You'd want a motherboard from the following set of chipsets: {P67, Z68, Z77}.
I still feel a bit embarrassed at my latest "impulse buy." I watched flee-bay and other sources for almost a year after resellers were posting "Out of Stock" for the i7-2700K. I was telling myself not to bother -- as if I'd quit smoking and kept visiting my friend's tobacco shop anyway.
The idea was to replace my 2600K and "buy myself" another 200 Mhz in clock speed. It turns out I bought an extra 100 Mhz. I had second thoughts about tearing apart my 2600K system and going through "the process" of re-establishing OC profiles, when I was using the totally stellar Z68 system for regular computing needs as well as gaming.
So like an idiot hardware junkie -- which I am -- I developed the excuse that I needed to replace another computer for which an old GA-EP45-UD3R motherboard seemed to be "going south." Turned out later it was the PSU and not the board, but I went forward with the upgrade anyway.
I needed a motherboard. I started scouring Ebay and Amazon sources, and the Newegg offerings were limited to an Asrock Z77 Extreme 4 or an ASUS Z77-A.
I discovered there are outfits who handle "corporate IT assets" while maintaining a store-front for consumers. They repair and refurbish used and surplus motherboards:
www.ascendtech.com
Here's their listing of Skt-1155 boards.
http://www.ascendtech.us/intel-lga1155-motherboard_c_mb1155.aspx
Just on the first of the five pages, scroll down to the ASUS offerings, and you'll find the P8Z68-V Pro/Gen3 board for about $85. I almost hate to point someone toward the corporate IT-asset handlers, but I already bought what I need from them. I have friends who are retired electronics-techs and who don't care about the latest and greatest. So they buy used parts from sources like AscendTech.
Maybe you can get lucky and find a Z77 board, but for the Sandy CPUs, it doesn't get much better than this, and the Gen3 boards were compatible and ready-made for the Ivy cores like the i5-3570K. It's a board with an 8+4 phase-power design -- which you won't find in the end-of-lifecycle models like the Z77-A. Even the Sabertooth Z77 board was only an 8+2 model.
To be honest, the addiction-induced 2700K purchase was an unnecessary upgrade detour for me, but I'm really impressed with the board I purchased for it.
The worst thing I discovered about my $85 "Pro/Gen3" board: One of the latches for a memory slot was broken, so I need to use some sort of tool to remove the module in the slot. Everything else was absolutely stellar. I might have RMA'd the board because of the latch, but after testing it -- I decided it was a keeper.
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