Motherboard Upgrade - First Intel Purchase...Ever

[DMFD-Minister]

Well, I've always bought AMD because they cost less and suited my needs up until now. Bulldozer was a massive disappointment, so I've switch sides and will now be seen saying "Long live Intel" all while cheering for the underdog so we'll see some prices start dropping (like that'll ever happen). But I digress.

In preparation for Battlefield 3, I'm beginning my new system build. I've purchased a 2500K instead of the 2600K because it performs similarly in gaming. I've purchased two 6970s. I'm going to purchase G.Skill 1600Mhz 1.25v memory because it uses less power. Now I just need to settle on a Motherboard. I think I've settled on Z68 because it'll support Ivy Bridge.

Newegg reviews are very important to me. I want to have the best chance possible at a good experience the first time around without DOAs, and through 5 system builds, I have never had a DOA product (knock on wood). I search for products by narrowing down the specs to fit my needs and then sort by product rating. What I've learned is that no motherboard manufacturer makes all good boards. They have some good ones and not so good ones. So anyone saying "only ASUS, only MSI, only Gigabit" I think is a little nearsighted. I've owned them all.

That being said, I'm pretty close to sold on this board:

ASRock Z68 Professional Gen 3

Reasons I like it:

• It seems to have higher quality capacitors than other products
• Reviews seem to state that it overclocks like a champ. One reviewer took a processor 200mhz higher on this board than on a comparable Gigabyte board (it was the same processor - ie same serial number)
• Z-68 and ready for Ivy Bridge
• Two PCI-E 3.0 Slots activated by IB
• Significant suite of software including software that competes with BigFoot's Killer NIC
• It has 83% 5-egg reviews on Newegg - this is nearly unheard of for a Motherboard - everyone is always pissed about 1 thing or another with their board, so I think 83% is very good
• It's pretty sexy lookin
• I'll probably get 3 years out of it. Ivy Bridge and PCI-E 3.0 make me feel relatively comfortable that it'll be partially future-proof.

Things I won't use:

• The 3rd PCI-E x16 slot. Who's going to run tri-fire with the 3rd card running at x4? Plus Trifire usually requires WC (which is actually going to be a future upgrade)
• NIC Teaming - Got no use for two NIC ports
• The Mouse Port - My Razer Mamba already does all the things their mouse port does
• ALL 10 SATA ports
• Old PCI Slots - Seriously, who uses these anymore?
• FDD and ATA connectors - another "seriously?" moment
• Probably won't use SSD caching immediately, but who knows, maybe in the future I'll pick up a small drive for cheap and dedicate it to caching if it makes sense as the product matures
• Likely won't use onboard audio. Have a X-Fi Fatal1ty Pro PCI-E 1x.

Things I don't like:

• It costs $255 + $9.48 shipping - Seriously...no free shipping Newegg?
• I know that if I order it tomorrow, a $25 off promo code will come out and Newegg will offer free shipping. It always happens to me that way.

So I guess I'm doing a few things here:

1. Venting my nerves about dropping $265 on this board
2. Looking for someone to tell me I'm crazy and point out an alternative
   OR
3. Looking for someone to agree with me that the board is hot and I should just suck it up and buy it

Thanks for reading my ranting! Sorry for my brain exploding all over the place.

 

[DMFD-Minister]

Oh, and not that it matters for this thread, but I game in 5760x1080 whenever possible. This is currently impossible with BF3 owning my rig, hence the upgrade

 

[Dangman]

I cannot recommend that AsRock mobo for a few reasons:
1) It only has a 1-2 year warranty. Kinda stupid IMO to be paying $265 mobo with only a 1-2 year warranty when much cheaper mobos from Asus, MSI, or Gigabyte have three year warranties. Hell some of MSI mobos are now coming with 5 year warranties after registration.
2) $265 for that mobo seems steep IMO since its features don't justify the higher cost IMO.

IM0, I don't see that AsRock mobo being worth $85 to $95 over these similar feature motherboards:
$170 - Asus P8Z68-V Intel Z68 ATX Motherboard
$180 - MSI Z68A-GD65 (G3) Intel Z68 ATX Motherboard

 

[DMFD-Minister]

Thanks Danny for the input. The ASUS board has pretty poor reviews, but the MSI board does have most or all of the features that I'd want in a board. I have a MSI board right now and it has not performed well in overclocking. I can't even take a AMD 955BE up to 3.3Ghz and have it be stable. Could be user error, but I've tried everything and read all the guides. Even the auto-overclocking utilities that are supposed to work can't figure it out. The MSI Z68 board does have decent reviews, I'll keep it in mind and chew on that for a while. My current experiences just make me a bit hesitant. It could be that I got a processor that can't overclock for

Ultimately, I'm not very concerned about a 2-year warranty. If your board hasn't died in 2 years, it's probably going to be good for quite a while longer...and in two years technology will probably have come such a long way that I'll have an itch to upgrade again.

I agree with you though that the warranty is pretty cheap from ASRock, and that it does seem overpriced for the features. There is certainly some worthless software packaged with it that is driving up the cost.

 

[Dangman]

Thanks Danny for the input. The ASUS board has pretty poor reviews, but the MSI board does have most or all of the features that I'd want in a board. I have a MSI board right now and it has not performed well in overclocking. I can't even take a AMD 955BE up to 3.3Ghz and have it be stable. Could be user error, but I've tried everything and read all the guides. Even the auto-overclocking utilities that are supposed to work can't figure it out. The MSI Z68 board does have decent reviews, I'll keep it in mind and chew on that for a while. My current experiences just make me a bit hesitant. It could be that I got a processor that can't overclock for

Well part of the reason why I recommended the MSI was because of this HardOCP review of it:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/09/22/msi_z68agd65_g3_lga_1155_motherboard_review/

Seems like a fairly solid mobo to me. Although it is puzzling to hear that the Asus board has "poor reviews" considering how popular its more featured brother is:
$210 - Asus P8Z68-V Pro Intel Z68 ATX Motherboard

108 people gave the above mobo 5 stars with another 43 giving it 4 stars. Looking through the four star reviews, it seems like a lot of them could be PEBKAC issues to me.