Hey Guys I just ordered my new PC: E6600, GA-P965-S3, XFX 8800GTS 320mb.

But my supplier just told me that they dont have stock of the S3 Mobo, they have the DS3 which is too expensive for me and an Intel Guardfish which im very reluctant to get, However I can get an ASUS P5B for slightly less than the S3.

What do you guys suggest? please dont suggest getting something that is quite a bit more expensive as im on an extremely tight budget and everything has already been ordered, please only suggest a board that is less, the same or Very similar price range to the S3

Also is there a big difference in OCing ability from the S3 to the P5B as i was planning to do a medium OC on stock cooling on the S3?

Thanks

I don't think you will see much difference with the Asus P5B. It is a good mobo and will mildly or more aggressively overclock your E6600 without a problem. Do not loose your sleep over it!

Good luck...

OK I've pretty much decided on the P5B

But

Now i have a much bigger problem:
I read a review on the board and it says that the IDE port needs the chipsets drivers to be installed to recognise something attached to it, now the problem is that i only have an IDE optical drive and i plan on installing Windows with that. It said something about installing the drivers from a flash drive, now is that possibe without installing windows? as far as i know thats impossible

Please help!

This refers to an older version of the bios. In any case, if you select from bios the Jmicron controller and set it to IDE mode (or IDE compatibility mode), it will be perfectly alright with your optical drive. You will be able to install windows anyway, so if you locate the problem you change the setting in bios and you will be fine!

Phew!

So I just need to set the BIOS to IDE mode and the IDE Optical drive will work just fine?

Yup!

I just got the Asus P5B a few days ago. I was also a little confused about the optical drive install problem that you mentioned. I flashed the bios from inside the bios with a version from ASUS´s web page that came out last week and it was easy. I used a USB flash drive and it was no problem. I had to reinstall windows xp from optical drive (which is what you want to do) because when I tried to boot from from my hard drive it was just to much of a hardware change.

Anyway, as the other people have said it is no problem. It is running nice and stable. The chip is running hotter then in my last board and I am working on this.

I´ll tell you more later as it has only been a few days.