Medium Budget Z77 Mobo

[Blackmarket]

I recently picked up an Asrock z77 Extreme 4, and after days of horrible service with Asrock, I've returned the board and will be starting again this weekend.

I've been looking at getting Gigabytes UD3H, D3H, G1.Sniper M3, or possibly the ASUS P8Z77-V LK. Does anyone have an insight as to what boards around the $130-160 range will work best for general gaming and high-quality streaming in the near future? Customer service is a big deal for me and I don't see myself going back to Asrock after the poor level of service.


Something I'm also factoring in is Neweggs free 8gb ram deal that comes with the P8Z77 and the G1.Sniper M3. I've read great reviews on all 4 products, but not too many that compared them. I'd also be interested in other brands, assuming their customer service is good. I've reviewed the sub $160 review article on tomshardware, but only the D3H is compared; the rest recently came down into this price range.



CPU: i5 3750k
Ram: Patriot Viper 3 8GB 1600
PSU: Corsair 650w


Thank you for your time

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Isn't the Sniper M3 an mATX board?

I would get the Asus board, Gigabyte makes fantastic GPUs, but their motherboards tend to be less than great.

[Blackmarket]

Isn't the Sniper M3 an mATX board?

I would get the Asus board, Gigabyte makes fantastic GPUs, but their motherboards tend to be less than great.

It is an mATX, but with it's price per performance, it's a solid contender. The M3 is typically benched among the $200+ mobos, like the Sabertooth. I do fear the cooling issues though and dislike the lack of features.

The Asus board sounds like a solid pick, my main issue is the lack of reviews for it. It seems to be shadowed by the ASUS P8Z77-V (non LK) and the V-Pro. I've also read that Asus and Asrock are the same company; though, I've never dealt with Asus before.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Asus and AsRock split three years ago.

[Evil Inside]

Asrock Z77 Extreme4/6

[Blackmarket]

Asrock Z77 Extreme4/6

I can't afford the Extreme 6, but the Extreme 4 is what I just returned. The BIOS had really bad DCP latency and RMA'ing it turned into a weeks worth of chaos that resulted in me being out of $134. Asrock refused to honor any warranty, ignored my emails, and tossed me around their call center faster than I could speak. I love the reviews of the Extreme 4, but I don't want to have to count on Asrock again.

[Deleted]

perhaps also check if there are any good boards from intel/msi (msi being meh'ish with some series i believe though)
but i'd say intel might be worth looking into since they make plenty of budget/mid range boards (and some extreme high endd stuff at times :P)

[Biernot]

I would go with the Asus P8Z77-V LK (or LX). Asus is probably the brand i had the least problems with over the last 5 years. I own the LX myself and am happy with it.
I too don't like Gigabyte as a motherboard brand. Not mainly because of quality issues, but i hate their bios. It's not intuitive and confusing.

What i really like about my board are the very fast boot times. Despite me having activated Raid, the BIOS boot is done about 15s after i push the power button.

[Blackmarket]

I would go with the Asus P8Z77-V LK (or LX). Asus is probably the brand i had the least problems with over the last 5 years. I own the LX myself and am happy with it.
I too don't like Gigabyte as a motherboard brand. Not mainly because of quality issues, but i hate their bios. It's not intuitive and confusing.

What i really like about my board are the very fast boot times. Despite me having activated Raid, the BIOS boot is done about 15s after i push the power button.

Seems like Asus is taking it. I've also been looking at the MSI Z77A-GD65, as I've seen it on a few websites for $150. Like the G1.Sniper, it's a higher level board that got placed into the lower price bracket.

[Void666]

Try picking up a Asus z77 Sabretooth board when they are on special offer. Seen em for as low as $180

[Blackmarket]

Try picking up a Asus z77 Sabretooth board when they are on special offer. Seen em for as low as $180

Honestly, I'd pick that up in a heartbeat if I saw it for $180, but I've looked all over and that board is a solid $240.

[Void666]

Yeah ncix and memory express sometimes have insane offers on. I got My Asus Maximus V Formula board from ncix for $240

[Faithh]

Never never ever go with ASRock..

Don't go for the p8z77-v LK or LX or whatever just the normal Asus p8z77-v. Because they don't have either VRM heatsinks or proper SLI/CF support see below for more descriptions.

Go for this board only 160eur - The Asus p8z77-v

http://azerty.nl/producten/product_d...n-cpu-ver.html

Pretty awesome heatsink design and it works great and overclocks awesome.

This board has 2x PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots so it's damn nice to SLI or CF. While the LK only has for example 1x PCI Express 3.0 slot x16 and 1x PCI Express 3.0 slot x4. The bandwidth speed has to be exactly the same to SLI/CF for proper performance.

The pro version has a dolby integrated into the onboard sound and allows you to overclock the IGP.

I won't go for the Asus z77 Sabertooth that armor can be annoying if you lost a screw in it :P A friend had a network card and it didnt fit because of the Mobo's armor.

You won't notice that much from the Asus p8z77-v or Maximus V Formula.. In performance maybe maybe a 1% increase. The RoG (like formula or extreme) are just meant for overclocking and has some dumb gaming tools which are pointless. You don't need to Quad/Tri SLI/CF because the scaling starts to be crap at 3 cards and 4 is complety pointless.

I have the Asus p8z68-v pro gen3 and it easily overclocked my 2600K to 5GHz in a few minutes.

[Biernot]

Faithh, i think you have sufficiently proven with your last posts here in the computer forum, that your technical knowledge is doubtful at best.

And while i would not say anything against your choice of the Asus P8Z77-V, your reasoning behind that is just mindless babble that doesn't have any reference to the needs of the OP. It was nowhere mentioned, that SLI/CF is of any interest, nor that a heavy overclock is wanted. (And btw. that you could oc your i7-2600k to 5GHz is mostly your luck of getting a good chip, and not your choice of the mobo...)

[lokii]

I actually bought the asus motherboard and i5 as part of a combo from newegg for an xmas present for the folks last week. It's been straight forward and error free. I have always been a little partial to asus. Simply put reliability has always been there and their direct ties to intel usually give their product a little extra. Yeah you will pay a few dollars more, but it's worth it.

[noteworthynerd]

I'm sorry to hear about your issues with ASRock, I've been using their boards (almost) exclusively for three or four years now (both at home in my personal PCs and in the dozen or so PCs I've built at work in the last few years) and I've never had any sort of problem with them. I did receive a DOA board that was meant for one of the PCs at work, but they replaced it no questions asked.

In your price range I'd also probably suggest the ASUS P8Z77-V LK, despite what Faithh said it is a good board (Marest also recommends it in his 1020 and 1260 builds: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-Sample-Builds).

Another option might be the Intel BOXDZ77SL50K, it lacks a couple of nice features (like an additional PCI-E 3.0 slot), but all of the Intel boards I've worked with were well constructed. Unfortunately, because their boards are name-brand you often end up paying more than you would for off-brand boards with the same features.

TL;DR: I'd recommend the ASUS P8Z77-V LK (despite what Faithh said) considering your circumstance.

[Shinzai]

I'd agree with the general consensus - ASUS is basically ASRock with more tech assistance on hand, if you need the help. Also everything I've seen about the ASUS P8Z77 is good.

[Faithh]

Faithh, i think you have sufficiently proven with your last posts here in the computer forum, that your technical knowledge is doubtful at best.

And while i would not say anything against your choice of the Asus P8Z77-V, your reasoning behind that is just mindless babble that doesn't have any reference to the needs of the OP. It was nowhere mentioned, that SLI/CF is of any interest, nor that a heavy overclock is wanted. (And btw. that you could oc your i7-2600k to 5GHz is mostly your luck of getting a good chip, and not your choice of the mobo...)

You don't understand anything at all and youre a copypaster so you don't have a valid argument.

Hahaha are you serious? :O Let's start. I don't know from where you found that bullshit that you have to very lucky to reach 5GHz?

The lucky chips who do 5GHz are doing it 1.4V or less.. Mine is at 1.5V which is just a major crap OC'er and its far far above the maximum recommended voltage. It's kinda very bullshit to mention that you have to be lucky to reach 5GHz with a 2600K, it's even easier to reach it on 2500K's because of the cooling. 2600K's are tending to get hotter than 2500K.

My old Q9550 which is a 45nm was reaching 4.4GHz at 1.4V which was just amazing nice, but I needed faster ram to allow to get more FSB speed. 430MHz was the max my ram (DDR2 800MHz).
My 2600K doing 5GHz at 1.5V on H2O which is crap overclocker. I've seen many 2600K's reaching the 5GHz like full of them. I've seen one doing @ 1.35V the 5.1GHz and ofcourse he didnt need watercooling.

you DON'T have to be LUCKY to reach 5GHz, it's all a matter of cooling. Some chips are requiring more voltage than other chips. Currently at 5GHz @ 1.5V with Load line calibration on ultra high, I'm getting temps around 60-65° while gaming but once I start to run prime95 small fft's I'm reaching 90°. I'm planning to get a custom watercooling kit with a rx360rad and going to try it to push it to 5.5GHz

I don't know if you can read actually. He's been looking G1.Sniper M3 which can do SLI/CF properly so I've advised him an Asus.

And who says that you have to OC everything manually? He can switch the TPU on and it's overclocked as well with something like 4.2GHz @ 1.3V which is too much anyway voltage for that clockspeed anyway.

I don't even know why you bought an Asus p8z77-v lx while your case Fractal Define R4 doesnt even have proper airflow and your big heatsink isn't allowing to cool your vrm off. Heatsink is surely blocking all the cool air. Lovely dude.

Where's your technical knowledge now?

Edit: Mobo's are making a huge part of OC'ing especially because of the power vrm phases and the quality of the capacitors and how precise you can set your vdrop or vdroop (LLC). Asus has the most advanced options nowadays.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

The lucky chips who do 5GHz are doing it 1.4V or less.. Mine is at 1.5V which is just a major crap OC'er and its far far above the maximum recommended voltage. It's kinda very bullshit to mention that you have to be lucky to reach 5GHz with a 2600K, it's even easier to reach it on 2500K's because of the cooling. 2600K's are tending to get hotter than 2500K.

2600Ks need a bit more attention because of the hyperthreading, so disable it. There, you have a 2500K. Have fun.

My old Q9550 which is a 45nm was reaching 4.4GHz at 1.4V which was just amazing nice, but I needed faster ram to allow to get more FSB speed. 430MHz was the max my ram (DDR2 800MHz).
My 2600K doing 5GHz at 1.5V on H2O which is crap overclocker. I've seen many 2600K's reaching the 5GHz like full of them. I've seen one doing @ 1.35V the 5.1GHz and ofcourse he didnt need watercooling.

1.5V is pretty standard for many SB chips at 5.0 GHz.

I don't know if you can read actually. He's been looking G1.Sniper M3 which can do SLI/CF properly so I've advised him an Asus.

All motherboards with the SLI branding can do SLI properly. Some have differently wired PCI-E slots, though nowadays most have an x16 and an x8 wired up if they don't have a PLX chip (which adds about 80 dollars to the end price).

And who says that you have to OC everything manually? He can switch the TPU on and it's overclocked as well with something like 4.2GHz @ 1.3V which is too much anyway voltage for that clockspeed anyway.

You said it yourself. the TPU (or whatever it is called on the motherboard) gives you the clock speed at way too high a voltage to be certain that it is stable. Do it properly or not at all.

I don't even know why you bought an Asus p8z77-v lx while your case Fractal Define R4 doesnt even have proper airflow and your big heatsink isn't allowing to cool your vrm off. Heatsink is surely blocking all the cool air. Lovely dude.

Nothing wrong with the R4, it is a brilliant case, one of the best on the market in the 100 dollar band. It sacrifices a minor amount of cooling potential for silence (or near silence).

[BruceG87]

You don't understand anything at all and youre a copypaster so you don't have a valid argument. -snip-

You make some really random posts and everytime someone disagrees with you.. you accuse them of either having bad "IT skills" or accuse them of copypasting from the internet. You tell everyone their argument is invalid, then accuse them of not being able to read.

Then you follow the opening insults up with some random post that has a bit of fact obscured by whatever theory/logic you came up with while presumably on a bad acid trip. You've displayed all of this, and more, consistently in this past week.

It's getting old Faithh, real fast.