Intel has gone and done it again!  Their latest hardware offerings, the Core i7 and the X58 chipset, have caused the usual stir among the enthusiast crowd. As the early adopters make their moves to get onboard with the newest hardware, chances are good you're going to start seeing a lot of used processors and memory modules in the For Sale forums and online auction sites. While the new hardware certainly isn't any more expensive than any other high-end component, the new X58 platform is based on the the new socket LGA 1366 and uses DDR3 only. This could be a very good time to build a newer system using some spare parts that will be discarded by those ever-adopting enthusiasts.

Some time ago, Gigabyte released the EP45-DQ6 and I feel this is a great time to highlight the boards capabilities. Let's face it, money is tight and times are tough. For most of us, owning a performance PC is a luxury and not a necessity. So if we can avoid paying the Early Adopters Tax (the absorbingly high price that retailers like to slap on cutting-edge hardware) and still get top-notch performance, than lets take advantage of that opportunity. The Core2 is still a great processor and has a very proven track record among the overclocking crowd. Another strong point for this motherboard is that it also uses DDR2 meaning you can recycle the RAM you presently have. While JDEC spec for DDR2 might not sport the high clock speeds of DDR3, motherboard manufacturers have taken matters into their own hands and have sided with memory vendors to increase DDR2's performance.