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I initially wanted to build a new system for myself and my father in June. Back then I was looking at the AMD's with the new AM2 chips that were coming out. I tend to not follow PC hardware until I actually intend to do an upgrade. After doing some more research, I found out about the new Intel Conroe chips and how they completely blew the AMD chips away for gaming. I'm not an overclocker, so my primary concern was gaming performance out of the box.
I decided to wait on the upgrades to see how much better the Conroe would be, and I am glad I waited. Looks like an awesome chip for the price. After I knew what chip I wanted, I started looking into video cards. This was around late July, so DX10 cards weren't on my list. I got really interested in the nVidia GX7950's, but was a little concerned that the only official support for these cards was on the nForce4 chipset. I read that there were some hacky drivers out there to have them work with intel 975's, but I tend to be cautious and like going with official stuff.
After some more research, I heard about the awesome looking nForce5 series and how there would be a version put out to support the new intel chips. Yay! It seemed like the perfect fit for me. I wanted the 7950 video card and Conroe chip, so the nForce5 chipset was an awesome match for those. I also wanted a board that could support quad-sli if I decided to upgrade one of my video cards (I wanted to build 2 machines, identical to one another, so one GX7950 in each). For example, if I decided to get a DX10 card for myself later on down the line, I would like to pop that spare 7950 into the other machine so it could have some quad-sli action. From what I read, the board would be able to do it later on with better driver support. Sounded perfect so far.
Now that I knew what hardware I wanted, I started digging to find which manufacturer I would go with and when these boards would come out. This was around early August. That's when I found this thread and started following it on a daily basis. The manufacturer of the board didn't matter too much to me since I don't care to overclock and most of the stock features look similar between the manufacturers.
So, that's my story thus far. I am intently waiting for any nForce5 board to come out that supports the Conroe chip, and the Asus board is the top one of my list. As soon as it comes out, I'm going to order it. Been waiting to upgrade my system since June, and I can't wait for the C55 stuff that people have been discussing.
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