Hi, Can anyone offer any suggestions regarding the following requirement for a new motherboard/system. It is only being used for business, and mainly for compiling/running multiple back end Java, C+++ etc applications: 1. Gaming/overclocking not a priority at all. A $20 graphic card or onboard graphics should do fine. 2. Stability & performance are most important. 3. MUST be *certain* that it is possible to disable UEFI secure boot on the mobo, to hence run any Linux distro without any secure boot hassles. 4. Want to be able to install at least 64G of RAM on the mobo, to be able to run a big ramdisk for very fast I/O when repeatedly & concurrently building (fast rebuild times) & testing database intensive applications - all on ramdisk. 5. 4 core CPU would be ideal (singlethreaded performance is important, so don't want to spread CPU grunt across too many cores, but a degree of application concurrency is important too for concurrent building/running applications in the background). 6. Want Intel (not AMD) based, probably i7 & proably Ivy Bridge. 7. Either a PS/2 mouse port or 9 Serial port is essential (for the special mouse I use) - either onboard or via a PCI/e expansion board are ok. 8. Boot drive will be an SSD (probably 256G Crucial m4 or Samsung 840 Pro), backup drive probably a 1TB non raided WD RE4. 9. Want a fast CPU, but not willing to pay sqillions for the absolute fastest - maybe an i7-3770K ? 10. Don't use wireless, so wifi features on the mobo are unimportant. At least 1 GBE Lan port is necessary. Cost is not the main criteria .. but I don't want to waste it either. A budget of 1500 would be good if it could get me what I want but can spend more if need be. Probably looking at running 64 bit Ubuntu 10.04.x (Gnome) or Kubuntu 12.04.x (KDE) as the host (to get LTS & a traditional desktop UI), with 32 bit Windows XP in a virtualbox for occasional use with basic business & legacy applications. I have seen various comments on chipsets (Q77, H77, Z77 in particular), but am not a great deal the wiser as a result :) Prefer mainsteam mobo manufacturer (Asus, Gigabyte, MSI etc) for (usually better) firmware upgrade support. Many Thanks for any suggestions, Andrew