cheap, but good, and featureful, Z97 board?

[VirtualLarry]

Have my eyes on a pair of ASrock Z97 Pro4 boards.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157507

It has PCI-e 3.0 x16, PCI-e 2.0 x16 (x4 electrically), 2x PCI-e 2.0 x1, 2x PCI

M.2 (PCI-e 2.0 x2, 10Gbit/sec)
SATA Express
ThunderBolt AIC header
6x SATA6G
4x DDR3 slots

It's ~$110 at Newegg. Currently has a rebate too.

The only real downside I can see to this board, is no SLI or PCI-e 3.0 x8/x8. But I've never been a huge SLI fan. I had overheating issues when I tried it on my 990FX board with 2x Gigabyte WindForce GTX460 1GB cards.

I guess I'm just looking for a board that will OC my G3258 CPUs to their max (currently limited to 3.8Ghz in a Gigabyte H81 board), and provide a future path for Broadwell-K overclocking. (ASRock's description mentions 5th-gen Core CPUs.) (Edit: And of course, have future-proof I/O features, so I don't get left behind if some new I/O standard actually takes off.)

Also something not too expensive.

Edit: Do you think it's worth spending money on a new mobo (currently have GA-H81M-DS2V), just to boost my G3258 from 3.8 to 4.2 or maybe even 4.5 if it will go that high? Or would it be better to spend $130 on a new i3 CPU, that would likely still be faster, at 3.7Ghz stock, with HyperThreading?

Is it worth future-proofing for Broadwell-K? What if it gets cancelled? (Rumors of that in the Broadwell thread.)

 

[Puffnstuff]

VL quit being a cheap skate and get off your wallet.

 

[crashtech]

I have one for sale, Larry.


http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2407693

 

[VirtualLarry]

VL quit being a cheap skate and get off your wallet.

Cheap skate? That's not a low-end board. I am confused by your comment. Should I get a $300 ROG board, just because?

I would consider a Z97 Anniversary (ASRock), or a Z97-PK (ECS), or an Z97 PC Mate (MSI) to be low-end, with the MSI being the least low-end of the bunch (also the most expensive).

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Asrocks are great. Why do you need two of them? Stop buying two of everything.

 

[DuRoi]

Asrocks are great. Why do you need two of them? Stop buying two of everything.

Hi,

I register today and i was browsing when i look at your post.
I think some guys buy two of everything because they are afraid to be left alone.

Psychology. :whiste:

 

[Essence_of_War]

Is it worth future-proofing for Broadwell-K? What if it gets cancelled? (Rumors of that in the Broadwell thread.)

It's pretty much never worth future-proofing except for saving money to be spent in the future.

Do you think it's worth spending money on a new mobo (currently have GA-H81M-DS2V), just to boost my G3258 from 3.8 to 4.2 or maybe even 4.5 if it will go that high?

4.2 seems plausible. 4.5 is probably wishful thinking.

Let's rephrase the question. Is a ~10% speed bump worth ~$100 to you? Unless you have a very specific application (a CPU bound game, that is withing a couple of percent of being able to vsync to 60 fps, for example) for which you're sure the speed bump will result in noticeably improved performance, that seems a like a waste of money.

 

[Essence_of_War]

double post

 

[escrow4]

If you want close to futureproof buy an X99 board with a 5960X and some 1TB 850 Pro's. Buying a new mobo to overclock a cheapo dual core is hilarious. Broadwell K won't be hexa or octa either.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If you want close to futureproof buy an X99 board with a 5960X and some 1TB 850 Pro's. Buying a new mobo to overclock a cheapo dual core is hilarious. Broadwell K won't be hexa or octa either.

I know, right? Buying any PC under $5K is cheaping out....

 

[Puffnstuff]

Larry buy the board and a i5 4690k to go with it and be happy.

 

[denis280]

Larry buy the board and a i5 4690k to go with it and be happy.

Same here

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I'm surprised nobody mentioned what I discuss below.

Larry suggests that part of his priorities include overclocking.

I think it has been six or seven years now since I began evaluating potential motherboard choices according to their phase-power design. Phase-power design seemed to be important or just "better" for overclocking.

In the last two months, I had a chance to compare the overclocking features of a 4+1 phase-power board (ASUS) with those of an 8+4 ASUS board. I am now more convinced than ever that the rule-of-thumb is a good one.

The budget board for the right chipset will get you "sufficient overclocking adjustment features." But I find things lacking: for instance, on an ASUS Z77-A board, I could not adjust the default PLL Voltage downward: I could only get two choices -- default or 1.8V and "+10%."

So I'd look at mid-range boards, even for overclocking the "budget" Anniversary dual-core. Some mid-range boards have phase-power design equal to what you find among top-end boards.

I would also expect such boards to have better BIOS adjustment features.

Consider what you get for the extra $50 to $100. You should be able to swap out the dual-core G3258 and replace it with an OEM, "tray" or used i5 or i7 Haswell or Broadwell processor.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Larry buy the board and a i5 4690k to go with it and be happy.

That would be relatively ideal for me I suppose. But at a greater cost, and if I'm already sitting on a Haswell quad-core, I'm not going to want to upgrade to a Broadwell-K.

Is there any particular feature or lack of feature that would cause me not to want that board?

 

[Puffnstuff]

Well if I were buying I'd be looking at an asus or gigabyte board myself but that's just me not to mention that their implementation of the uefi standard is top shelf. Whatever you do don't buy an evga board. I could go on and on about my recent experiences with their z87 and z97 ftw's.

 

[daveybrat]

That would be relatively ideal for me I suppose. But at a greater cost, and if I'm already sitting on a Haswell quad-core, I'm not going to want to upgrade to a Broadwell-K.

Is there any particular feature or lack of feature that would cause me not to want that board?

As you can see in my sig below, i've got the same ASRock board. Love it for the price. Very stable, great Intel Lan, lots of new features, intuitive bios, and 5th gen cpu support.

Oh and it looks great too with the blue heatsinks

 

[BonzaiDuck]

AsRock -- supposedly a spin-off of corporate ASUS -- had chosen to compete with the big boys using a more aggressive price strategy. Their boards were touted three years ago for Gen2.

And supposedly for that price range between $100 and $200, some of the AsRock boards were offering a 12-phase-power design.

There IS a place for your average budget-board. But on the one hand, some folks buy top-end "ROG" boards because they want the extra features even if they don't need them, and it makes shopping and comparing easier: you don't have to do it.

On the other, some boards are more promising for over-clock results than other boards.