Looking for a motherboard recommendation

[nurturedhate]

http://promotions.newegg.com/intel/13-2602/index.html

Looking to purchase this deal from newegg. Going with the 4670k and was wanting some recommendations regarding the motherboard options. My last two boards have been gigabytes and have served me well.

A concern is that the gigabyte board does not show support for 1866 memory and that is what I currently have. It's not a huge deal to downclock to 1600 but not preferred.

Main concern/question is the overclocking capability of these boards.

Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated.

 

[blackened23]

You should look at them from a features perspective, generally speaking the price is commensurate with the features offered. How many SATA ports? USB 3.0? Do you want dual LAN? Wifi? Number of PCIE slots? Do you want the new Realtek 1150 chip (It is vastly improved over the more common 8xx realtek chip)? You should ask yourself these questions, that is what the price boils down to most of the time.

Additionally, overclocking wise I think they're all fairly similar - I personally prefer asus here because I am just accustomed to their UEFI interface from the Z77 series. Aside from that you can look at stuff such as the number of power phases available - I believe the Z87 pro has 12 IIRC (8+4). My opinion is heavily biased, but I always recommend asus. It is the most expensive, but Asus boards have always been a pleasure for me to work with. Don't mistake this for me suggesting the other boards are bad - far from it - it's just personal bias as mentioned.

As far as memory support on the Gigabyte board, you are fine. The IMC is on the CPU die now so the motherboard has very little to do with that, and as far as i'm aware *all* of the boards listed are certified for 4 DIMM 2800 operation. You won't have issues with 1866, trust me.

 

[nurturedhate]

Pretty split between the Asus and the Gigabyte. Both offer the features that I need. The Asus does offer wi-fi and bluetooth support but I have no need for either though bluetooth could have a few niche uses.

Looking through things the Gigabyte does support my memory. Not sure why I even questioned that.

Overall it was more of a question of overclockability and personal experiences though its most likely too early for that.

Am also aware that these are most likely the C1 stepping with the sleep issue but that does not affect me.

Thanks for your quick response Blackened

 

[KentState]

I went with Gigabatye this round, but I prefer my previous Asus and regret not going that route. Just simple things like fan header locations and where the PCIe 1.0 are located. On my Asus I could get to 2 of the 3 easily, but the Gigabtye only has one which isn't covered by the video card, but is pretty much on top of it. I also prefer the Asus BIOS as it's just more straight forward and better organized.

 

[blackened23]

I went with Gigabatye this round, but I prefer my previous Asus and regret not going that route. Just simple things like fan header locations and where the PCIe 1.0 are located. On my Asus I could get to 2 of the 3 easily, but the Gigabtye only has one which isn't covered by the video card, but is pretty much on top of it. I also prefer the Asus BIOS as it's just more straight forward and better organized.

I'm glad you posted this actually, I was interested in hearing feedback on the Gigabyte board - i've used MSI and ASRock, but not Gigabyte. Now that you mention the layout issues, that's definitely one reason why I like using asus. They put a lot of thought into the layout and everything is intuitive - this is why I keep going back to them. I've never been disappointed by any asus board in the past decade, they've all been great.

 

[tkivisto]

I've used ASUS, AsRock, MSI, and another brand which I will choose to leave anonymous to protect my innocence (it was replaced quickly).

ASrock gets you a little more features for the $$, but not necessarily everything you will need in particular. Gigabyte is a great brand, but so is ASUS. I totally agree that you should look at the board in the same price range from Gigabyte and ASUS, look at the layouts of the fan/USB connector/power connectors and decide which has the better features and layout. I think you'll find that either one will deliver the performance you need and support similar RAM speeds and capacities (they maybe just don't test ALL of the same RAM chips so don't ALL show up in the compatibilities charts).