- Apr 20, 2012
- 3,972
- 72
- 91
Hi,
a friend of mine is looking to get a new PC, and because the case he chose, he had to wait with ordering until the Z97 launch, so the previous choice of AsRock Z87M Extreme4 has become less obvious.
Requirements in order of importance:
Intel LAN (he's going to run Linux and the Atheros E series "killer" chips appear to have no native kernel driver support)
Support for Haswell Refresh CPUs (currently there's a 100Mhz to be had for free - would be a pity having to do without it)
reasonably priced (no more expensive than necessary)
better audio at the same price is a plus
available in the not too far future
4xRAM, 6x SATA, just in case.
not really important:
thunderbolt, sata express, eSATA, SLI, OC
cons:
wastes like VGA ports, PCI ports
I think an Extreme 4 on Z97 would probably be the best bet, but currently isn't on the market.
The Gryphon is too expensive, the ASUS "plus" is a bit toward the low end, component-wise (even though it has an M2 port?) and Gigabyte and MSI don't use Intel NICs.
Of course, if the Z87 is guaranteed to either have an up-to-date BIOS or can update the BIOS itself using a non-recognized CPU, the problem ceases to exist as well.
a friend of mine is looking to get a new PC, and because the case he chose, he had to wait with ordering until the Z97 launch, so the previous choice of AsRock Z87M Extreme4 has become less obvious.
Requirements in order of importance:
Intel LAN (he's going to run Linux and the Atheros E series "killer" chips appear to have no native kernel driver support)
Support for Haswell Refresh CPUs (currently there's a 100Mhz to be had for free - would be a pity having to do without it)
reasonably priced (no more expensive than necessary)
better audio at the same price is a plus
available in the not too far future
4xRAM, 6x SATA, just in case.
not really important:
thunderbolt, sata express, eSATA, SLI, OC
cons:
wastes like VGA ports, PCI ports
I think an Extreme 4 on Z97 would probably be the best bet, but currently isn't on the market.
The Gryphon is too expensive, the ASUS "plus" is a bit toward the low end, component-wise (even though it has an M2 port?) and Gigabyte and MSI don't use Intel NICs.
Of course, if the Z87 is guaranteed to either have an up-to-date BIOS or can update the BIOS itself using a non-recognized CPU, the problem ceases to exist as well.
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