Best Z97 matx mobo

Guess my eyesight just sucks then because:

ASRock Z97E-ITX/ac LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard

It's at the bottom of the micro range but they clearly call it a mini.

Disregard my entire argument.

Just to note, I do not own any Asrock board thus no loyalty.
At the same time I have never owned Asus either as I always found their premium
price not warranted.
 
ep0x73 said:
Guess my eyesight just sucks then because:

ASRock Z97E-ITX/ac LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard

It's at the bottom of the micro range but they clearly call it a mini.

Disregard my entire argument.

Just to note, I do not own any Asrock board thus no loyalty.
At the same time I have never owned Asus either as I always found their premium
price not warranted.
Click to expand...


Im with you, ASUS generally its always much more expensive even for any specs they carry. But on the other hand I build many rigs over this past year and I been using more and more AR and up until today never had any real issues.
 
Just picked up an Asus Gene VII and it won't boot with the first 2 slots populated. I get the 55 error. This is only the second Asus board I have bought and both were nothing but problems.
 
Stopped using Asus boards a long time ago. Even using asrock and msi the last couple years and haven't had any trouble with either brands.
 
anyone know if Assrock Z97E has true digi VRM ?
and is that fact actually still important for haswell chips?
 
ep0x73 said:
Does it matter? the OP was looking for mini-atx and I am sure is aware you cannot put 32mb and run SLI or he would just go atx.
The point made was you stated Asus does not cut corners thus they have a low failure rate. I showed one of their most expensive board was one of the worst at 8%.

Least you admit the rive is a POS.

For the record I only buy/have full atx but I neither have/need 32mb or run SLI and the vast majority do not either.
Click to expand...

I get that much (and I bet the poster you are replying to does as well) - I've gone mATX for my last two upgrades (including this one) even though I've stuck to the same ATX case. You can have 32GB (and even SLI) in mATX - MSI has a Z97 mATX mobo with four DIMM slots and SLI support; so does Gigabyte - so it's not impossible. (Pricey, yes - impossible, no.) The bigger driver for mATX has mostly been price - it certainly was for my last two upgrades! (In fact, I wound up going all the way down to H81 because I found I didn't have to give up either of my gotta-haves - overclockability and gigabit Ethernet - despite the cheapie price. The choice is getting added to my SIG as it's now mounted in my case - MSI's H81-E33.)

On the H81-E33 itself - even for mATX, this mobo is *little*; it's easily the smallest mATX motherboard I've ever used in a build. (In fact, it's smaller than the mATX board it directly replaces.) The one thing it OBVIOUSLY sacrifices (compared to not only other motherboards, but other mATX motherboards) is DIMM capacity - it has but two DIMM slots. However, they are the same capacity-wise as any other LGA1150 motherboard - 16 GB per slot (32 GB total). If you have two 4GB DIMMs (as I did), install both and your CPU of choice and you're ready to rock.

The surprise that is Intel H81 - The only features that H81 does NOT support are in terms of software - it doesn't support either Rapid Start OR Smart Response. (Considering I don't have an SSD installed, I need neither feature at this time.) Still, two of the four SATA ports DO support SATA 6.0Gb/sec; the other two support 3.0Gb/sec. If it turns out that you DO need those features that a higher-end chipset supports (such as Z97), why not simply upgrade the motherboard? (This isn't a laptop or notebook or even tablet - the motherboard can be upgraded exclusive of anything else. If you installed the motherboard yourself, you know HOW to do it.)

Gotchas - Of COURSE there are "gotchas" - there are "gotchas" with buying anything.
Here are some that I picked up along the way:

Expansion (in this case, the issue is slot "spacing" - not necessarily the number of slots). mATX motherboards in general are slot-starved - the E33 has just two (one PCI-E x16 and one PCI-E x1). That's it. If your GPU is a dual-slot design (and one of mine is), even a lot of PCI-E x1 board (such as the Recon3D Fata1ity Professional that I'd like to retain) are going to have issues - fortunately, the Fata1ity Professional *itself* doesn't have issues with such close-quarters placement, and neither does the GTX550Ti (the dual-slot discrete GPU in question) or most of the possible options in terms of GPU upgrades. However, GPUs WIDER than dual-slot (and examples exist) are going to see that x1 slot go bye-bye.

RTFM - a definite gotta-do; mATX is laid out differently from ATX. Even mATX layouts can differ from each other. Motherboard/case connection points changed - and I'm replacing mATX with mATX. I'm not sure about the two USB ports on the case (as far as compatibility with the USB headers), hence I have not connected them. I have a header from my previous motherboard that may - MAY - work; however, I'm not sure about it, either. So it could be another "gotcha" waiting to sink it's teeth into my rear.

4K - This is entirely CPU-driven, as there ARE Intel CPUs that have onboard graphics support for 4K.
 
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