Advice needed for a new, stable system

[cameramonkey]

My trusty video editing system finally died the other day after 4 years of service. A P4 2.8 sytem w/ and Asus P4P800 Deluxe, Geforce 6800 (AGP), and 2 gigs of Corsair PC400. My CPU and Mobo bit the dust. Anyway...

I'm in the market to build a new system. I'll probably salvage my old SATA Hard drives and my 550 watt antec power supply, but the CPU, Mobo, RAM, and video card of course all have to be new purchases. I've been lurking around and reading some posts and reviews on [H]'s site (and have read the new system guide) for some ideas, but I still have a few questions. The bottom line is, I need to build a new system kinda quickly that it fast and, most importantly, stable. I do not really get into overclocking. I mainly use my system for video editing with Adobe Premiere Pro, Sony Vegas, and After Effects (all running on Windows XP Pro). I do game a little (I love Half Life 2 and Battlefield 2), but only when I have some down time.

I've definitely decided to get the Intel E6600 Core Duo, 2 Gigs of Crucial Ballistix PC2 6400, a BFG Geforce 7950GT (512MB), and one new SATA 250 GB Hard Drive. The thing I'm having the hardest time deciding is which motherboard to get and with what chipset. I definitely need a motherboard with firewire support because I do a whole bunch of video capture. I'd love to get something based on the intel 965 or 975 chipset. But after looking through the forums it seems that many of these boards have some setup woes or compatibility problems (mostly with ram and ide drives). I've looked at the following motherboards but don't know which one would be the easiest to set up quickly and be stable with the workload I'll have and the hardware I've picked out:

Gigabyte DQ6 (I considered the DS3, but I need firewire support - I guess I could always get a PCI firewire card??)
Asus P5W DH
Asus P5B Deluxe
Asus P5B-E

I'd love to get the Asus P5B-E (because I'm trying to save $$$$$), but didn't know if this was a "quality" board. It has the firewire support built in and has most of what I would need built in. But I'm open to any and all suggestion for any of the components of this build, especially recommending a good stable motherboard that is easy to set up and get going. Thanks so much in advance, I look forward to the suggestions.

 

[cameramonkey]

bump

 

[engiNURD]

I'd go with the GA-965P-S3, -DS3, or the P5B-E. Also, get a PCI firewire card if you need firewire 800, because most onboard firewire is 400. All of those boards are good quality.

 

[cameramonkey]

Thanks for the information. Good recommendation for the PCI Firewire 800 card.

On a 2nd note I was wondering if there was a cheaper alternative to the Crucial Ballistix PC2 6400 RAM? I'm leaning towards the Asus P5B-E. Just looking for good solid memory at a good price.... Thanks.

 

[engiNURD]

Since you wont be overclocking, just go with the cheapest DDR2 kit that you trust. There isnt much difference between the 3 major speeds (533/667/800) on the latest intel platform, so there really is no need for higher speed ram. Since you want stability, make sure its rated at 1.8v. I think your best bet would be Corsair Value Select 2GB kit DDR2-667 (its cheaper than 533, lol). This choice also allows for some overclocking, should you decide to try it later down the road.

$208 - CORSAIR ValueSelect 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2-667 VS2GBKIT667D2
CPU Ratio // Memory Speed // Best Memory Timings // Voltage
4:3 // DDR2-400 // 3-2-2-5 // 1.9V ..... 1:1 // DDR2-533 // 3-2-2-7 // 2.1V
4:5 // DDR2-667 // 3-3-3-8 // 2.1V ..... 2:3 // DDR2-800 // 4-3-3-8 // 2.2V

Above test results from Anandtech.