg]

Newegg has open box rampage formulas for 199.99 shipped.

[cakofony]

I dont really need crossfire if not having it will save me money (the only reason i wanted it was so i could fantasize about finding working 48 series cards in a trash can somewhere...)

is X38 any better than p43/p45 for anything besides crossfire?
I would really like to stay under 150 if possible, 200 was absolute top if it would give me a huge improvement. The p5q looks really good

[cakofony]

Ordering the P5Q. It looks really good.