Another Motherboard Recommendation Needed

[steelerfan]

I need a recommendation on a motherboard. The main purpose of the computer will be for currency trading. When trading I need to look at 2-D historical charts. The more charts I can see the better. I think I will need at least 4 monitors for this. Initially because of money, I will only be using 2 20 inch wide screens but I would like to be able to upgrade to 4 or more in the near future. I would also like to use it as a game machine. My main goal is for the computer to be stable and reliable. Initially I’m not planning on overclocking but may do it in the future if the system supports it.

Goals in order of importance:
1. Stable and reliable
2. 4 or more monitors
3. fast (any of the core 2 duo processors should be plenty fast)
4. games



I initially decided on the Asus p5n-E SLI motherboard. After I picked this out I saw in the Asus forums that a lot of people were having trouble getting this board to run stable. As I stated before, the machine absolutely has to be stable but I could live with instability in this board for a couple of weeks if a bios upgrade would fix the stability problem soon.


Here is my initial parts list. I haven’t purchased anything yet:

Asus P5N-E SLI
E6300
Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4
eVGA 256-P2-N554-AX Geforce 7600GT
Antec TruePower TRIO 650 650W
3 Western Digital Caviar RE WD3200YS 320GB - setup in raid 5

Does anyone have a suggestion on what motherboard I should get?
Should I get a P5N-E SLI and hope for a stable bios upgrade?
Would you recommend changing any of the other components?


Bob

 

[steelerfan]

By the way. I wanted to stay below $200 for the motherboard but was really shooting for $150 or lower.

 

[g-paw]

My experience with ASUS boards have always been good but I do not have the one your concerned about. A couple of thoughts. Intel has a reputation for making very stable boards but I don't think they're very good for overclocking but it's been years since I had an Intel board. I would also read the post on stability problems very carefully, e.g., does the problem come up when overclocking? Does it happen at the default settings? Does the ASUS support site say anything about this as being a problem? Is it related to SLI or a particular type of memory? I'm not suggesting it may not be a general problem but I've seen a lot of posts where people complain about stability or other problems for mobo or other hardware and often times it has to do with what they're doing. I'd also check the reviews on newegg, also with a shaker of salt. Also check reviews of the board on legitimate tech sites like tomshardware and extremetech.com