Anyone use Intel Z68 board ?

Soldato
Joined
18 Jun 2005
Posts
3,434
Hi,
I'm building a Z68 gaming system for a mate and through his employee purchase program in work he can get himself an Intel DZ68BC motherboard, a 250gb 510series SSD, and an i7 2600k, all in for 500 quid. Personally I think that is an exellent deal. Just wondering if anyone out there has ever used an Intel branded board. The Intel mobo promises overclocking features which is not that common for Intel boards, and like a lot of Z68 boards is limited to running 2 gpu's at 8x/8x, and of course doesn't support 3 way sli. I don't believe it supports UEFI either. Still, I'm sure it will likely be a stable board and won't have the issues reported on some the Asrock boards.

So should I go ahead and tell him to order these components ? The plan will be to run them with a 16gb Corsair 1600mhz CAS9, 1 or possibly 2 GTX 580's, Asus soundcard, Raven RV03 case. Strider Gold 1000w psu and a couple 1 tb drives for storage.
 
To be honest, if it's Intel it'll be solid through and through. Their QC checks tend to be quite good. Worst case scenario he could swap out the Mobo for something else, it would still be worth it just for the 510 and the i7... Trust me when I say a 510 is QUICK! :)

kd
 
Thanks,

I was just checking with him, and if doesn't buy the cpu/ssd/board bundle and just buys the cpu and ssd individually, it comes to, including shipping, 380 pounds!!

So the question is, should he buy that Intel board also. Only costing an extra 120 quid.

This is the board in question. Intel says it can be overclocked. I can't see any negatives really other then not being able to do 3 way sli down the road, but he'd need a board with nforce 200 tagged on to achieve this. Actually when I think about it, he is running at 1080P so more than 2 gpu's wouldn't be a requirement at all.

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/motherboards/desktop-motherboards/desktop-board-dz68bc.html
 
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Will tell him to go ahead so. I assume no benefits in gaming for sandybridge, by getting some G.Skill cas7 sniper ddr3 over the proposed Corsair Vengeance cas9. From what I can see, besides cas7 being a lot more expensive, it seems to require 1.6v, and Intel are recommending no more than 1.5v for durability. Don't plan to switch myself to newer tech for a long time.
 
All the ram guides for sandybridge at Xbitlabs, Anandtech and Bit-tech say 1600MHz with modest C9 timings is ideal.
 
I guessed as much. Thanks. I haven't really looked into it as I didn't think sandybridge would be an upgrade for me. Will revisit this when the rampage IV is out (maybe).

By the way, is there any advantage to getting some low voltage (1.25v) cas9 gskills over the 1.5v corsairs ?
 
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