The EVGA 780i is a great motherboard. I overclocked the 9300 from 2.5ghz to 2.8 in about two minutes. Manual is good, you get lots of cables, good drivers, etc. Make sure you use an nvidia video card for best results. The 780i will allow you to use up to three video cards in SLI mode. I haven't found a need for that much display power, as my monitor is only 1680x1050. If you are driving a bigger monitor, you may want to consider two video cards to maximize performance. For a few more dollars, you can go with the 790i board, and use DDR3 memory, which is faster, but more expensive. I almost went that route, but wanted to keep the cost of the PC to $1500 (in the US).
I do recommend going to the 9300 or 9450 processors. They aren't much more expensive than the q6600, and give better performance overall. And, if you use DVDecryptor or IMGBurn to create DVD's, you will use all 4 cores. Same with many Adobe products. Crysis and Bioshock also use all the available cores.
The EVGA 780i is a great motherboard. I overclocked the 9300 from 2.5ghz to 2.8 in about two minutes. Manual is good, you get lots of cables, good drivers, etc. Make sure you use an nvidia video card for best results. The 780i will allow you to use up to three video cards in SLI mode. I haven't found a need for that much display power, as my monitor is only 1680x1050. If you are driving a bigger monitor, you may want to consider two video cards to maximize performance. For a few more dollars, you can go with the 790i board, and use DDR3 memory, which is faster, but more expensive. I almost went that route, but wanted to keep the cost of the PC to $1500 (in the US).
I do recommend going to the 9300 or 9450 processors. They aren't much more expensive than the q6600, and give better performance overall. And, if you use DVDecryptor or IMGBurn to create DVD's, you will use all 4 cores. Same with many Adobe products. Crysis and Bioshock also use all the available cores.