Good Mobo/CPU setup?

What is your budget? For the same total price as what you linked, you could get a different motherboard and a quad core CPU.
 
will you be overclocking??
is there a need for sli?? what resolution do you game at?? if less than 1900x1200 then cross out sli and crossfire.
 
Its about 270-300ish, but i need the ram. The reason id get the SLI is for the future, but i game at 1600-1200 and im not sure about OCing.
 
If you do think about OCing - I'm sure many would agree:

E2160 - $69.99
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L - $89.99
AData 2GB (2x 1GB) DDR2 800 - $42.99 (free shipping)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro - $26.99
-------
$229.96

I think shipping would be about ~$20 at most..
So you're well under $270.

And SLI is a horrible upgrade option because by the time you get the second card, there'll be a cheaper faster single card solution.
 
I agree with tzk. That chip will definitely reach 3Ghz with that cooler/board/ram.
 
What if i went with the setup above, but swaped out the CPU with a E2200 or E2220?
And how hard is it to OC one of those, the E2160, E2200 or the E2220?
 
The E2xxx processors all have the same approximate OC threshold, which is around 3.4GHz (YMMV) with air cooling. Core 2 Duo/Quad processors aren't really hard to overclock... there's a general C2D/C2Q overclocking FAQ available in the Intel Processors forum. Make sure that you purchase an adequate CPU cooler (like the Freezer 7 Pro), as the stock HSF is not an acceptable option.
 
So with the E2000 series, you're just inching your stock speed slightly higher each step by 200Mhz (multiplier increases by 1x each step). The E2160 has a 9x multiplier, which is pretty high already.
 
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