Decent midlevel LGA1156 board?

[PliotronX]

I completely skipped getting into chipsets between the P35 LGA775 and Z87 so I am trying to see if I can scrounge up a board even used or refurb that can do a small OC on a 760k that I salvaged out of a dead PC. What are your guys' thoughts?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I completely skipped getting into chipsets between the P35 LGA775 and Z87 so I am trying to see if I can scrounge up a board even used or refurb that can do a small OC on a 760k that I salvaged out of a dead PC. What are your guys' thoughts?

Your biggest problem, I think, will be the short-lived nature of the socket 1156. Personally, I'm not even familiar with the chipset names or codes that were applied to that socket. By contrast, 1155 had P67, Z68, Z77 and several other chipset variants that didn't have "Z" overclocking or similar features. There were two generations of processors compatible with 1155 chipsets and boards.

So you might look for offerings on EBAY. Some of those come from individuals who want to squeeze salvage value from their old hardware. Others come from small computer shops or specialist sellers, and among those, there are "RMA-refurbished" boards and boards that have been "tested." AMAZON may also offer a similar range of used or surplus product.

Then, there is an entity of business handling large amounts of "corporate IT assets," whereby corporations may unload large amounts of last year's hardware as they upgrade to "this year." Some of these recyclers have two store fronts: one for their corporate suppliers, and another for people like you and me. I recently discovered an outfit called "AscendTech." Would you be interested in a socket 1156 ASUS "Maximus" mATX board for less than $130? Take a look:

http://www.ascendtech.us/intel-lga1156-motherboards_c_intlga1156.aspx

In my situation of a couple months ago, I was looking for ASUS Z77 motherboards of socket-1155. Stumbling across Ascendtech, they seemed to have more than a few P8Z68-V Pro, -V Deluxe and -V LK boards, and they had the "Pro/Gen3" board which would work with both Ivy and Sandy Bridge cores. I picked up one of those Gen3 boards for $85.

They have a return policy, but any flaws in the board were fairly minimal. For instance, a RAM-slot latch was broken, but you could insert the RAM, or retrieve it from the slot with a little extra tedium, and the slot worked fine.

Outfits like Ascendtech also have the facilities to repair used items to a degree that some manufacturers offering warranty replacement wouldn't bother. That seems evident on the other "store-front."

 

[PliotronX]

Wow, thank you Bonzai! That Maximus is perfect! It's even mATX which is what is needed for the case I was planning on using and totally forgot to mention.