I notice these days that more and more motherboards only come with one IDE channel (which controls up to two IDE devices). I need a motherboard like those of the past decade with two IDE channels (which controls up to four IDE devices). Also need a few other things and was hoping someone could recommend a particular model name-grade board (i.e., Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, etc.) that has all these features: 1) Two IDE channels (as mentioned above) 2) 3 standard PCI slots (two isn't enough, four would be fine but I don't need more than three) 3) 1 PCI-e x16 slot (this one's negotiable as I could live with an AGP slot instead) 4) designed for Intel chips (not AMD) and takes the new Core2Duo (again, negotiable as I could live with it only taking the PentiumD chip, but don't want an older one that only takes the Pentium4 chips) The rest of my desired features I'll assume it includes like onboard sound, onboard NIC, multiple USB for both front/back, etc. as pretty much all boards these days have those. Anyway, does such a board exist that has all 4 of those features? Thanks for any suggestions.
I remember seeing a Fry's Electronics ad this past weekend featuring ECS Elitegroup motherboards that had old-school features and yet were Core 2 Duo-compatible. You might want to check ECS Elitegroup's website out. Otherwise, I'd recommend that you just wait for the next forklift-upgrade. The prices of old-school components are climbing relative to the current-generation stuff. For instance, rather than buy a dual-DVI AGP video card to work in an older trading PC provided by my firm, I opted to buy a brand-new Macbook and bring it in for trading. It just wasn't worth spending more on a PC built out of ancient components.
If manufacturers had half a brain, they'd make mobos with 3 PCIE x 16 slots + 3 PCI slots. Then, we could accommodate everything available today.
Thanks dchang0 for the info on ECS Elitegroup, had never heard of them and their product line. I continue to hunt around but motherboard websites are downright painful to use as each item is usually multiple clicks down with tiny little pictures at best. It probably makes too much sense if any of them let you specify what features you want in a board and then they'd tell you which of their boards have those features. Such a simple idea but I haven't run across anything resembling intelligence yet. Oh well, I'll keep plugging away and if anyone can offer any board/mfg suggestions it would be appreciated.