GA-Z77X-UD3H versus Z77 Extreme4 versus Z77A-GD65

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Roger Thornhill

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Buying today, and I'm decidng between these boards: GA-Z77X-UD3H , Z77 Extreme4, Z77A-GD65 . Read some nice reviews here on the UD3H and the GD65. Tough decision. I want to OC an i5, maybe a i7.
 
I'm guessing you are talking about the Asrock Z77 Extreme 4? If so, I build with that motherboard just about everyday: Overclocking on the board is full-featured, but not as crazy as more expensive boards. In terms of stability, I don't think I've seen an Extreme 4 fail, I have seen the lower end Pro 4 have memory issues, but the Extreme is quite solid (especially if you update the bios to the most recent, which you can do over the internet from within the UEFI setup without any drives installed).

I recommend the Asrock Z77 Extreme 4. I do not have experience with the other boards, but I do have experience with thier branding: the P55 and P67 era Gigabyte boards were failure prone, I don't know if the newer stuff is as bad. I generally avoid MSI like the plague.

Just my thoughts.
 
Yes, the Asrock. I just read the Z77A-GD65 review here on Hard Forum. They certainly liked it. Gave it their Gold Award.
 
Reviews are good for a best case scenario. What single-sample reviews miss out on is the long term reliability factor. Gigabyte boards are always reviewed high, but in my experience, they fail quite frequenty: something you wouldn't learn from a single-sample review.
 
Go gigabyte and up the ante to the z77x-up4th gaining thunderbolt ports
I have the ud3h right now and will swap to the up4 soon once the price of Thunderbolt external raid drive comes down.
 
If you want build quality, nothing beats Gigabyte in that. Many people may think that the E4 is a good motherboard and it actually may be for what features it boasts and how much it costs, on paper. But the E4 is actually a really low-end quality motherboard. It's VRM phase actually heats up quite a bit and isn't recommended for extreme overclocking So it of course leads to it not being that reliable.

Gigabyte on the other hand doesn't cheap out on its components, but it fails in software for using that hardware. They're still using the retro layout of EasyTune and other softwares, which isn't even user friendly, but rather featureless.

The GD65 just as you mentioned about the reviews, is actually overall much better than both of the above.
 
Looks like the MSI Z77A-GD65 does not have the Vcore Offset in the bios. This might affect upper range overclocking
 
All are solid boards, my vote goes Gigabyte. I've never had a problem with their boards.
 
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