Best Mid Level Intel Board for Vista?

I have a builders OEM for 32-bit Vista Ultimate.

For the first time in 12 years I tried ASUS instead of Intel.
Until I gave ASUS a chance I never had any problems with hardware failures.
I went with an ASUS P5N32-E SLI with a 680i chipset.
After the first board failed POST without any hint or warning in under 7
days I tried to give ASUS the benefit of the doubt.
They replaced the board but I had to pay shipping.
Well here I am 6 months later after normal stock settings and limited use
the board died.
Diagnostics never revealed anything wrong, but Vista was constantly giving
me issues with I.E. and Media Player.
I went through 2 different high end 650 Watt power supplies, 2 sets of DDR2
RAM, two SATA2 500GB drives, two 512 MB PCI-E video cards....

Needless to say, I want to go with a different manufacturer, and most likely
back to Intel.
I have been looking around, but the X38 chipset seems limited to DDR3 memory
and I am tired of wasting money on this build.

Any DDR2, Core 2, PCI-E, SLI, gigabit LAN boards out there you recommend?

--
Best Regards,
Chris Moor
Vigilante aka ARS_Komachi

"Chris" <kewlvigilante@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:57C57E36-35AD-4FD8-ADE8-8EE3C884E135@microsoft.com...

> Any DDR2, Core 2, PCI-E, SLI, gigabit LAN boards out there you recommend?

If you don't want to overclock (or indeed tweak at all), I'd recommend the
Intel DG965WH board. It's stable as a rock and can take up to 8GB RAM.

Tom Lake

I ended up going with the Intel DG33TL and a Thermaltake LanParty Small Form
Factor Box.
I always liked my previous SFF's and never had any issues with them.
Always reworked them for best cooling performance.
The switch back to Intel was the best move, just not happy with ASUS
P5N32-E-SLI after 2 boards RMA'd.

The Intel board is solid as always, posts great numbers at stock settings.
(5.6-5.8 with Ultimate 32-bit)
I should have stuck with them, they have always been good to me for the last
12 years.
I wanted to try SLI, but in all honesty, one GForce 8800 GT is all a guy
needs any more and SLI's a waste of power.
Up and running on Vista again with no more issues =)

"Tom Lake" <toml_12953@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news71A5C5A-ADCB-4288-A6D1-E496E8D74D15@microsoft.com...
> "Chris" <kewlvigilante@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:57C57E36-35AD-4FD8-ADE8-8EE3C884E135@microsoft.com...
>
>> Any DDR2, Core 2, PCI-E, SLI, gigabit LAN boards out there you recommend?
>
> If you don't want to overclock (or indeed tweak at all), I'd recommend the
> Intel DG965WH board. It's stable as a rock and can take up to 8GB RAM.
>
> Tom Lake