Have a preference for which brand you use...have horror stories and can tell us which ones not to use? Post away...

Links to brands....latest info on motherboards are also helpful.

Good Link for motherboards....

http://www.motherboards.org/

General Rule for #of RAM slots....low range may only have 2 slots...most have 3....mid range most of the time have 3 and higher end generally have 4.

My opinion on other ports...

You need the AGP port for graphics cards...i don't like pci graphics cards performances.

Most of the time you need at least 4 pci slots. Try not to get intergrated sound or network cards....most boards however now will intergrate a network port and sound card....which is fine as long as the processor, cache, and bus are decent.

You want to try for at least 400 Mhz bus system.

You want at least 2 but i recommend 4 or more USB ports. Hopefully the board and your chasis allows for front usb ports. If you have an option for firewire...just to be compatable have at least 1....perferably 8 pin.

You can find a good board for around $60

I have found that it is very hard to find a decnet motherboard that doesn't have something integrated in it. I don't mind integrated Sound and NIC but I don't like integrated Video.

The 2 brands that I haven't had any problem with are Asus and Gigabyte all with AMD processors. I have yet to build a system with an Intel CPU.

My last motherboard was Intel, and the one I just got is Intel as well. Lousy for overclocking, but usually very stable.

C