New motheboard recommendations.

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SEMI_287

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Well I have some extra dollars and I'm building a new gaming pc. Nothing out of this world and it's goingoing to be "cheap". I ordered a MSI GTX 970, I wanted the MSI R9 390 Gaming Edition but it sold out right as I went to buy it. Anyways. I settled on an i5 4690k. It's in my budget and it seems to be a fantastic cpu. I can not settle on a mobo. I'm a noob when it comes to intel, I've been AMD forever. Coming from an ancient 1090T X6 cpu I think I will be happy. Here's the two mobos I have in mind. Thanks for the help guys. Please feel free to recommend another one. I'd like to stay under $90.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=13-130-779
I found.]MSI Z97[/url]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=13-130-760
I found.]MSI B85[/url]
 
Z97, the B85's sometimes need a Bios update to support the Haswell Refresh. Odds are this long into the cycle it would natively support it but you will need a z97 to overclock the CPU.

I don't know if you just prefer the Twin frozer design or its goes with the color of your build but i found a Gigabyte G1 OC (which is just a factory overclocked Windforce R9 390) on Jet.com for $309.99 and $50 off with the promo code "20now" (only good for first purchase) bringing the price down to $259.99 which is a excellent deal and even beat Newegg's deals during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

K3lev5b.png
 
I thought about that card. But I heard the Gigabyte version caused the computer to never shut off and the card eventually tanked. I wanted the R9 because it has seemed to out perform the 970 in most games and that memory bus and capacity. Whew! I've never heard of that sire before. Seems pretty good!
 
Originally Posted By: SEMI_287
I thought about that card. But I heard the Gigabyte version caused the computer to never shut off and the card eventually tanked. I wanted the R9 because it has seemed to out perform the 970 in most games and that memory bus and capacity. Whew! I've never heard of that sire before. Seems pretty good!


Yeah i was looking into it when i read something about that. Personally I'm with you with the MSI R9 390 they also have a XFX R9 390 and a Asus Strix R9 390 that cost about $30 more after promo and everything.

Supposedly AMD cards are really well optimized for Direct x12 and there has been some benchmarks around showing some pretty large performance gains. Nothing against Nvidea they make great cards but i think the 3.5gb's is the 970's Achilles heel. The R9 390 scores very well compared to the 970 on some games like Dying Light that use more then 3.5-4gb's of vram.
 
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Originally Posted By: 3800Series
Originally Posted By: SEMI_287
I thought about that card. But I heard the Gigabyte version caused the computer to never shut off and the card eventually tanked. I wanted the R9 because it has seemed to out perform the 970 in most games and that memory bus and capacity. Whew! I've never heard of that sire before. Seems pretty good!


Yeah i was looking into it when i read something about that. Personally I'm with you with the MSI R9 390 they also have a XFX R9 390 and a Asus Strix R9 390 that cost about $30 more after promo and everything.

Supposedly AMD cards are really well optimized for Direct x12 and there has been some benchmarks around showing some pretty large performance gains. Nothing against Nvidea they make great cards but i think the 3.5gb's is the 970's Achilles heel. The R9 390 scores very well compared to the 970 on some games like Dying Light that use more then 3.5-4gb's of vram.


I heard they are too. But I don't know if we'll see DirectX 12 games soon. I see they have a MSI R9 390 for $329 but I don't see the difference between that and the one that sold out. I'm also not sure about the ASUS. I heard the voltage was locked. But I know they make good cards. I'm using an ASUS Radeon 5770. That thing has played everything on ultra until Fallout 4.

I hope that the GTX 970 is a good card. Everything we've seen has pointed it's a beast but the 3.5 vram concerns me. I mean I'm using some old dell 21 inch lcd. 1080p is my max, dobut I'll be doing 1440 gaming soon. But what really [censored] me off is its sold out and out of stock. Schmucks...
 
The GTX 970 is superior to the R9 390 in my eyes, you made the right choice! You get about the same performance for about half the power!

Nvidia is stomping them in gpu power per watt right now, i have an EVGA GTX 970 myself, easily the best card for 1080p Ultra gaming, don't worry about the 3.5 gb VRAM you won't easily be able to max it unless you run GTA 5 on every max detail.

I am not a big fan of MSI motherboards, although i am an extreme overclocker, they exclusively use [censored] Nikon mosfets, which have burnt many motherboards for users who push them at all, some running stock speeds. I am a bigger fan of Asus/Gigabyte high end boards, i am running a Z170 Hero myself, but that's a pricey motherboard for skylake. The Asus Sabertooth is nice but sounds like you want cheap?


For some insight into the issue check out this database....

http://www.overclock.net/a/database-of-motherboard-vrm-failure-incidents
 
Originally Posted By: 901Memphis
The GTX 970 is superior to the R9 390 in my eyes, you made the right choice! You get about the same performance for about half the power!

Nvidia is stomping them in gpu power per watt right now, i have an EVGA GTX 970 myself, easily the best card for 1080p Ultra gaming, don't worry about the 3.5 gb VRAM you won't easily be able to max it unless you run GTA 5 on every max detail.

I am not a big fan of MSI motherboards, although i am an extreme overclocker, they exclusively use [censored] Nikon mosfets, which have burnt many motherboards for users who push them at all, some running stock speeds. I am a bigger fan of Asus/Gigabyte high end boards, i am running a Z170 Hero myself, but that's a pricey motherboard for skylake. The Asus Sabertooth is nice but sounds like you want cheap?


For some insight into the issue check out this database....

http://www.overclock.net/a/database-of-motherboard-vrm-failure-incidents


I would have to partly disagree. The 970's are great cards and while its better then the R9 390 in some cases its not a huge difference your talking about 5fps in most cases. As for power I would also disagree there as well. While the r9 390 does use more power in most cases its 10%-20% in stress test benchmarks.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-970-maxwell,3941-12.html

It's not extremely common for the GTX 970 to hit the 4gb's of vram before maxing out a game but it does happen. Many people report noticeable performance drops after passing 3.5gbs. It will only become more common in the years to come. If the DX12 benchmarks are true then it will put the r9 390 a decent bit ahead of the 970 along with the fact it has 4 extra gigabytes of ram for the future. I think if anything the r9 390 will mature into a better card. When released the GTX 970 was walking all over the 390 not so much now. It does very well against the 970 and 980 in some cases. While some cards keeping the temperature down to (or below) the level of the 970.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sapphire-nitro-r9-390-8g-d5,4245.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9cKZiJw6Pk
 
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Originally Posted By: SEMI_287
Here is another board. Any input?


I would stay with the MSI motherboard. Unless you find a Asus z97 around the same price. Asus makes excellent boards and argueably is the best manufacturer for quality.

The Gigabyte board seems to be poorly reviewed I don't have a ton of experience with them myself altho I do have a LGA 1151 Gigabyte board on my shelf that I got for dirt cheap on Black Firday. Gigabyte use to be very highly regarded but over the past few years their quality control has been going down. Doesn't mean you can't get a great board with them just means they seem to be suffering from more frequent problems in the last few years.
 
Originally Posted By: SEMI_287
Here is another board. Any input?


I am not a big fan of the less expensive gigabyte boards but their top boards are extremely nice. The last 2 times I've built my friends pc once was socket 775 now he's still using a 2500k, I used $200 Gigabyte boards they are awesome.

I don't understand the popularity of the MSI boards it's all marketing if you ask me. I recently built an AMD FX8320 rig with MSI gaming 970 amd board and the mosfets were hitting 80C and throttling my cpu like crazy, they flat out use inferior components where it counts if you ask me. The board was beautiful and worked okay without much overclocking but at those temperatures I can't imagine it would live as long as other boards.

All that being said I like this Asus board in the $140 price range.



Here is a great deal on the ASUS Z97-A LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard , http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=13-132-118
I found.




Honestly I looked pretty hard and I don't see any sub $100 boards I would use personally...if that means anything.

Make sure to look for features you want. A big thing now that's going to get even better soon is M.2 ssd slots, and not all the boards have those, they are amazingly fast and eliminate cables for sata and psu power by hooking directly into a board.

Also make sure if you need usb 3.0 the boards have it, not all boards do or have less than the other.
 
Originally Posted By: 901Memphis
Originally Posted By: SEMI_287
Here is another board. Any input?


I am not a big fan of the less expensive gigabyte boards but their top boards are extremely nice. The last 2 times I've built my friends pc once was socket 775 now he's still using a 2500k, I used $200 Gigabyte boards they are awesome.

I don't understand the popularity of the MSI boards it's all marketing if you ask me. I recently built an AMD FX8320 rig with MSI gaming 970 amd board and the mosfets were hitting 80C and throttling my cpu like crazy, they flat out use inferior components where it counts if you ask me. The board was beautiful and worked okay without much overclocking but at those temperatures I can't imagine it would live as long as other boards.

All that being said I like this Asus board in the $140 price range.



Here is a great deal on the ASUS Z97-A LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard , http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=13-132-118
I found.




Honestly I looked pretty hard and I don't see any sub $100 boards I would use personally...if that means anything.

Make sure to look for features you want. A big thing now that's going to get even better soon is M.2 ssd slots, and not all the boards have those, they are amazingly fast and eliminate cables for sata and psu power by hooking directly into a board.

Also make sure if you need usb 3.0 the boards have it, not all boards do or have less than the other.


I appreciate the help man. What's the difference between the z97-A and -E boards besides $10?? My buddy is trying to get me to get the MSI Krait. Man, this is slightly a PITA!
spankme2.gif
 
If you're going to get a "K" processor, then there's no point in getting a B85 mobo. The "K" means it's overclockable, but only the Z mobo's can overclock. I have an MSI Z87 (predecessor to the Z97) and it's a fine mobo. It was only $80 2 years ago and has been rock solid. I wouldn't hesitate to buy another MSI.

MSI's are a little cheaper than ASUS but I have found them to be comparable. You can use the savings to buy a faster CPU or GPU
 
Not entirely true.

My Gigabyte GA-H81M-DS2V will overclock my core i5 4690K. I can't bump it too high because it gets too hot because there is not enough power phases. Some of the H81 boards can overclock because the bios was out before Intel put their foot down. I think some of the H97 boards can overclock too. Not sure about B85, but it's possible there are some boards that can overclock.
 
Originally Posted By: BigD1
Not entirely true.

My Gigabyte GA-H81M-DS2V will overclock my core i5 4690K. I can't bump it too high because it gets too hot because there is not enough power phases. Some of the H81 boards can overclock because the bios was out before Intel put their foot down. I think some of the H97 boards can overclock too. Not sure about B85, but it's possible there are some boards that can overclock.


Yes you covered it well, some of the boards will let you overclock but that doesn't mean they can handle the TDP. I'd rather have a decent board if I was going to get a K chip.

Interesting note too, on the new skylake chips you can overclock non K chips on Z170 boards. I hear my Asus MAXIMUS VIII HERO Is capable of some serious blck speeds so I can't wait til they come out with some super cheap chips for me to pound on. Hopefully something like the Pentium G3258 or around $60.

I can get my 6600k up to 4.9 ghz bench stable but 5 ghz is not doable with comfortable voltage.
 
Thanks for the help guys. I went with the ASRock Fatal1ty mobo. Fits with my video card. Santa came early for me!!!

20151214_192636.jpg
 
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