looking to buy a new mobo but don't know which chipset to go for.

[Kragen2179]

Hi, am looking to build a system for a friend, it is to be used as a home/office/web browser machine and ideally should be able to last for at least 5 years.

My question is this. Should I go for a P67 (was looking to marry up with a Core i7 CPU)  based board or is there a better chipset to choose?

I want to avoid using on board graphics if at all posible.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

The P67 chipset is fine but it has been overtaken by the Z68 chipset. They both run  the same processors and whether or not they have graphics on board is not important as you can disable them if you don't want to use them. You will notice very little difference in performance and they are both more than a match for what you want to use them for.

[Kragen2179]

Thanks for the reply

This is the proposed build...

Gigabyte GA-P67-UD4-B3 or GA-Z68X-UD3P-B3 Motherboard
Intel Core i7 2600 CPU
Corsair CMX16GX3M4A1333C9 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 XMS3 PC3-10666 (1333) Non-ECC Unbuffered
CSSD-F120GB3-BK 120GB SSD Corsair Force Series 3 Series SATA III - 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (For OS and apps)
2 x Seagate 1TB Barracuda SATA 600 7200RPM Hard Drives (Mirrored RAID for documents and files)

Questions...

1) Which mobo should I pick, older tried and tested P67 or newer Z68, and why? N.B. both boards listed above are in the £130 range on www.scan.co.uk

2) As far as I can make out the i7 2600 only really supports 1066 & 1333 speeds, yet the above boards bothe support higher speed memory. Is there any point getting memory that is rated faster than the CPU?

[Dark Mantis]

Yes the spec looks fine but do you need all that memory ? If not you will find it easier to setup with only two modules.

The i7 2600K will work with any speed memory that the motherboard will support so no worries there.

As for the motherboard there is little to choose, obviously the Z68 is slightly newer and more up to date but not that yoiu are going to notice really. Just go through the spec list and see which ones you need more for your main use.