Z77 Chipset Motherboard Reviews

@the_director, not yet, still mulling through the reviews, quite hard to appreciate the differences as I'm not used to any of the bios's, proprietry features from these manufactures as my last board was by supermicro. Am gradually narrowing down based on what pcie slots it has, number of sata3 ports etc then trying to figure out which of the proprietry features and bundled bits would suit me best. I've got a few bits as they were on offer but not getting much more until the cpu is available. I've updated my build spec but it currently has a fork in it as I had to rethink the case and am a bit undecided between matx which would be a bit more versatile to move and double as a work pc in the soho or the atx which would have more room to add better sound and tv card and perhaps sli/xfire later. Have you got a build spec of yours?
 
@thenewoc yesterday I ordered:

Corsair Carbide 500r case
Corsair H100 cooler - fits into the top of the case nicely
Corsair Performance Pro 256GB SSD
Samsung Green 16GB ram
LG lightscribe Blu-ray RW drive

I will be using my existing Corsair AX 850 Gold PSU and 2 5850 graphics cards.

So I just need a motherboard and CPU - have even been thinking about going S2011 with a 3820.

Otherwise I'm leaning towards the Asrock extreme4 Z77, if I didn't need to crossfire I would probably go for the asus gene z77, but that board would mean the two cards would be virtually touching.

I think it is sensible to wait for the full reviews with Ivy CPUs to be released before buying any other parts.

I see you have been making lots of changes, I know I did along the way.
 
@the_director, you like corsair then :) I'm surprised you didn't opt for one of the gigabyte boards with the free antec kuhler 620's... Snap on some of the same parts. The X79/S2011 I think is a tricky one seems better if you would be using software that would make use of the extra threads but I think you loose integrated graphics which I think is one of the advantages with Z77 and Lucid Virtu Universal MVP. I think I saw an Intel roadmap that showed S2011 running concurrently with Haswell though so perhaps that platform has more life to it than Z77 but it's also pricier. There are still some more Z77 boards to come or that i've not looked into properly yet such as the atx version of the maximus gene,think it's 'formula' something, also Asrock extreme 9, Biostar and a few others.
 
Oh yeah i've made changes and then some because usually one thing changing has had a knock on effect. The main prob was Antec discontinuing the case, that was the only htpc case with decent height so that cpu cooler didn't have to be compromised on. Bloomin typical all the years Antec been doing htpc cases and they chose to stop now. I did begrudge choosing something which I knew was a bit of a dated design though, front USB2 for instance and didn' t really need the vfr display/remote etc.
 
Yeah, the fatal1ty professional-m is interesting as it has slightly better spacing for crossfire. I don't want to spend too much on a motherboard really.

S2011 does have a longer lifespan in theory, however, by the time IB-E us launched Haswell will be just about ready to launch which could well make IB-E pricey and pointless and Ivybridge / Sandybridge users can just switch motherboards and CPUs.

Hence why I don't want to spend huge amounts on a motherboard that will be bettered next year by a nee socket.
 
That is great
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Thank you so much for the sharing.
Still confused about the mob choice.
I owned a computer with
i5 2500k.
G.Skill Ares 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit - Orange
1600M
gainwind GTX 580
raid0 2 30GBSSD
60GB SSD
500GB HDD
wonder which Z77 shall i choose to purchase?
 
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