Which Z87 Mobo for £100-150?

[Razyre]

Hello there.

The time has come! I can finally move away from the awful Phenom II X4 940

So, I am going for a Haswell build, 4770K, 8-16GB 2400 RAM and a motherboard of which I haven't chosen yet.

Price needs to lie within £100-150, although I'll allow a little over if the particular mobo suggested offers significant gain over the others. Under is also welcome if there is an awesome budget board lol.

Thus far, been looking quite heavily at Asrock boards, mainly because of because of Porn cloud (or home cloud if you prefer), because that feature is pretty awesome, but I want to know what the best overall board you think is in this price range.

I need a BIOS with as many options as possible, a good level of overclocking ability (No idea what I'll OC to yet, but only time will tell, best set myself up in good stead) and I suppose a nice colour scheme, but I'm not /overly/ bothered. If it's any conciliation, my current GPU is a 7950 (Yes, I know, a 7950 with a 940 X4, it's horrible). Oh yeah, and needs to work well with Crossfire/SLI.

Please give your suggestions!

 

[zealot1983]

asrock ex4 it is pretty good

 

[Razyre]

Any particular reason?

 

[jcniest5]

I heard Asrock still sucks with their thin PCB mobos, which can't take heat as well, or bend easily.

 

[Vectronic]

So far, ASRock Z87 Ext4 is my theoretical purchase... I know 1150 is fairly new, but of the 12 boards from 4 manufacturers or whatever... it's still the best option *for me*.

It has the onboard power/reset/CMOS buttons (although they scrapped the nice CMOS reset with a light, for a generic button switch)... dual BIOS, and the PCB might be a bit flimsy, but if it's the same as my Z77 Ext4, tough enough.

It's an ugly brown PCB, however when not directly lit with white light, you never notice.

Like the Z77 Ext4 it has the most features for the price, but... it's also not made the best.

My Z77 Ext4 has been running for a little over 7 months, no problems (that weren't my own fault), i5 3570K @ 4.5GHz and RAM @ 2000 (from 1600) for about 5 of those months.

Gigabyte or ASUS are likely better boards for quality (although there seems to be a lot of complaining about Gigabytes 1150's)... but they have fewer features, and disgusting color schemes... since my box has a window, that's rather important.

MSI has decent looking boards (except for the dragon, "neat" enough - entirely unecessary), not sure about the quality... but it's probably my second choice.

However, I'm just window shopping, since I have no need and very little desire to upgrade to Haswell so far.

 

[Razyre]

I've been told by many, many people to go Gigabyte. I think I'm just going to throw in the towel and go for it. This was over at OCUK but I wanted a second opinion. I really want to upgrade now, my 4 year old system is horrible.

 

[Rvenger]

Do yourself a favor and stay away from the Z87 Extreme 4 for now. I am not impressed with this board at all. The "purity sound" sounds terrible, Bios freezes with a block pattern on top of the screen, Dynamic Storage accelerator disappears in the RST Control panel, Vcore reports 1.79v.

This board is nothing like the Z68 Extreme 3 and Z77 Extreme 4. This thing is riddled with issues.

 

[Revolution 11]

That's a pity. The Z68 Extreme 3 and Z77 Extreme 4 had excellent reviews and I was looking forward to getting the Z87 version. What board best for its price would you recommend if the Extreme 4 is a no-go?

I will be using it for gaming/mild overclocking usage, I don't care about sound quality really as long as there is no obvious distortion like the forementioned example.

 

[Razyre]

Sounds like Gigabyte is a good choice then lol.

 

[Rvenger]

That's a pity. The Z68 Extreme 3 and Z77 Extreme 4 had excellent reviews and I was looking forward to getting the Z87 version. What board best for its price would you recommend if the Extreme 4 is a no-go?

I will be using it for gaming/mild overclocking usage, I don't care about sound quality really as long as there is no obvious distortion like the forementioned example.

MSI Z87-G45


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130693