ASRock 4Core-DualSATA2 Mainboard anyone ever use before?

[Reanimation_LP]

I'm looking at possibly picking up this board, a 2180 CPU, and 2 GB of DDR 800 RAM.

Anyone have any thoughts on the board? How well it'll overclock?

I'm not too fond of VIA chipsets, but it seemed to get a bunch of good reviews on Newegg.

I'm just looking for something faster than my 3.4 GHz P4 478 combo.

My current specs -

P4 3.4 GHz Northwood HT
Gigabyte i875P Mainboard
2GB Dual Channel DDR400 RAM
ATi Radeon X1950 Pro AGP8X
Dual 400 GB IDE Seagate Barracudas
250 GB WD Caviar 16MB 7200RPM IDE
Dual 250GB WD Caviar 8MB 7200RPM SATA
Samsung 16X DVD-RW IDE
CoolerMaster 430w PSU

I'm looking to use the board as a stopgap, as I can afford to drop 200 now and then some money on a new PCI-E card and such down the road.

I eventually plan after getting this to slowly replace it, first by buying a new PCI-E video card and mainboard, then upgrading to Quad Core, a bigger PSU, and 4 GB of RAM, and then use the leftovers from both changeovers as upgrades for other machines in my house.

 

[Strategy]

I put together this same combo for a friend and it was a decent overclock. I think we got his chip to 2.5, anything else, even 1 FSB higher would not post. While that is still a good overclock, its not great.

On the other hand I had the 4coredual VSTA and it was a pretty good overclocker which is why I was expecting more out of the SATA2. I had my E4300 @ 2.7 on that board for about 9 months until I upgraded it.

so YMMV on that board.

Also keep in mind that the ASROCK's PCI-E slot is a physical 16x slot but only 4x electrical meaning you will get some performance hits with the newer cards.

edit: looks like it wont be an issue for you since you said you would upgrade to PCI-E and the mainboard at the same time.