Which Mini-ITX board?

Montala · 1 Nov 2015 at 15:58

Hi,

I have just posted in the 'Case Central' thread, but as this question is specifically motherboard related I will ask it here!

As soon as they are available I am planning to buy a Kolink Satellite Micro-ATX Cube Case from OcUK, so (as you do!) I started by looking for a suitable Mini-ITX motherboard for it... probably the wrong way round, but there you go!

I strongly favour Asus boards, so my first choice was for the (fairly) cheap and cheerful Asus H81I-PLUS, but I then decided that I would prefer something a bit more recent, so looked at the Asus mini-ITX Z97I-Plus board, which is of course a fair bit more expensive at around £150.

Then, this morning I read a review on the new Asus Z170i Pro gaming Mini-ITX board which... much to my surprise seems to be about £20 cheaper at £130 or so.

Presumably this would be a better choice for me, bearing in mind it uses a later chipset, and incorporates a few more options?

Anyway, I shan't say any more for the moment, until I have received a reply or two!

Thanks!

nox_uk · 4 Nov 2015 at 19:17

What cpu are you thinking of?

I recently went asrock x99e-itx with a 5820k. Figured the extra two cores were better for me long term.

Montala · 4 Nov 2015 at 22:22

Those two together must have cost you well over £500 which is more than I really want to pay.

If for example I were to go down the Skylake route, I could pick up an Asus Z170i Pro gaming Mini-ITX board coupled with an Intel Core i5 6500K CPU for about £300 which should also give me a bit of 'future proofing'... if indeed there is such a thing these days!

Thanks for replying though!

GloriousMess · 6 Nov 2015 at 12:22

I'm looking at an i7 build in a Bitfenix Prodigy case, and the primary concern for me is cooling. There's not a great deal of room, and if I'm overclocking a 5820k the heat output is going to require a fairly meaty cooler compared to the same overclock on a 6700k. Of course, the advantage is 2 more cores and a larger CPU cache.

Whether that's worth a fairly substantial increase in cost is not something I've decided on yet. It's not like there are many choices for a X99 mini-ITX motherboard!