Which reasonable price z97 atx MB with very good audio ?

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you2

[H]ard|Gawd
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I'm looking ot upgrade my 2500k system to a haswell. I'll be going with a single gpu (r9 390 or whatever can drive a 1440p reasonably well).
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What I would like from the board is reasonable number of fan headers; very good audio (most have decent audio but a few seem to have issues); very reliable and hassle free service if there is an issue. I do not intend on focusing on overclock but might get a K cpu if it is cheaper than the non-k (microcenter). Undecided if I will go with i5 or i7; I know the 4970k runs very hot with stock cooler (I will be using stock cooler).
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Some of the motherboards I've leaning towards are:
msi gaming 5 (seems ok but slow boots - $130ish)
gigabyte gaming 7 (one review suggested the audio had interference issues) ($125) (seems to have low failure rate)
asrock extreme 4 (seems to be a bit power hungry and modest failure rate but has intel nic - prefer intel over killer)
msi power max (high end board for not too much $ - $160)
asrock fatality (so many variants hard to tell which one is reliable)
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I do not care about esata; m.2 or usb 3.1; 6 sata ports are plenty. I do care that he board is reliable; stable and runs cool (some of the boards boost the cpu above recommended threshold at default settings to 'win' benchmarks).
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I'm open to other suggestions as I'm having a bit of an issue dealing with the gazillion reviews I've read the past 2 weeks. My concern with some of the $100 dollar boards is that they won't last 5 years but if one is well made and has good audio I don't need a lot of extra features. Also the more expensive boards seem to have dropped a lot in price since skylake was released (i have already decided skylake doesn't justify the cost for myself).
 
MSI gaming 5 will probably do well for you, but if you don't care about overclocking why not go for an H97 board?


ASUS H97 pro-gamer is like $100 has decent audio, though it might be low on SATA ports
 
why are you upgrading? Especially since you don't care about more SATA6/USB3.1/M.2.... This is the only reason to upgrade from what you had. The performance advantages are pretty slim (especially since you're not overclocking.)
 
Well as I noted I've been having some issues with the current motherboard. I suppose I could look around for a 1155 motherboard but those are fairly expensive so it might be more cost effective to get a 1150 with an i5. Also, while minor, it will upgrade the system to pcie 3.0 and the sound system.
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Then again I could stick with the current 2500k/mb and see if it gives me a couple of more years (it is 4.5 years old). Btw the motherboard is an early version of the p67A-GD65.

Warrior said:
why are you upgrading? Especially since you don't care about more SATA6/USB3.1/M.2.... This is the only reason to upgrade from what you had. The performance advantages are pretty slim (especially since you're not overclocking.)
Click to expand...
 
z77 = if you are unhappy with your current mobo and it isn't a z77, you could looking into finding a decent one. I loved my Gigabyte z77x-ud5h.

z97 = sounds like you understand the added benefits of moving to this platform, BUT you are going to need a new CPU, so why not go Skylake? I have a Z97X-UD5H-BK paired with a 4790K and it's plenty.

z107 = latest and greatest, lots more PCI-E lanes, BUT 6700K is nowhere to be found and overpriced when it is. 6600K is plentiful and prices have come down some.
 
I'm not sure that the extra pci-e lanes will be much benefit for a single gpu gaming system. I could see a server with lots of pcie ssd benefiting from the extra lanes or perhaps a multi-gpu sytem. Not only are the skylake mb/cpu more expensive but I would also need to spend another $100 or ddr-4 ram.
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You are right I should do a better job checking into z77 mb. I thought the jump from 2500k to haswell refresh was 20% but that probably doesn't matter much for games.
 
more PCI-E lanes has only partial to do with GPUs... it allows for faster and more SATA/M.2/ect. ports to be features on the board.
 
Yes but I said above that this is not a server so it won't require much in the way of sata/pcie (for disk) ports. More precisely I will have two; at most three disk and a dvd drive so 4 sata ports is fine. I suspect m.2 and esata are dead on arrival for desktops but only time iwll tell (I see some benefits for nucs/laptops).

Warrior said:
more PCI-E lanes has only partial to do with GPUs... it allows for faster and more SATA/M.2/ect. ports to be features on the board.
Click to expand...
 
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