What board for i5-2500, $150 or less?

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sygyzy

sygyzy

Lifer
Oct 21, 2000
14,001
4
76
Hi,

I am upgrading my current desktop and need a motherboard recommendation to be paired with an i5-2500 CPU. My requirements aren't that steep, at least I don't think so.

  • $150 +/- $10
  • USB 3.0 Support
  • At least 6 internal SATA
  • SATA 6gb and 3gb
  • Onboard LAN and Audio
  • Stable, tools to aid with overclocking

I have the ASRock P67 Extreme4 and the MSI P67A-G43 on my list simply because they were both used in recent Tom's Hardware builds. Any other recommendations? Thanks.

Edit: Now I am reading about the Sandy Bridge chipset failures that affect P67 and both the boards on my list, recommended by Tom's Hardware are P67. WTF? Why would they recommend faulty boards? I read it affects the 3GB SATA channels which happen to be what all my devices are. So confused.
 
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DaveSimmons

Elite Member
Aug 12, 2001
40,730
670
126
> Stable, tools to aid with overclocking

Only the "K" chips offer overclocking, you need the 2500K not the 2500.

> Edit: Now I am reading about the Sandy Bridge chipset failures that affect P67

If you keep reading, that happened with the first run of chips, the chips are fine now, all the bad motherboards were recalled.

Choices:
- H61, H67: no overclocking but onboard video and "quick sync" encoding using the GPU part of the chip. H61 has no SATA 6 GB.
- P67: overclocking but no onboard video support. Has 6 GB and it's all peachy now
- Z68: overclocking and most boards (not all) have video out using the processor GPU and quick sync encoding

If you don't care about using the 2500's built-in video or quick sync, then P67 is a perfectly good choice.
 
sygyzy

sygyzy

Lifer
Oct 21, 2000
14,001
4
76
First, thanks for the correction. Yes, I meant 2500K but I actually didn't know the difference. I just thought some sites mislabeled it 2500.

I don't care about video out but what is quick sync encoding?

Thanks for taking the time to help me. PM me your gmail address if you'd like an invite to Google+. My way of saying thanks.
 
sygyzy

sygyzy

Lifer
Oct 21, 2000
14,001
4
76
That seems really attractive (Quick Sync).

I noticed the Z68's also have some sort of SSD boost ability but according to Anandtech, it only works in RAID mode not AHCI. Having recently upgraded my 40GB Intel SSD, I have a spare one and was thinking I could use that for SSD caching and my 120GB SSD as my OS drive. I thought that Windows 7 SSD needs to be used with AHCI turned on in BIOS. So you does that mean you can't have a SSD OS drive and a SSD Cache drive? Is it designed to only boost standard platter drives?
 
jjmIII

jjmIII

Diamond Member
Mar 13, 2001
8,399
1
81
sygyzy said:
Edit: Now I am reading about the Sandy Bridge chipset failures that affect P67 and both the boards on my list, recommended by Tom's Hardware are P67. WTF? Why would they recommend faulty boards? I read it affects the 3GB SATA channels which happen to be what all my devices are. So confused.
Click to expand...

That has been fixed already with the B3 edition of those boards.
 
sygyzy

sygyzy

Lifer
Oct 21, 2000
14,001
4
76
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Phynaz

Phynaz

Lifer
Mar 13, 2006
10,140
819
126
sygyzy said:
That seems really attractive (Quick Sync).

I noticed the Z68's also have some sort of SSD boost ability but according to Anandtech, it only works in RAID mode not AHCI. Having recently upgraded my 40GB Intel SSD, I have a spare one and was thinking I could use that for SSD caching and my 120GB SSD as my OS drive. I thought that Windows 7 SSD needs to be used with AHCI turned on in BIOS. So you does that mean you can't have a SSD OS drive and a SSD Cache drive? Is it designed to only boost standard platter drives?
Click to expand...

Raid mode on Intel boards is inclusive of AHCI. Basically you configure them for RAID even if you aren't going to use RAID.

You can have an SSD OS drive and also a cache for your HDD.
 
sygyzy

sygyzy

Lifer
Oct 21, 2000
14,001
4
76
Even if my HDD is say the secondary drive after the OS SSD?
 
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S

skipsneeky2

Diamond Member
May 21, 2011
5,035
1
71
While the p8p67 pro is a bit more, i do believe its the best mobo around if you can squeeze about $25 more IF you can i doubt you will be disappointed with that choice.
 
Gryz

Gryz

Golden Member
Aug 28, 2010
1,551
204
106
I'm also interested in learning about the practical differences between a P67 and Z68 motherboards. ASRock is my preferred choice. (Maybe Asus as alternative).

I read something that suggested the Z68 chipset might supported the next generation Intel cpus. I suppose that would be SNB-E. Is it already known whether Z68 will do that ? Any chances CPUs after the first SNB-E will be supported by Z68 ?

I'm not sure I will do SLI, but if it costs me only 10-20 euros/dollars to keep the option open, I will do that. So looking at these 5 candidate boards, I see 4 out of 5 have 2+ slots for videocards.

The ASRock P67 Pro3 SE has two PCIE-16x slots (100 euro). no SLI ? or 16x/4x ?
The ASRock P67 Extreme4 has three PCIE-16x slots (125 euro). 8x/8x
The ASRock P67 Extreme6 has three PCIE-16x slots (155 euro). 8x/8x
The ASRock Z68 Pro3 has only one PCIE-16x slot (110 euro). no SLI
The ASRock Z68 Extreme4 has three PCE-16x slots (155 euro). 8x/8x

The Z68-Pro3 has only one 16x slot, so no SLI.
The P67-Pro3-SE has two 16x slots, but doesn't seem to support SLI ? Correct ? Weird.
The other 3 boards do support SLI. But the PCIE speeds seem to fall back to 8x/8x. Am I correct to assume that there are no 1155 motherboards that support 16x/16x PCIE SLI ?
I've read that 8x/8x has only a few percent (3-5%) fps-penalty over 16x/16x. Still wonder if going SLI will be worth it, with yet another speed penalty.

I'm not doing videodecoding, so the Z68 chipset has no advantage there. I'm not gonna use an SSD for caching. (I like to decide for myself what to put on the SSD). Is there any benefit of Z68 over P67 for me ?

So far the P67-Extreme4 looks like the best buy for me. Is there any reason why the P67-Extreme6 is worth 30 euros more ? And if I don't care for SLI, is there any real benefit for a gamer like myself to buy a P67-Extreme4 over the P67-Pro3-SE ?

Thanks.
 
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Y

you2

Diamond Member
Apr 2, 2002
6,727
1,760
136
I went with the z68-extreme 4 because I am using the on board video (and wanted display port + lots of sata ports; 2+ pci slots; if the pro3 had display port I probably would have gone with that);

Since you dont' care about the onboard gpu I would go with the p67 extreme4 or the p67 pro3-se. The extreme4 has a few other features (more ports; pci slots; ...) if you don't need them save some $$ and go with the pro3-se.
-
Never buy a motherboard for future proofing. Next year it will be 1/2 price.
 
VirtualLarry

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,572
10,207
126
Gryz said:
I read something that suggested the Z68 chipset might supported the next generation Intel cpus. I suppose that would be SNB-E. Is it already known whether Z68 will do that ? Any chances CPUs after the first SNB-E will be supported by Z68 ?
Click to expand...
No, SB-E is Socket 2011. The "next generation" is going to be Ivy Bridge, socket 1155. Z68 boards MAY be compatible with those CPUs, with a BIOS flash.
 
sygyzy

sygyzy

Lifer
Oct 21, 2000
14,001
4
76
Just to update the thread since you guys were so helpful - I bought an ASRock Z68 Extreme4. I know it's about $50 more than I originally planned to spend but I am pretty happy with it.
 
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