First "starter" mobo

[Locum51]

Yea, that's insane! Another thing that i thought was insane was the one Nvidia Quadro Videocard that supports 4 monitors by itself! I was like wow that's a little overkill!

[Zephik]

This one is the best bang for the buck, but the layout is kind of meh. Its also the only one that has on-board video though.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128388

This one is a bit more costly, but has a much better layout.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128380

This one is even more costly yet, but has two PCI-E x16 2.0 slots. ...and its pretty cool looking. lol :p

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813135093

There are probably better ones out there, but there were so many boards and they varied only so much, so I probably missed a few. But from what I could tell, they didn't differ all that much so I don't think there is some amazing board out there that I missed. They differ mainly by layout and I didn't want to compare pictures between five and a half billion boards. lol

[Zephik]

This one is pretty nice too...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157135

Bah! There are so many choices! Its only slightly ridiculous. No wonder you wanted help. lol

[Locum51]

Haha. Yea! I am kind of like a kid in a candy store and i can only choose one thing!

[TheGreatSatan]

You guys to to locate the edit button. How many separate posts do you need to make to get your point across? They're all 10 minutes or less apart

[Zephik]

Is there a problem with that?

[Locum51]

Yea, yea....i know the forum rules i've been on plenty of them. I am getting some really good help here.

[apbrit2009]

don't go with socket 775, it's being phased out
go with lga 1156, 1366, or am3
it may cost a little more, but it's worth it if you want to upgrade your computer down the road

[mDust]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131390

(in the voice of randy marsh: ) "Oh.My.God." /love

now to make my reply relevant: the 775 is being phased out, but you'll still be able to get parts for it for a long time. and in a couple of years even the extreme quads will be dirt cheap. don't drop a ton of money on a 775 board, which it looks like the recommendations are sub $100 so that's fine. nobody really 'needs' bleeding edge technology anyway. no not even you, gentle overclocker who may be reading this...

[FuzzyPlushroom]

Yesterday's ultra-high-end equipment is still expensive today and will be tomorrow, due to people wishing to max out their existing hardware. The Athlon XP 3200+ was the fastest Socket A CPU; I watched people purchase them at over $100 a couple of years ago as AM2 was being phased in. Even today, they're $40, $45 and still frequently counterfeited. I don't even want to talk about the price of P4EEs.

If you want to get the most out of technology, replace your old system with a good motherboard and midrange CPU on a new socket, then upgrade the CPU once to the new midrange model later on (early C2D to C2Q, for example, or my A64 3500+ to X2 4400+). This philosophy has served me well.