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Gigabyte SOC Force or Asus Z97 Pro for 4790k build?

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poohbear

Platinum Member
Hey all, im looking at making a new 4790k build, but debating between the Gigabyte SOC Force or the Asus Z97 Pro (non wifi version). Both are around the $200 price point, but i want to get the best overclock and looking at long term durability, future proofing, & stability. I use SLI & will use SLI in the future again, but both support it so no issues there. What i'm debating specifically:

1) The Z97 Pro offers both Sata express & M2 ports, where as the SOC Force only offers a Sata Express port. But i read that some of the M2 SSDs plug directly into the PCIE slot, so do i need a dedicated M2 port? ie is that a strike against choosing the SOC Force?

2) SOC Force has 8 phase VRM design whereas Z97 pro has 12 phase VRM design. Does this make a big difference or is it just marketing hype?

3) in terms of build quality, the Gigabyte advertises it uses special Japanese chokes for 10k hours life, 2x copper pcb, gold plated CPU socket design etc. Asus advertises this for their other mobos (ie Sabretooth series), but not the Z97 Pro.😛

4) the SOC force is choke full of overclocking features and buttons, whereas the z97 Pro just offers basic overclocking functionality. Not that haswells are hard to overclock, but SOC Force definitely seems the overclockers choice.


Point 1 is the one thing holding me back the most as i really want this build to be future proof... if there's no M2 port & it becomes standard in a few years then I'm limited in my SSD options.

What do u guys think is the better choice? Thanks in advance for your advice.🙂
 
A few thoughts:

Both Asus and Gigabyte make good boards. I would be happy with either. 8-phase is balanced enough for at 4790.

The 4790k is known to have a hard stop at 4.7, and even that takes a pretty good bump in voltage over 4.6, so I would not choose one board over the other in terms of overclocking, as it is more up to the chip on this one.

M2 is still at the beginning stages, so I would only worry about that if you plan on keeping the board for a while. I have a feeling the next chipsets and operating systems will be improving upon it.
 
Thanks ketchup79,i found this list that shows the quality of the mobos capacitors and VRM parts of each z97 (and all the way back to Z68) mobo out there:

http://sinhardware.com/index.php/vrm-list

according to that the Gigabyte SOC Force uses higher quality parts and has a solid 8 phase VRM vs 6+2 on the Asus Pro (12 phase was marketing BS!), so looks like i'll be leaning towards that.
 
Asus... marketing bs?.... NO!!!!!!!!!!!

lol

To be fair, they all have that (marketing glorification). But I believe this is more a fear from the past than it is currently, unless you are going for a super cheap board , which you are not.

Also, remember that the Devil's Canyon chips have additional capacitors to smooth power delivery to the cores. Of course, since these chips are showing that the don't overclock too much, I don't know what help this is, except that they are probably less likely to die prematurely, not that this is a big problem with CPUs doing so in the first place.
 
good point. What do you think of the Asrock OC Formula? its VRM parts also scored really high in that list (higher than both), and comes with both M2 & SATA express! Same price range as the Asus Pro & the gigabyte SOC Force. Has Asrock come a long way? they used to be a budget mobo brand yea?
 
They were a budget spinoff of Asus. IIRC they are independent now and a lot of folks around here are very happy with their boards.
 
poohbear said:
6+2 on the Asus Pro (12 phase was marketing BS!)
Click to expand...
It is 6 but because somehow there is a "double-er"(?) technology involved they can call it 12?

I don't think the Asus Pro can do both M.2 and SATA Express at the same time. It is one or the other?

This won't be much of an upgrade for you, you will not notice much speed up over your 2500 unless you are doing stuff that will use eight cores.
 
Thanks Gleem. Yes im into video editing these days, 2500k is really slow @ it, so hoping for faster video encoding with the 4790k.🙂 also for gaming i read bf4 & frostbite engine 3.0 games benefit from extra cores, so it should help a little for those.
 
Haswell-E is releasing very soon. Have you considered waiting for that, at least just to see the options at the time?
 
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