Good Mobo for an i5-2500K? Z68

[itakey]

Looking for some recommendations on z68 motherboards. I plan to use integrated video with dual monitors (One on VGA and one on DVI I'm guessing), and plan to do some minor overclocking.

Looking to spend anywhere from $80 to $130. Microcenter has $50 off a mobo with the purchase of a chip so I'll probably go that route if I decide to by there vs. newegg based on price of my overall build.

Some people on this board recommended these so far:
ASRock Z68 PRO3 GEN3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157279

Gigabyte GA-Z68MX-UD2H-B3 motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128503

Any other boards out there people recommend? Love?Hate?

 

[Fallengod]

Been trying to decide the same thing myself. I bought a gigabyte ud3h-b3 and have had second thoughts about it and have now honed in on the Asus P8z68-v LX or LE which are a bit cheaper. I still cant decide.

Not a big fan of Asrock and have little experience with them, so I tend to stay away from that. Id stick with Asus or Gigabyte personally.

The Asus P8Z68-V LX is pretty popular. Its the board microcenter told me they sell the most of as well. If you get it at MC, youd knock $50 off which would put it at $70 before tax which is pretty cheap.

 

[itakey]

That Asus you mentioned sounds decent too, have to look into it.

I've heard that a lot of these boards don't allow the 1st memory bay to be used if using and aftermarket CPU cooler, so i'm trying to figure out if one board has the clearance. If not I've read you can get low profile RAM, but I'm not sure if that will definitely help.

Anyone have a similar setup? Share your experience!

 

[Fallengod]

Yes that is true. And, I think that is going to come down to which heatsink you buy not which mobo. I dont know, maybe mobos do vary is placement of cpu socket and memory socket placements, not sure.

Anyways, when I had mounted my first lga 1155 board(Gigabite Z68 UD3H-B3), the first memory socket was kind of blocked by the Cooler master hyper 212+ heatsink. I had to use the 2nd and 4th memory slots and I only run 8gb so that works. If I were trying to run 16gb of 4 sticks, I am not sure id be able to. That is kind of hard to figure out until you have the heatsink though.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

When I bought my 1366 board, I went with a budget board and it's been fantastic. Asrock X58 Extreme. Apparently it had great OC potential too.

 

[Kenmitch]

That Asus you mentioned sounds decent too, have to look into it.

I've heard that a lot of these boards don't allow the 1st memory bay to be used if using and aftermarket CPU cooler, so i'm trying to figure out if one board has the clearance. If not I've read you can get low profile RAM, but I'm not sure if that will definitely help.

Anyone have a similar setup? Share your experience!

You only have to worry about the memory slots if your gonna run 4 sticks. When running 2 sticks you'll use A2,B2 as it's pretty much the standard as far as I can tell. Been this way on all S1156 and S1155 MB's I've looked up or used.

Not a big fan of Asrock and have little experience with them, so I tend to stay away from that. Id stick with Asus or Gigabyte personally.

ASRock was a spin off of Asus. Their original purpose was to compete with the lower end MB makers. They have greatly improved and now compete in the upper end also. I don't think they are still a sister company of Asus today tho.

I'm currently playing around with the ASRock P67 EXTREME4 GEN3 I picked up at microcenter with a 2500k on Friday. Needed to rma my board in sig to Asus and needed something to play around with till I get it back. Not sure what I'm gonna do with the 2500k yet as it's still sealed. Might test it out when I get my Asus board back to see if it'll do 5ghz under 1.4v's. If it does I'm gonna sell my 2700k as I just wanted to play around with a i7 for once.

The board seems pretty solid. Nice build quality it looks like. The uEFI is primitive compared to the Asus implementation but has enough settings to get the job done. My 2700k overclocks the same on the ASRock board. The ASRock board has a better look to it....As far as colors go anyways!

Anyways, when I had mounted my first lga 1155 board(Gigabite Z68 UD3H-B3), the first memory socket was kind of blocked by the Cooler master hyper 212+ heatsink. I had to use the 2nd and 4th memory slots and I only run 8gb so that works. If I were trying to run 16gb of 4 sticks, I am not sure id be able to. That is kind of hard to figure out until you have the heatsink though.

A just FYI on the Hyper 212+. The way the fan mount clips onto the heatsink allows you to raise it up about 1/2" if needed to clear memory sticks. All you have to do is align the upper clip with the top edge of the heatsink before clipping it on and you'll have enough clearance for most memory sticks.

 

[Charlie98]

A just FYI on the Hyper 212+. The way the fan mount clips onto the heatsink allows you to raise it up about 1/2" if needed to clear memory sticks. All you have to do is align the upper clip with the top edge of the heatsink before clipping it on and you'll have enough clearance for most memory sticks.

^^^ That's what I found on my -D2H-B3 Giga mobo (not the UD2H model.) Memory goes in 1st and 3rd slots (from the front the 4th slot is indeed covered by the 212+ fan, but all you would have to do is slide it up a hair (for RAM with a heatsink like my Stealth.) To do it over again, I would have gotten Corsair XMS3 or other low profile RAM.

I like my D2H-B3 Gigabyte mobo, nice mix of features, easy OC'ing, and some of the USB's have power whether or not the computer is on (for charging my iPhone.) Not had one problem with it (Rev 1.3) except a little capacitor or VRM clatter at high OC/load (LinX testing.)

 

[itakey]

I was planning for a Z68 board since I read that this would be the best chipset if I wanted to overclock, and use the integrated graphics from an i5-2500K, is this good advice?

 

[Fallengod]

I was planning for a Z68 board since I read that this would be the best chipset if I wanted to overclock, and use the integrated graphics from an i5-2500K, is this good advice?

Sure why not. Integrated graphics, at least the hd-3000 anyways, are pretty good. They should allow all video needs honestly. I can even play some games with it. I play league of legends and the hd-3000, while has only 50-70 fps most of the time, still plays it fine.

The only thing I didnt like personally on integrated graphics since I output to my TV often, the HDMI cable doesnt carry the sound signal off motherboard like video cards do. I am not sure yet if this is fixable but...perhaps it is with a cable and connector on the motherboard, maybe you can get sound to the HDMI output.

Remember, you can get a GT 520 for like $15AR and thats gonna be better than integrated video. I prefer to have an actual video card. However, the onboard video is sufficient with the 2500k as long as you dont intend to do any crazy gaming. Source games or other games like LoL play fine on it. This would dictate that any video processing or blu-ray movie watching would be fine also. Imo, the integrated video isnt worth much, id advise people to just get an $15AR GT 520 or similar and be done rather than use integrated video, it only saves you like $15 heh.

 

[Charlie98]

I was planning for a Z68 board since I read that this would be the best chipset if I wanted to overclock, and use the integrated graphics from an i5-2500K, is this good advice?

I'm taking my time to pick out a good GPU (and maybe waiting for the prices to drop a little... :whiste: ) and using the on-board graphics, they work pretty well.

I've been playing MW2 on it and it's playable... most of the time.

 

[itakey]

Thanks for the info guys. I don't game at all, only work in Windows environment and do photoshop stuff mainly, so I should get by with Integrated graphics. Agreed that a separate card isn't much if you want something decent. I just figured if the graphics are there, and it seems that a lot of motherboards support it, why not.

Too many darn options with good reviews these days. Guess I should be happy about that, but it makes choosing hard

 

[tigerbait]

I recently built a computer for my brother using BIOSTAR TZ68A+. It was $95 at newegg when i got it. No problems at all. Performs well. O/C'ed a 2500k to 4.5GHz using CM212+.