Hey Hadlevad - Seems I'm about half a step ahead on this (MoBo) phase, probably a step or two behind elsewhere (balance of nature probably) Anyway, if you've settled on DDR ram, the best board I've found is the Abit BD-7 raid. It has the following, direct from Abit's website -

CPU
Supports Intel Pentium 4 Socket 478 processor
400MHz System Data Bus
Chipset
Intel 845 (ICH2) chipset , AGP 4X 1.5V device only

Memory
Supports two 184 pin DDR DIMMs
up to 2GB MAX
Audio
AC'97 integrated digital audio controller
BIOS
SoftMenu™III Technology
Multi I/O
2 channels of BUS Master IDE Port support Ultra DMA 33/66/100
2 channels of BUS Master IDE Port support Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133
Miscellaneous
1 AGP4X slot, 6 PCI slots, 1 CNR slot
Ultra DMA 133/RAID
High Point HPT372 IDE Controller
Ultra DMA 133MB/sec data transfer rate
RAID 0/1/0+1

When I searched on this # at Pricewatch, it came up as only 5 PCI slots - However, the Abit website has a picture which agrees with their own description, so 6 it is.

I have downloaded the manuals for Gigabyte and Abit boards, both DDR and RDRAM, and what I have found is that the Gigabyte boards use the Promise embedded raid controller which is a "lite" version, and does NOT support raid 0+1. The Highpoint embedded raid on the Abit boards does. The thing with embedded raid is you can use it or defeat it. Also, both the Promise and Highpoint versions DO allow you to use the extra IDE channels as just that - I.E. you can (1) enable the raid chip, then (2) either set it up as an actual raid, or set it up as two more standard IDE channels and plug in extra IDE devices. If I remember correctly, at least one of the boards allows you to even use non-hard drive (CD-Rom) devices. In any case, this would allow you to (my plan, for example) connect to IDE1 - 1 or 2 HDD's, first being the boot drive IDE2 - CD-RW, DVD, or DVD-R; IDE3,4 - 4 more identical HDD's, to be used either independently as normal IDE drives, or as one giant 4-drive striped array, or as 2 2-drive stripes, or as a striped and mirrored pair (raid 0+1) depending on your needs for speed and/or redundancy or capacity. Plus, if you find for some reason that the embedded controller does not meet your expectations, you can always dis-able the chip and plug in a discreet PCI controller - remember, the MoBo has six PCI slots. The only downside I can see is you need to buy large memory chips to get adequate ram for a serious audio machine, as it has only 2 slots for ram. If the board really does support up to 2 gB of ram, then it apparently supports 1
gig chips. Crucial.com's memory configuring page agrees,

http://www.crucial.com

although they only offer 512 meg chips for that board. I am pretty sure this is their limitation, as they only recently started offering DDR at all.

So, for an audio machine sticking with Intel chipset and DDR, my vote goes unanimously (easy to do when there's only ONE of me) to the Abit BD-7 Raid. It can be had, according to Pricewatch as of today, for $150(US) plus shipping. Personally, if I go DDR, that's the board I'll get. If I decide the RamBus is worth it, I'll still use Abit, just a different board. The raid function can be used, ignored, subjugated (2 extra IDE channels) or replaced. Can't ask for much more flexibility than that ! Best of luck... Steve