Alternative to MSI Z68A-GD55-G3?

Kona*

Kona*

Kona*

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Hi guys,

Last week I bought an MSI Z68A-GD55-G3 motherboard and it's turned out to be a real lemon. Overclockers have agreed to RMA it for a refund and I'm looking to buy an alternative before I ship the GD55 back. Can you guys suggest an alternative? I'd prefer it to be Gen3 as it gives me a bit of future proofing but by the looks of it the only other manufacturer who has a Gen3 motherboard out is ASRock, and I've never been a great fan of them.

So, for around £150, what can you guys suggest? Ideally I'd like to place the order before 3pm today :)

Thanks!
 
stulid said:
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8Z68V_PROGEN3/
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8Z68VGEN3/

But I dont think you can find one anywhere in the UK yet.:(
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:( I've always been a fan of ASUS motherboards, shame they are not available in the UK yet.

The Hitman said:
I was not a fan of Asrock.But I went and bought The Extreme 4 Gen 3 board.Its the best board I have ever bought. Its a cracking board.
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It does look like it's either another MSI or an ASRock that I am going to have to get, the ASRock has quite a few problems after reading through the huge thread on it - my RMA number is valid for 28 days so I might wait a week to see what develops.

Any other suggestions?

Cheers :)
 
Dont get a Gen3 board (where are the cards anyway?)


http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-361-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18312497

If you only use the top slot then its Gen3 at 8X bandwidth when used with a ivybridge CPU.


Or you could get a board that doesnt have any PCI-E switches at all and sends all 16X lanes to the top slot direct from the CPu socket meaning when a ivybridge CPU is fitted you get PCI-E3.0@16X at the top slot,
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-364-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990

And just stick with single card graphic solutions.
 
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So its not worth getting gen 3 then i have also been thinking of getting etheir this MSI Z68A-GD55-G3 Intel Z68 or this MSI Z68A-G45-G3 Intel Z68 what is the diff between the 2 cuz the first one is a tenner more?
 
Gameruk said:
So its not worth getting gen 3 then i have also been thinking of getting etheir this MSI Z68A-GD55-G3 Intel Z68 or this MSI Z68A-G45-G3 Intel Z68 what is the diff between the 2 cuz the first one is a tenner more?
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The GD55 has the better quality parts as its part of the militaryII brand.

Two more SATAIII ports, power and reset buttons, OCGenie button.
 
Well I've spent most of today and this evening deliberating what to do and I've ended up ordering the ASRock Extreme4 Gen3 - I did say I didn't like ASRock motherboards due to their reputation back in the day however I'm willing to give them a chance, I went with one of the big guns (MSI) and it ended up being a disappointment, lets hope this is better :)

Thanks for the help stulid and Hitman!
 
What exactly was the issue with the MSI Board? Asking as I've got one and it is working flawlessly :-) (Z68A-GD55-G3). My friend has just got the asrock extreme 4 gen3 board and is really liking it as well.
 
Scougar said:
What exactly was the issue with the MSI Board? Asking as I've got one and it is working flawlessly :-) (Z68A-GD55-G3). My friend has just got the asrock extreme 4 gen3 board and is really liking it as well.
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I might have had a duff board as it had a number of problems, namely:

1) Upon booting/restarting it wouldn't always display any video from a graphics card in the PCI-E ports, if you enabled Lucid Virtu you could get graphics out of the on-board GPU but Device Manager didn't report any PCI-E card installed, a number of others on the MSI forums have had this too.

2) Unable to boot at anything other than stock settings for Overclocking. I'm talking either a) enabling XMP or b) Pushing the CPU to 3.6GHz on 1.3v - it simply wouldn't boot.

4) Hard-locking inside the BIOS when saving changes.

And the deal breaker (common to all GD55 G3's):

No licensed version of Lucid Virtu. MSI haven't included the Virtu Certificate in any of their BIOS releases for the GD55 G3 yet, this means that Lucid Virtu runs in Trial/Eval mode for 30 days (with reduced functionality; no editing games list or disabling OSD) and after your 30 days is up you get a Lucid Virtu watermark in various places on your screen unless you disable it.

I'm sure MSI will release a BIOS update with this in sometime soon but I'm not putting my money behind a half-arsed product (no offence if you have one!) as I want all of the features working out of the box!

I'm looking forward to getting the Extreme4, I toyed with the idea of getting the Extreme7 but £70 extra is a little too much for features I'll not use in the long run!
 
Well I managed to rebuild my PC again last night with the ASRock Extreme4 Gen3 and I have to say, this motherboard is miles better than the GD55 - right from the way it is packaged (not the graphics on the box, I'm on about the padding, etc) down to how it's performing.

After running it at stock for 22 hours to check stability I've overclocked the CPU to 4.2GHz @ 1.288v and so far, so good. I'm going to push for more once I've got it stable :)
 
Superb board the Extreme 4 Gen 3, got one last week from Overclockers, but only got the time to build it today.

Can't fault it, o/c my 2500K to 4.2ghz with just one click.:)
 
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