asrock z87 extreme 6 vs gigabyte z97X UD5

[you2]

Any comments between these two motherboards ?

I need a replacement motherboard with 10 sata slots and at lest one PCI card. Unfortunately none of the z97 boards have 10 sata slot (the gigabyte only has 8 - which is one of about 4 boards with PCI slot and 8 sata slots). the extreme 6 (z87) does meet my requirement but not sure if the penalty of z87 vs z97 is worth it.
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one PCI slot is a hard requirement else i would get the z97 extreme 6 (which has 10 sata ports).

 

[ctk1981]

The main difference between z87 and z97 was support for m2 and sata express. Most z87 boards will also support DC with a bios update. Outside of that I don't there's any real tangible performance difference between the two chipsets.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

If you need 10 ports, have you considered a cheaper board with an add-on 4 port SATA controller? Like this one?

You should also be aware that the Z87 Extreme6 (the Z97 Extreme6 also has this setup) might have 10 ports, but 4 of these are driven by an Asmedia 1061 controller. That only has a single PCIe 2.0 x1 link (500MB/s shared among all drives). This does not matter much for HDDs (although it might be pushing things with 4 100MB/s+ drives), but a single SSD can saturate that link.

For performance I'd at least look at a solution with a Marvell 9230 (PCIe 2.0 x2).

If you don't mind me asking, what are you using that PCI slot for? It could be cheaper to replace that card with a PCIe equivalent. There is also the option to use a PCIe to PCI adaptor. They're rare but do exist...

 

[you2]

Some answers. So two of the sata port will be used with optical drive dvd/rw and blue-ray/r so performance shouldn't be too much of an issue; the other 7 will be used for 4+2 software raid and boot disk; so the 4 ports on the asmedia would be 2 optical which are only used once in a blue month; 1 free and 1 boot disk.
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The pci slot is used with a 15 year old tv tuner. I've looked at pcie options and linux doesnt' seem to suppor them very well (at least the analog input; I have the tuner hooked up tot he analog output from comcast converter box - this is sd). It looks liek the 950q (usb device) is suppose to work with linux so I might try one of those and if it works I could drop the pci slot requirement. I do have a requirement for display-port and since this post I've come to realize that the gigabyte board lacks display port but I could go witth the newer z97 extreme6 (unless there is something better). The sata controller you linked is $100.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Some answers. So two of the sata port will be used with optical drive dvd/rw and blue-ray/r so performance shouldn't be too much of an issue; the other 7 will be used for 4+2 software raid and boot disk; so the 4 ports on the asmedia would be 2 optical which are only used once in a blue month; 1 free and 1 boot disk.

If you only use it with ODDs and a boot disk, I don't see any problems. Which leads to:

The pci slot is used with a 15 year old tv tuner. I've looked at pcie options and linux doesnt' seem to suppor them very well (at least the analog input; I have the tuner hooked up tot he analog output from comcast converter box - this is sd). It looks liek the 950q (usb device) is suppose to work with linux so I might try one of those and if it works I could drop the pci slot requirement. I do have a requirement for display-port and since this post I've come to realize that the gigabyte board lacks display port but I could go witth the newer z97 extreme6 (unless there is something better).

I must admit I haven't kept current on TV tuner cards since our national TV service started streaming everything over the internet (don't view that much traditional TV). So I'm really not in a position to advise on that part...

If you have a DisplayPort requirement, it narrows down mainboard choices a lot unfortunately. If you can replace your tuner card, I think the only worthwhile Z97-board is the Z97 Extreme6. Its simply the one with fewest compromises and you get a nice bootable M.2 x4 slot separate from the southbridge for possible future use.

(biggest compromise is only being able to run the PCIe 3.0 x16 slot at x8 when the M.2 x4 slot is occupied, but the performance penalty is really minimal)

The sata controller you linked is $100.

That was just the manufacturers page with list price. If you shop around, its a bit cheaper:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-365-_-Product

Controller cards are expensive unfortunately. There is little we can do about that. But that $71 does give you a 7 port card that works with every board you can think of, and you can easily transfer your setup to a new machine. Without worrying if the new board has the required number of SATA ports.

I'm not going to recommend either way, both solutions have their own strengths and weaknesses.

 

[voodoo7817]

I don't know if it will work for you, but have you looked into the HDHomerun product line? It's not quite the same thing as a TV Tuner card but perhaps it will offer you an acceptable solution. Here's a link: http://www.silicondust.com/. I'm not sure which of their products would work best for your needs but their products are pretty well reviewed. Their site does mention Linux compatibility but I can't speak much about how good it actually is.

I've mentioned this a few times on other threads already, but as someone who recently purchased the ASRock Z97 Extreme6, clearly I think it's a good decision to buy one. My thought would be that finding a modern TV Tuner solution to go with the best motherboard option possible (especially if it lets you avoid using a separate and expensive sata controller) is the way to go rather than compromising on the motherboard for the sake of an older TV Tuner solution. I would think this would also be the most economical solution, but I am also not an expert at TV Tuners.

 

[you2]

Yea - I've been looking intot he HdHomeRun and the biggest negative(s) are having to get a cablecard from comcast (free but a real hassle) and configuring the thing. I'll probably go the hdhomerun route in the future but not this summer (probably wait till I move). Glad to hear the Extreme6 Z97 is looking good. I'll probably go that route when microcenter has the i5 refresh as a bundle. I think I can poke my z68 board into lasting another month. Also give me another week or two to think about the hdhomerun (really hate dealing with comcast).

 

[Ausm]

I recently purchased an Arock Z97 Extreme 6 board but I had to return it because I couldn't get it to run properly with my EVGA GTX670 video card. I blame it on the chipset and not the mobo.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I recently purchased an Arock Z97 Extreme 6 board but I had to return it because I couldn't get it to run properly with my EVGA GTX670 video card. I blame it on the chipset and not the mobo.

More likely you should blame it on the UEFI. I've heard a few boards here and there have issues if the graphics card has an older VBIOS/OpROM that is not UEFI compatible. Make sure CSM (compatibility support module) is ENABLED. Some newer asrock boards also have a "Video OpROM Policy" option (and storage ditto) that has to be set to run legacy devices too.

Don't forget to update the UEFI to the latest version either, the first few releases are bound to have a few issues here and there...