Spec Me A Motherboard

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27 Apr 2007
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Edinburgh
Afternoon folks,

I was hoping someone could give me a little advice in regards to what motherboard I should get.

It will be for a brand new build which will fit into a Corsair 540 case and what I'll be looking for is:

1) Crossfire and as I'll be using the 290 I'll preferably be looking at spacing the 2 cards apart due to heat.

2) I'll also be placing a Creative ZXR sound card in there with the add on so another pci express is required for that.

3) At least 4 USB 3.0 ports

4) Good overclocking features and user friendly bios if possible.

I was previously looking at the X99 ROG motherboards but they've not appeared yet and plus since I'm only going 4790k I think it might not be the best suitable for me but I'm happy to be proven wrong if it is.

Any advice is much appreciated.

Thanks :)
 
My budget will be about £300 but I don't necessarily want to spend that much.
Will the X99 only be for the hex core processors? I was looking at them as well before I was advised if I'm primarily gaming they would be overkill and I'd be best to look at the Devil's Canyon line.
 
Yes, even an i5 4690k would be great for gaming, but the i7 4790k would be nicer if it fits in budget - they are both Devil's Canyon chips. The Devil's Canyon chips won't fit in X99 boards, full stop won't fit.

One of these? :)

The Gaming 7 is excellent value, it comes with a £70 set of 8gb RAM, which is bleeding great value.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Gigabyte Z97X-UD3H-BK Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £139.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 7 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £139.99
1 x Gigabyte G1.Sniper Z97 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £128.99
Total : £418.57 (includes shipping : £8.00).

 
The budget for the motherboard will be about £300 the cpu budget is different, what's the difference between these motherboards and the more expensive ones?
Also will I notice the difference between the network adapters as I've read the Intel ones are generally better than the Killer NIC.

Edit: Forgot to say I'm looking at at least 16gig of ram.
 
Nah, the network adapters don't have a massive difference, only at quite high internet speeds. The higher end boards are generally more packed with features, but generally most of the features aren't used. They also allow for really high end overclocking mostly, imo not worth spending the extra on
 
Oh excellent I didn't even realise that was coming out! Just saw it's been announced today, although it looks like it only has 3 PCI-E slots. Will I see a major difference in a 290 being used in lower speed pci express slot? I wanted to space the 290s apart due to heat as I won't be water cooling.
 
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