P67 or Z68 Recommendations

[VaporX]

Wev man I am sorry to hear your pain. I know my Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3 has been great and I would suggest one as a possible choice.

[d6bmg]

I actually considered that eVGA board, but the PCIe x1 slot is blocked by the cooler and I need that slot for my Creative XFI Titanium

 

And, the FTW board is extended ATX so won't fit in my current case......................... last problem is that it only has six SATA ports. Need at least 7 with one eSATA or 8 SATA all together. I've got a SATA to eSATA bracket.

 

Then I would stick to my previous suggestion: Asus P8Z58 V pro/gen3.

 

You could buy a Z77 for the native USB 3.0 but.. apparently they have less power phases...

Sorry I thought they were released already I think PCIE 3.0(not that it makes a difference) is only for IB?

 

Thunderbolt?

http://www.hardwares...hunderbolt/6203

 

Sadly they are not available publicly.

[wevsspot]

Thanks CE. Anyone have any thoughts or experience with the GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD4? Looks like a solid board. Has all the connections I need and priced within my budget. 16 phase power, has a couple PCIe x1 slots, the lowest of which I can slip my XFI into and I think without affecting the airflow on my top video card. Thoughts?

[wevsspot]

Still reading on the UD4 and just see that it doesn't have an external clear cmos button.............. wow what an oversight.

[El_Capitan]

Still reading on the UD4 and just see that it doesn't have an external clear cmos button.............. wow what an oversight.

A lot of boards don't seem to have them these days, though I haven't had to clear CMOS in a long time. Only amateur overclockers need them.

[wevsspot]

Ok, external clear cmos button aside............

 

What do you think about the UD4?

[El_Capitan]

Not sure, I never got to play with the UD4. I think taco's played with the UD2 or UD3.

[Waco]

I love my UD4 - but the BIOS still needs a little bit of work. You can't use offset voltage to overclock if you want to use LLC. The LLC options when using fixed voltage are extremely robust though - so you can get whatever behavior you want out of it with a little patience (IE: high LLC level increases voltage under load where you are more likely to need it, mid level LLC pretty much keeps the voltage constant, and low LLC lets the voltage droop a bit under load).

 

So aside from that - I have absolutely zero complaints with the board. Not having a clear CMOS button is only slightly annoying - there's a set of pins you can jump fairly easily to clear the CMOS if you have to. I've never had to clear mine even with extremely ambitious BIOS settings.

[d6bmg]

^ Does is have UEFI BIOS or the conventional text based one?

[Waco]

It's conventional. I hate UEFI BIOSes...they're too complicated and flashy (in general). I don't need pictures, I don't need animations, just give me the damn settings with the minimal amount of processing (by me) needed. While I was running my ASRock board (which has a decent UEFI BIOS) I never touched my mouse nor did I find it any more useful than a text-based interface.

[wevsspot]

Thanks for everyone's input. I purchased the Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD4 board. Mainly out of frustration with the Asus and MSI experience over the weekend, but also based on CE's and Waco's feedback on their GB boards. It's been a while since I've had a Gigabyte board and hopefully this one will be as solid as the previous ones I've use.

 

Waco - can you confirm that I've got room to run my PCIe x1 card in the lowest x1 slot and still leave some room for airflow on my top GTX570 video card? I'd appreciate that.

 

Wev

[Waco]

As long as your card isn't overly long you'll be fine - but I'd probably put it in the lower x16 slot if it blocks it up. I doubt you'd see any performance difference between x8 and x16 with the 570.