sandy bridge z68 mb advice?

[86waterpumper]

Alright I have grown past tired of waiting for bd, so I will probably go ahead and build a 2500k rig. What I would like to do is to use the fractal designs arc mini case, which will only take matx boards. Which is the best available to use? Newegg has a few gigabyte boards, a asus, and a msi I noticed. I do want to have all the onboard video connections, dvi, hdmi, vga which I see the asus board did not have. I do not really care about the new fancy mouse supported bios, except for the fact that I do want a really fast post time, does anyone know which boards get through this the fastest? Another thing I have noticed on the biostar boards I have used in the past (and read about gigabyte) is the fact that there are problems with the system going into and coming out of a sleep state, and also with the smartfan header working and adjusting cpu fan speed. Since I am trying to cut back on power usage and be able to leave this system running for long periods I need those two things to function very well. I"m not super concerned about overclocking, I may o/c some, but certainly not over 4.5ghz. I will be using the onboard video for most things, but I would like the option to run my radeon 6850 also maybe with virtu etc. I care nothing about dual video cards though.

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

On the Gigabyte Z68’s you need to make sure that it does support the IGP (Intergraded Graphics on Processor). About half of Gigabytes Z68 boards don’t support the IGP. If you are buying from Newegg they list that you need a video card on the boards that don’t have support. Otherwise have fun and I think you are going to be impressed on what the Intel® Core™ i5-2500K can do for you.

Christian Wood
Intel Enthusiast Team

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Alright I have grown past tired of waiting for bd, so I will probably go ahead and build a 2500k rig. What I would like to do is to use the fractal designs arc mini case, which will only take matx boards. Which is the best available to use? Newegg has a few gigabyte boards, a asus, and a msi I noticed. I do want to have all the onboard video connections, dvi, hdmi, vga which I see the asus board did not have. I do not really care about the new fancy mouse supported bios, except for the fact that I do want a really fast post time, does anyone know which boards get through this the fastest? Another thing I have noticed on the biostar boards I have used in the past (and read about gigabyte) is the fact that there are problems with the system going into and coming out of a sleep state, and also with the smartfan header working and adjusting cpu fan speed. Since I am trying to cut back on power usage and be able to leave this system running for long periods I need those two things to function very well. I"m not super concerned about overclocking, I may o/c some, but certainly not over 4.5ghz. I will be using the onboard video for most things, but I would like the option to run my radeon 6850 also maybe with virtu etc. I care nothing about dual video cards though.

That's not my understanding, either firsthand or second-hand -- unless the only one you looked at was the P8Z68 Deluxe. I can't even remember for sure if the Maximus IV Extreme Z boards also dropped the iGPU ports, but it could be possible. Point being, the P8Z68-V and V-Pro do have those ports, except for one caveat: The DVI port is not dual-link - but single-link.

There are pros and cons to all these boards. I'm very happy with my Asus P8Z68-V-Pro, but I can see how the AsRock Extreme board or one or more of the Gigabyte boards may have their strong point, so I'll leave off with the observations above. Anyone else?

 

[86waterpumper]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131759

Here is the board I was referring to, with no connectors.

I'm sure the board you are using is great, but it isn't the micro atx form factor? There are tons of great boards if you can buy fullsize, heck the biostar tz68a+ is under 100 bucks sometimes at newegg...using the smaller boards narrows my choices alot but maybe there are more boards on the way, or ones that are not avail. at newegg to look at.

 

[you2]

I would recommend board with display port for higher resolution. I have asrock extreme 4 but there are less expensive alternatives depending on how many sata, pci and pcie ports/slots you need.

Btw buy what you need for today NOT tommorrow. For tommorrow it will cost less or you will want something else.

 

[you2]

Btw all boards have some issue with s4/s5 intel issue i think. S3 works ok on my asrock and msi board.

 

[86waterpumper]

the asrock extreme 4 is a atx form factor not matx...but thanks for the heads up on the s3/ s4 issue, what is the diff. in s3 and s4? My htpc computer only has s3 sleep and it seems to work fine.

 

[you2]

Asrok z68 pro3 has displayport and is matx. S4 is hibernate (state written to disk and ram shutdown - I think).

 

[iTwins]

All motherboard are pretty much the same anyways, THEY ARE ALL MADE IN CHINA. But I too would recommend the ASRock Extreme4. It is one of few motherboards that have onboard VGA, HDMI, Displayport, eSATA, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, etc., etc.

I chose it because I need Intel RST + eSATA + front panel USB 3.0 ports. I didn't care much of its o/c capabilities or 3 x graphic card PCIe slots.

The Extreme4 also allows you to add in 1 or more extra RAID controller card. My previous 2 shi-tty ASUS mb (different models) won't even allow one - it's either the onboard Intel ICH or disable onboard Intel ICH and use external.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131759

Here is the board I was referring to, with no connectors.

I'm sure the board you are using is great, but it isn't the micro atx form factor? There are tons of great boards if you can buy fullsize, heck the biostar tz68a+ is under 100 bucks sometimes at newegg...using the smaller boards narrows my choices alot but maybe there are more boards on the way, or ones that are not avail. at newegg to look at.

I hadn't looked closely enough at that board, but based on what I know about the entire ASUS P8Z68 model-line, if blindfolded and asked to wager, I would've guessed correctly.

The flagship of the P8Z68's -- the "Deluxe" -- also offers no video ports for the iGPU.

Perhaps ASUS reasons that the hardcore gamers will run their Lucid Virtu in "D" mode -- or that they will always have top-end gfx PCI_E card.

I must've missed your preference for mATX. Certainly, there will be some of those. I just haven't looked at them. I built two twin systems in '08 from LGA-775 mATX boards, and it renewed by sense that you can get a lot for a lot less. For those boards I remember, there were only two memory slots (DDR2) but there are 2x4GB modules still available for them. Not that many limitations, really . . .

Most likely, if you find an mATX board, it would be more likely to have those three plugs served up at the I/O plate.

 

[86waterpumper]

wow, the asrock z68pro3-m is 114 bucks at newegg? That seems to be a smoking deal there! I always thought asrock was sort of bottom of the barrell how is their build quality compared to msi and asus etc? I do like the esata and display port, seems alot of boards now are dropping the esata for some reason I guess they figure everyone is going to use usb 3.0. I was looking pretty hard at the MSI z68a-gd55 it looks like a pretty nice board too, but didn't have the display port I don't think. I want to use the fractal design arc mini case, but noone in the states have it, so I may end up rethinking the micro sized stuff if I can't find a case that I like...although I love the idea of having the computer a smaller size.