AnandTech has posted the first part of a comprehensive guide to building a system for the new Core 2 Duo chips.  Today’s article covers motherboards and memory, the next will cover PSUs, cooling and storage.
“The last few weeks have been an amazing time in the computer business. Conroe, or Core 2 Duo to use the formal name, has captured all our attention with a combination of stock performance, overclocking capabilities, and value that is nothing short of breathtaking. Once the excitement settled down a bit, however, we realized that all the “Intel” rules had changed with the launch of Conroe.

First is the fact that while Core 2 Duo is Socket 775, it won’t work in almost any existing Socket 775 (Socket T) motherboards. With the move to 65nm, the reduced voltage Conroe was designed for, and the greater need for stable power that Conroe requires, boards had to be redesigned to work with Conroe. The first and only board that was Conroe friendly was the Intel BadAxe, which was part of the launch of the last two NetBurst processors – 955EE and 975EE. Even with BadAxe you were not home free, since we soon learned that only BadAxe Revision 0304 or later would work with Conroe. In fact, everywhere we turned we were asking, “Will this work with Conroe?” If there was hesitation or a maybe, the answer was generally “No”.”

Here are some more Processor articles from around the web:

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