Best microATX Motherboard?

[plepak]

I'm looking to build a new computer for general office work as well as light/moderate gaming. I want to base it on a Pentium 4 631 chip and an Intel 945G chipset. There are several good boards out there with the features I want, but I'm not sure which to choose. Money is not an object, since I'm willing to throw down extra cash for a better board. Which microATX board does anyone think is the best with the Socket 775/945G combination?

 

[Zap]

I'll be the first...

If money's no object and you want the best, why not get a dual core socket 939 setup on a mATX board?

BTW, welcome to the forums. May your stay be long and prosperous. Watch out for the rabid AMDroids.

 

[plepak]

Allow me to correct: First, I want to keep the cost of my system under $1000. I've found some good deals on other parts, so I am willing to throw down more money to get a good motherboard. It's the heart of the system, and future upgrades would be much easier with a better board. Here's the parts list I have so far:

Aspire X-QPack mATX case
Intel Pentium 4 631
ATI Radeon X1300
Corsair Dual Channel 2x512mb DDR25400
Maxtor 300GB HDD
Memorex DVD-RW
Motherboard ???

I have seen nice-looking boards from Asus, Intel, Gigabyte, ECS, Abit, and MSI, but I was wondering if anyone could give me any performance info or any notes based on experience. The only differences I can see from browsing online is the color of the boards and small changes in layout. I like the mATX size, but it's hard finding good perfomance information compared to the standard ATX boards. One of these websites just needs a good mATX motherboard shootout...

 

[imported_killuminati]

iam using the Intel D945GTPL this one :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813121294
a very simple , fast , stable and normal motherboard .
i even overclocked my DDR2-533 to 667 via the intel bios . the pc booted and was stable .

my setup :
Intel Pentium4 630
Intel D945GTPL
Kingston 512MB DDR2-533
Samsung 80GB SATA2 HD080J .

Peace & ciao !!!

 

[furballi]

Guess you have a lot of $ to burn. Why spend $1000 on a PC for "general office work as well as light/moderate gaming"? AMD processors run cooler and generally perform better with games. I doubt that you will notice the speed increase between a $1000 rig and a $600 value rig, especially with those applications.

It is more difficult for a noob to build a well-ventilated case in the micro ATX platform. A hot case will often result is system instability.