Suggestions for a good mobo

Speedz

Speedz

Speedz

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Joined
25 Oct 2011
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55
Hi, looking at getting a new pc soon hopefully.
Can you guys suggest me a good motherboard which would be easy to OC with and have good performance.
I have been looking at the ASrock z68 extreme4 gen3, but i have been hearing some really bad experiences with overclocking (bad system stability and not very good overclocks). I have also heard good things about it. Whats your guys opinions on it?

It would have to be sli compatible, have good all round performance, and not cost anything over £150 at the very maximum.

Specs of new pc so far:
i7 2600k
MSI GeForce GTX 580 OC Twin FrozR II 1536MB
Antec 1200 case
seagate barracuda 1tb HDD
Corsair 850 w PSU
OCZ Agility 3 60gb SSD
Kingston HyperX Genesis Grey 8GB 1600mhz
Akasa AK-CCX-4002HP Venom CPU Cooler
Samsung SH-S222AB/RSMS 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter

Thanks for your help :)
 
Last edited:
Surveyor said:
There have been some people who've ended up with a board with damaged CPU socket pins.

They're either unlucky, careless or there are some quality issues.
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I can only comment on MY experiences with it, and it's been faultless.

If you look through all the threads on this forum you'll find problems with just about every make and model of motherboard. Including Asrock, Asus, Gigabyte and MSI.
 
Davefran said:
I can only comment on MY experiences with it, and it's been faultless.

If you look through all the threads on this forum you'll find problems with just about every make and model of motherboard. Including Asrock, Asus, Gigabyte and MSI.
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And I'm commenting on the experiences other members of the forum have posted about.

Recently the only posts I've seen where an RMA has been refused due to damaged pins are for ASRock boards.

It may be something or nothing, but it's happened more than once.
 
Davefran said:
The last post I saw regarding bent pins was on a Gigabyte board. So like I said it could be any manufacturer.
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How long ago was that?

There was a thread a few hours ago about an ASRock board but it got deleted.

And fowler002 will tell you all about his from a few days ago, I believe it was an Extreme7.

It's a lesson for everyone to check the CPU socket pins before installing the processor.

Once you've installed the processor you've had it if damaged pins are found.

This applies to all manufacturers but ASRock seem to be the one that stands out at the moment with most problems (or just careless owners).
 
Davefran said:
The last post I saw regarding bent pins was on a Gigabyte board. So like I said it could be any manufacturer.
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At least with Gigabyte you only have to post it to Milton Keynes and not the Czech republic or wherever Asrock are based.

One reason I like MSI and Gigabyte, UK based RMA centers.

EDIT - sorry, Asrock are based in the Netherlands.
 
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stulid said:
One reason I like MSI and Gigabyte, UK based RMA centers.
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MSI have a UK RMA base but it's only for laptops I think, the motherboards have to be RMA to Netherlands also, same as graphics cards.
 
The MSI motherboards are very good but lack a few features within the UEFI BIOS that I would make use off like LLC and Offset, and switching Spread Spectrum off or on it doesn't make a difference 99.8MHz Bus Speed.

For the price you can't go wrong with the MSI boards but then again the Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3P can be had at the same price including VAT if you know where to look.
stulid said:
Swear I saw ScotiB say that, I do have a good memory (I think)
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Not 100% sure, the graphics cards definitly goto Netherlands, would be good if they did have a UK RMA base.
 
Posted 11/11/11:

ScottiB said:
in an attempt to clarify.

the ticket system is for tech support, reporting issues, trying to find answers. This is operated by our HQ engineers. it's kinda like a IT issue reporting system in a major company.

It gives our engineers direct access to issues and hopefully gives end users direct access to answers. I personally have no experience of how well this works but as they do not handle RMA's themselves this would be the wrong place to simply request an RMA.

We also have a support section on our official forums btw, this is manned by many of the same people.

our direct RMA service is operated by a team in the Netherlands, they do not offer tech support, they only provide and handle RMA's and typically only RMA's from resellers direct or customers whose reseller has refused to help them out. I have visited this RMA centre and to give you some idea, when I was there last December they were operating a 48 turnaround from receipt to dispatch

We offer a three year warranty, the terms provided to our major resellers provide special terms in exchange for their agreement to handle the full three years of that warranty. This is a new arrangement made at the time that we extended our warranty from two to three years. The terms of our RMA provide a maximum 14 day turnaround for resellers (typically half that) from the day they ship the fault card out to the day that they receive the replacement.

The simple answer why we operate the RMA system like this is that the reseller will test the board and return them in batches. We can then replace the product and get the replacement back to the end user much faster than having to receive, test and dispatch multiple RMA's from multiple different people. in general, this method provides much better serviceas it allows us to keep turnaround times to a minimum, it also allows the reseller more freedom to handle the RMA by their own methods.

I hope this helps
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Nelly said:
The MSI motherboards are very good but lack a few features within the UEFI BIOS that I would make use off like LLC and Offset, and switching Spread Spectrum off or on it doesn't make a difference 99.8MHz Bus Speed.

For the price you can't go wrong with the MSI boards but then again the Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3P can be had at the same price including VAT if you know where to look.
Not 100% sure, the graphics cards definitly goto Netherlands, would be good if they did have a UK RMA base.
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Did some digging,

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=19386716&postcount=11
MSI's RMA process allows the reseller to handle the full three year of the warranty if they choose to do so. Otherwise our NL service centre offers a maximum 14 days turnaround including transport time.
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So your right and I got something almost right,

Netherlands RMA center if the reseller is giving issues with the 3 year UK warranty which they should be able to handle.
 
Nelly said:
The MSI motherboards are very good but lack a few features within the UEFI BIOS that I would make use off like LLC and Offset, and switching Spread Spectrum off or on it doesn't make a difference 99.8MHz Bus Speed.

For the price you can't go wrong with the MSI boards but then again the Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3P can be had at the same price including VAT if you know where to look.
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Just to add their is one level of LLC on the MSI motherboards - Low Vdroop, not enough for me I want lots of levels.

Also if you have more than one USB device connected the BIOS will take about an extra 15 seconds to boot than it would, again a BIOS issue that hopefully will be fixed, it hasn't bothered me enough to mention before.
 
So instead of 10 levels of LLC for a Gigabyte (well my UD4 does), MSI have a single setting called "Vdroop"? is this Vdroop adjustable?
 
stulid said:
So instead of 10 levels of LLC for a Gigabyte (well my UD4 does), MSI have a single setting called "Vdroop"? is this Vdroop adjustable?
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That is correct and this is not adjustable. :(
 
So we can't recommend Asrock because of a couple of bent pins and rma is in holland.
Msi lacks some major overclocking features in the bios like llc and offset and rma to holland.
Gigabyte doesn't fully support all the Z68 features, but at least rma is in uk.
And Asus seem to have some major boot loop problems.

Looks like time for Abit or Dfi to make a comeback and make a killing ;)
 
Davefran said:
Looks like time for Abit or Dfi to make a comeback and make a killing ;)
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LOL!!! I wish over half my motherboards over the last 12 or so years have been Abit, the forums were great too - good set of people. :)
 
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