Done with ASUS, looking for new 1155 board?

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night_2004

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After dealing with the B2/B3 recall (not ASUS fault but ASUS handled the recall a little less well than competitors), a B2 board that was semi-unstable as far as sleep was concerned, and now having a B3 board that constantly locks up, and piss-poor customer service and QA from both my X58 days and my P67 days, I think I might be done with ASUS for a while.

NewEgg has been kind enough to let me return my board after a good 5 months from the original purchase date, and I'm planning on getting a new board either now (if I take my desktop with me when I move for a temporary summer job) or in August (if I leave my desktop behind with my wife).

So I am hoping that maybe you all would have some suggestions for me. I'm looking for a solid board that just works, no hiccups or problems. I can't afford to have the board go south on me the week a major research paper is due like the P8P67 Deluxe did.

I'm not unopposed to another ASUS board, but there had be some pretty solid evidence that any new ASUS board from them is problem free. Heard good things about Gigabyte, so maybe the UD4? Might even consider Intel boards, simply because I never hear anything bad about them. Might even wait for the Z68 boards but I have no clue when those will be out (and when all the kinks will have worked themselves out).

IDK...the ASUS one was pretty much perfect in terms of features (8x SATA ports, 4x USB3, 2x PCIe x16 slots) but short on functionality/stability.

Pretty much thinking if the board meets most of these criteria I'd consider it:
* Stable
* 2x USB 3.0 or a spare PCIe-x4 slot I can use with a USB3.0 card I have.
* 1-2x eSATA
* 1-2x PCIe-x16
* 6-8 SATA (II or III), 8 being preferred with a stable SATA controller.
* A few x1, x4, and/or x8 ports for expansion.
* The fewer PCI slots, the better....I can't think of a use for them that any PCIe card couldn't do better.

Gigabyte's line up seems highly differentiated...is there a good chart that outlines the differences between all of the boards? I can't for the life of me figure out (yet) what the difference is between the UD3 and the UD3R for instance.

Thanks for reading the wall of text, and I look forward to your thoughts!
 
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MSI p67a-gd65 fits all those specs, and it is very cheap for what you get. As for actual usage, I can only say both the original and replacement for me worked smoothly. One thing I'll note about my B3 RMA, even though the MSI B3s seem to have come in later, is that the board actually has the new markings etched on and not just a sticker indicating it is a B3 (which I heard some other brands did have) Probably doesn't mean anything, but seems more likely to be an actual completely new board this way without anything reused.

night_2004 said:
Gigabyte's line up seems highly differentiated...is there a good chart that outlines the differences between all of the boards? I can't for the life of me figure out (yet) what the difference is between the UD3 and the UD3R for instance.
Click to expand...

The power design is different.

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3765#ov
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3764#ov

You can also tell by looking around the CPU socket area.
 
With Gigabyte, it's usually little things that differentiate them, and sometimes it's not in the specs you normally see on Newegg. It can be things ranging from the number of USB 3.0 ports to the number of SATA ports to the number of power phases the board has for the CPU. It can also differ in the arrangement of PCI-E lanes, and PCI/PCI-E slots. Also, there is no UD3R for the P67 boards (that I can see on Newegg). Did you mean UD3P? The UD3P differs from the stock UD3 by more power phases and different color scheme.

With Gigabyte, UD3 tends to be their budget/mainstream board for that particular chipset, UD5 being mainstream/mid-high end, and UD7/UD9 being extreme high-end. And then there's specialty boards. Pick them based on the particular features you need.

With MSI, GD tends to denote their enthusiast series boards, whereas G denotes mainstream/budget. The higher the number, the more features/more expensive it becomes.

PCI slots are useful for people that have leftover PCI cards from previous builds. That's why boards continue to have them today. Why buy a new PCI-E card when your existing PCI card works just as well?

6 SATA ports are provided by the ICH10R chipset on the motherboard (4 SATA3, 2 SATA6). Any additional eSATA and SATA ports are added by the discretion of the manufacturer through additional add-on chips. So every P67 board will have at minimum 6 SATA ports, controlled by the ICH10R chipset.

Out of all the boards I've worked with, Gigabyte is probably my favorite. Much more stable voltages than an Asus or MSI board. And MSI boards just hated my Phenom II 1090T (constant blow-ups at the first sign of overclocking), but this doesn't really extend to their Intel boards. MSI has had really good RMA service in my experience, turnaround time was really fast (less than 2-3 days).
 
limitedaccess said:
The power design is different.

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3765#ov
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3764#ov

You can also tell by looking around the CPU socket area.
Click to expand...

I'll have to take a closer look at the PCBs than. I should have noticed that, thank you for pointing it out.

Tsumi said:
With Gigabyte, it's usually little things that differentiate them, and sometimes it's not in the specs you normally see on Newegg. It can be things ranging from the number of USB 3.0 ports to the number of SATA ports to the number of power phases the board has for the CPU. It can also differ in the arrangement of PCI-E lanes, and PCI/PCI-E slots. Also, there is no UD3R for the P67 boards (that I can see on Newegg). Did you mean UD3P? The UD3P differs from the stock UD3 by more power phases and different color scheme.
Click to expand...

There's a UD3R listed on Gigabyte's webpage.

Tsumi said:
With Gigabyte, UD3 tends to be their budget/mainstream board for that particular chipset, UD5 being mainstream/mid-high end, and UD7/UD9 being extreme high-end. And then there's specialty boards. Pick them based on the particular features you need.
Click to expand...

So the UD4 is kind of in the middle. I noticed the UD5 too, but I haven't had time to really think about this too much. I just found out today I could return the P8P67 and I don't have a lot of time to decide if I'm going to get this before my cross country move. Might want until shortly after the move, but then I get the privilege of paying state tax on a NewEgg purchase (after them refunding my P8P67 you bet I'm going to order the next board through them even if I have to pay sales tax).

Tsumi said:
With MSI, GD tends to denote their enthusiast series boards, whereas G denotes mainstream/budget. The higher the number, the more features/more expensive it becomes.
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The only thing that bothers me about MSI is the fact that I worked for one company a while back where several employees had very negative experiences with the boards. I know that's barely relevant now (I hope).

Tsumi said:
PCI slots are useful for people that have leftover PCI cards from previous builds. That's why boards continue to have them today. Why buy a new PCI-E card when your existing PCI card works just as well?
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When you don't have any PCI cards to speak of, why should I care :p?

Tsumi said:
6 SATA ports are provided by the ICH10R chipset on the motherboard (4 SATA3, 2 SATA6). Any additional eSATA and SATA ports are added by the discretion of the manufacturer through additional add-on chips. So every P67 board will have at minimum 6 SATA ports, controlled by the ICH10R chipset.
Click to expand...

Unless they pipe one of the Intel ports out to an eSATA port....and before you ask...I don't want that as eventually I might want to run 6 drives using the ICH10R in a couple of RAID1 arrays.

Tsumi said:
Out of all the boards I've worked with, Gigabyte is probably my favorite. Much more stable voltages than an Asus or MSI board. And MSI boards just hated my Phenom II 1090T (constant blow-ups at the first sign of overclocking), but this doesn't really extend to their Intel boards. MSI has had really good RMA service in my experience, turnaround time was really fast (less than 2-3 days).
Click to expand...

That's good to hear that MSI is helpful with RMAs. That being said comments like this make me drift more towards Gigabyte.
 
When PCI cards tend to be cheaper than their PCI-E counterparts, I do care :p

As far as I know, the only motherboard maker that redirects a chipset SATA port to be an eSATA port is Biostar. I haven't seen this done on any (recent) MSI, Gigabyte, or Asus mid-high end boards.

MSI is now considered one of the top competitors in high-end parts, from graphics cards to motherboards. Since I haven't dealt with Asus or Gigabyte RMA's or customer service, I can't compare them. Also, the motherboards blowing up problem plagued only the MSI mid-range AMD boards that couldn't handle the Phenom II x6. Haven't really heard of any blow-ups recently, just the first few months in which the Phenom II x6 was released.
 
B3 revisions are fine, there isn't any SATA degradation across the chipset. The MSI P67 seems like a good choice if you don't want Asus.
 
Tsumi said:
When PCI cards tend to be cheaper than their PCI-E counterparts, I do care :p
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I know what you mean. I just tend to have a need for devices that you can find on PCIe rather than PCI.

Tsumi said:
As far as I know, the only motherboard maker that redirects a chipset SATA port to be an eSATA port is Biostar. I haven't seen this done on any (recent) MSI, Gigabyte, or Asus mid-high end boards.
Click to expand...

I only say that because an old computer of mine from Dell did that. I know, that isn't high-end.

Tsumi said:
MSI is now considered one of the top competitors in high-end parts, from graphics cards to motherboards. Since I haven't dealt with Asus or Gigabyte RMA's or customer service, I can't compare them. Also, the motherboards blowing up problem plagued only the MSI mid-range AMD boards that couldn't handle the Phenom II x6. Haven't really heard of any blow-ups recently, just the first few months in which the Phenom II x6 was released.
Click to expand...

The x6 problem I thought was an issue about not having enough power plains. That being said, if it is history it is history. How they handled the issue matters more than there was an issue.

TehRoot said:
B3 revisions are fine, there isn't any SATA degradation across the chipset. The MSI P67 seems like a good choice if you don't want Asus.
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This isn't a B2/B3 issue. This is just a crappy ASUS board issue.
 
The Gigabyte stuff is solid and they have a very wide range of boards. I have had both the UD4 and teh UD7. If you look through the motherboard section you can find my reviews. However z68 launches wednesday. I would suggest the UD4 or UD3P. Prices will be marginally higher than P67 boards, but there are some extra features like SSD caching that look pretty cool. Hopefully i will get one of these in the next few weeks.
 
I went with an ASUS for a p55 build, basically if you go with gigabyte you lose UEFI which has a pretty fast boot. So I guess I would lean toward MSI. But I had some problems with the MSI board I had with memory.

Although I thought Z68 boards were suppose to be out on the 8th, don't see any yet maybe you should wait for those.
 
I believe all P67 boards have UEFI bios, including Gigabyte ones.
 
Right now I'm learning towards the UD5, the UD4, and the UD7 (all Z68) in that order. Probably going to order first thing in the morning with overnight shipping (need it so that I can still have a PC and turn in the P8P67 for a refund).

Thoughts (layout, features, overclockability, etc) before I buy? I'm really trying to differentiate the UD4 and the UD5 by some feature that matters to me.
 
Just use the handy Gigabyte motherboard comparison chart, it'll list most of the differences, but you have to go through each line.

Additionally, the UD5 has 20 power phases vs the 12 of the UD4, which supposedly provides better overclocking capabilities.
 
There would probably be a part of you that would always be a bit disappointed if you went the UD7 route, so you made the right choice.

I cannot confirm/deny if I feel this way myself.

...:D
 
If you don't want to go with ASUS, Gigabyte or MSI are your best choices. I'd personally go with Gigabyte between the two for one reason alone: MSI's "Click BIOS" blows. Both of them come with software for overclocking in Windows that is far behind that of ASUS' TurboV EVO software. Hardware wise, all three make damned good boards and baring one or two issues, they are all usually really good pieces of hardware.
 
Dude you cant sleep a overclocked sandy on any P67 with good faith it will start back up. It will not wake up to the right frequencies. I had constant BSODs and as soon as I disabled C3 and C6 not one damn more blue screen after.

Dont blame the board, dont blame, asus, blame Intel.
 
Had multiple issues with P67 boards, now running a P8Z68-V Pro, and, so far, everything has gone smoothly. If you're still within your exchange period, it might be worth the hassle of returning it and going with Z68, even if you have no interest in using it's supposed advantages.
 
src1425 said:
Had multiple issues with P67 boards, now running a P8Z68-V Pro, and, so far, everything has gone smoothly. If you're still within your exchange period, it might be worth the hassle of returning it and going with Z68, even if you have no interest in using it's supposed advantages.
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Which power supply did you end up going for in your build?
 
Pyroja said:
QuickSync, on-board video, SSD caching, some other things.

Z68 is basically H67 + P67 and then some.
Click to expand...

Onboard video isn't found on all Z68 boards. The chipset is capable of having it sure, but not every board does as manufacturers aren't required to support the feature. Gigabyte's Z68X-UD7 is a great example of this. SSD caching and IPT (think built in RSA tokens) are the only features any given board using the Z68 chipset are guaranteed to have.
 
Mysticode said:
Which power supply did you end up going for in your build?
Click to expand...

Seasonic x750 Gold - I heard some rumors that some folks with them had trouble with P67, but I didn't have a spare PSU to test that theory. I don't know where the incompatibility was between my hardware and P67, but everything I have works fine with Z68 (see specs below).
 
src1425 said:
Seasonic x750 Gold - I heard some rumors that some folks with them had trouble with P67, but I didn't have a spare PSU to test that theory. I don't know where the incompatibility was between my hardware and P67, but everything I have works fine with Z68 (see specs below).
Click to expand...

I installed one of those PSUs in a friend's P8P67 Pro build without issues.
 
Dan_D said:
Onboard video isn't found on all Z68 boards. The chipset is capable of having it sure, but not every board does as manufacturers aren't required to support the feature. Gigabyte's Z68X-UD7 is a great example of this. SSD caching and IPT (think built in RSA tokens) are the only features any given board using the Z68 chipset are guaranteed to have.
Click to expand...

Ah, truth. Though, IMHO, why make a Z68 board and not leave the option for the on-board video? Just like with the P/H chipsets, that seems to be to be throwing out features you've already paid for.

As in, I can see not including an IGP on a board, especially if it's an enthusiast board. If it's not there, you're not paying for it. But the GPU is already there, on the CPU. You've paid for it. Seems a waste to not be able to take advantage of it.
 
I have the MSI P67A-GD65 and honestly, it's one of the best boards i've worked with. Everything just worked...Asus boards have always been finicky for me. I tended towards DFI (finicky but powerful) and Gigabyte. Gave MSI a try because the board got good reviews...and honestly not disappointed.
 
Pyroja said:
Ah, truth. Though, IMHO, why make a Z68 board and not leave the option for the on-board video? Just like with the P/H chipsets, that seems to be to be throwing out features you've already paid for.

As in, I can see not including an IGP on a board, especially if it's an enthusiast board. If it's not there, you're not paying for it. But the GPU is already there, on the CPU. You've paid for it. Seems a waste to not be able to take advantage of it.
Click to expand...

A lot of enthusiasts wouldn't care about it prefering to use the add in card for all their video. If you don't do a lot of transcoding, or simply don't care about Quick Sync, then the iGPU doesn't really offer anything of value despite being integrated into the CPU. The space the video ports take up on the back plane can be used for other things which are more important to the enthusiast.
 
Dan_D said:
Onboard video isn't found on all Z68 boards. The chipset is capable of having it sure, but not every board does as manufacturers aren't required to support the feature. Gigabyte's Z68X-UD7 is a great example of this. SSD caching and IPT (think built in RSA tokens) are the only features any given board using the Z68 chipset are guaranteed to have.
Click to expand...
Are you sure? For example, in this Z68X-UD4-B3 unboxing video they state that the motherboard can still do hardware video encoding. Just curious if the video is wrong.
 
xDezor said:
Are you sure? For example, in this Z68X-UD4-B3 unboxing video they state that the motherboard can still do hardware video encoding. Just curious if the video is wrong.
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I don't know. Like I said before it's my understanding that the iGPU feature needs the ports on it in order to be enabled. Similarly to how Intel's networking features are built into their chipsets, but they need the external PHY and hardware to actually use it.

I could be way off on this and frankly I won't be able to test it until I have a Z68 board without video connections on hand.
 
Dan_D said:
If you don't want to go with ASUS, Gigabyte or MSI are your best choices. I'd personally go with Gigabyte between the two for one reason alone: MSI's "Click BIOS" blows. Both of them come with software for overclocking in Windows that is far behind that of ASUS' TurboV EVO software. Hardware wise, all three make damned good boards and baring one or two issues, they are all usually really good pieces of hardware.
Click to expand...

I still have nightmares about Asus PC Probe. :p
 
xDezor said:
Are you sure? For example, in this Z68X-UD4-B3 unboxing video they state that the motherboard can still do hardware video encoding. Just curious if the video is wrong.
Click to expand...


the problem is that it looks like lots of manufacturers just slapped z68 chipsets on p67 boards so they have no video outputs. I'm not saying this is necessarily problematic if you'll always have discrete vga cards running but it does seem very stupid and sketchy to be paying for a product that is supposed to allow onboard video or discrete video but you can't run onboard video because there aren't any display outputs.

just go on the egg and look at all the atx z68 boards and see how most of them say "VGA card required" on the title line
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
I still have nightmares about Asus PC Probe. :p
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I still have a nightmare about OC on my Gigabyte P67A-UD4-B3 with 2600K (for 4.3GHz i have to push 1.38V into it, for 4.5-4.6GHz i have to push 1.39V VCore + 1.2V Vtt + 0.952V System agent - and it gives me BSOD even with these settings!).
 
I would go with a nice Gigabyte or MSI board. Its made me happy to see MSI get back into the groove of things. Back in the day I first went MSI only and then switched to Abit--Epox--DFI. MSI has some good boards out now which are worth a shot. I like my x58 Gigabyte board for my i7 and have no real complaints there. Take a pick at which companies boards have what you want and go for it, I think you will be more pleased with either one you pick then the current mess you've had with the Asus boards
 
loved my asus board p5n-d and also my 2x p8p67 pro's you might just got a bad board. Stuff breaks in the shipping process 80% of time even small things you dont notice that also doesnt effect the board to notice either... just gotta ask for better packaging.
 
I had my heart set on a Gigabyte Z68 but ended up buying (2) Asus P8Z68-V PRO's because it offered far more features for less money, including Intel LAN, more SATA 6 ports, and the iGPU. The integrated graphics makes building and testing a new computer much easier, when the bigass video card is out of the way. So far the boards have been flawless. Tested all features except bluetooth and firewire, tested 16 GB's of GSkill 8x8x8x24x2 (manually set to XMP settings) for 24 hours with memtest 86+, and ran prime 95 stable for 24 hours using a 2500k at 4.5 GHz, 1.30 manual vcore and "high" LLC. EPU disabled, TPU disabled, and sleep/hibernate disabled.

I also have (8) fans running off (4) temperature controlled fan headers on the board. The profiles can be set using Asus software. Asus confirmed in writing, every header on the board can handle 1 amp / 12 watts. I just used splitters.

So far I am impressed.
 
I like Gigabyte for intel and Asus for AMD CPU's. MSI is definately a good brand also. The only boardmaker I don't like is Asrock and ECS although some people love them I dont like their bios.
 
NSXSpecial said:
That was supposedly one of the best p45 boards, up there with the GB UD3P in terms of OC
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Thats what I thought too. It was great for suicide runs on a dual core. I didn't care about that. As far as 24/7 stable clocks at the lowest possible voltage it was awful. You couldn't adjust the gtl to anything other than 63 or 67%, the steps in core voltage, vtt, vNB, etc was really high (I think that it was 0.025), the northbridge and southbridge voltages were linked, it was really picky with memory, and didn't seem to like having all four dimms occupied. This was on a board that cost almost as much as a P5Q Deluxe (which blew the tpower out of the water).

Due to that I will never buy another Biostar board.
 
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