asus maximus II formula motherboard and ocz reaper pc8500 ram if you want to go the ddr2 route. i always recommend that combo when building a mid to high end rig for someone. i can't vouch for any ddr3 boards since i haven't used any personally yet but from what i've read the asus rampage extreme is pretty strong. also, gigabyte makes some pretty good boards. i just don't like the way they look with all the different colors used. for what it's worth, i use the maximus II formula and 8 gigs of the reaper pc8500 ram and i'm very happy with the combo. also, i know the support from both asus and ocz is superb. i've read that gigabyte's support is pretty good, too. abit made some really good boards but they're no longer in business.

I have an ASUS P5K-E that uses the Intel P35 chipset, that supports up to 8GB of memory. It uses DDR2 memory, and the box says "native DDR2 1066 support". It has been working really nice with a Core 2 Duo and a GF 9600GT. It's not exactly cutting edge technology, and the chipset could be considered old, but i got mine with only a bit over 100 € (last summer).

900MHZ Socket A Athlon (Thunderbird) up until about a year and a half ago.  256MB SDRAM PC133 to boot.

ANother good one.  I like that one too!

As for the colors, hey!  Once the case goes on, who knows the colors?

Thanks

I dont want cutting edge. Not because I am worried about bugs, but because you always pay a premium for it.

Cutting edge is only cutting for about 5 minutes anyways.  By the time they ship you the part, the true geeks are already laughing at your outdated technology.

Very true, but the P5K-E is starting to make the lesser geeks smile too

Newegg is great.  The new cpu takes a different socket x58 and is looking hot.  There is a good article at Techspot at:

http://www.techspot.com/article/131-intel-corei7-memory-performance/

And here is a Gigabyte Mobo that takes the cpu and 24GB RAM Triple channel.  Six slots at 4GB each

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128361

Drool,

 PS it also takes SLI & Crossfire

Aint that the truth!

Yes! A little pricey, but 24gb is talking!

8 memory ranks is the maximum most desktop chipsets can handle, which if the motherboards needs to support dual rank DIMMs (which is the majority of DIMMs) limits the number of memory slots to 4. Using 2GB DIMMs, larger ones are IMO not financially attractive, you get a maximum of 8GB memory with desktop hardware.

If you want more, desktop hardware is no longer sufficient, you need workstation/server boards. To allow more memory ranks per channel, AMD uses registered memory while Intel uses FB-DIMMs. If you go this direction, forget about Intel, AMD has the better solution here, it is generally faster, uses less power and costs less money.

The Supermicro H8DME-2 is a good board for such a large memory system, With 16 2GB sticks you get a nice 32GB of memory:

http://www.supermicro.nl/Aplus/motherboard/Opteron2000/MCP55/H8DME-2.cfm

GIGABYTE GA-MA785G-UD3H AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 785G HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

Winner of Tech Report Editor’s Award

will run up to 16 gigs of Ram

Only $89.95 at New Egg

Gee, you're only about 8 or 9 months late,  

Intel? Yuck. Try AMD again. Better bang for the buck.