Buy motherboard 1150

[Namiga]

Hello…
After many years of not coming here :wall::wall:, I'm back to my roots

The fact is that after 9 years with my beloved Q6600, I think it's time to upgrade... and I have the opportunity to get an i5 4440 "almost for free"...

The problem for me is the motherboard. What they offer me has an Asus H81 M A... which not much can be asked for except that it works

I have few clear concepts about the advantages of the Z97 chipset over the H97. The only thing I see is that the Z supports Multigpu and OC... and none of the two things excite me at the moment (if it did in the past)

So the H97 makes me much more useful than the Z97 (especially for price), but I would like to know if I'm wrong and I ask for your advice

The chosen one for the moment would be an asrock Z97 pro4...http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z97%20Pro4/ but if I can reduce costs …
There is also the Asrock Z97 anniversary... http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z97%20Anniversary/

For RAM, it would be 16Gb, possibly some Kingston HyperX fury Cas10 at 1600

The rest would be from my current pc, SSD v300 240Gb, HD 2 Tb and 7970

A little help please

[Fassou]

A pleasure to read you again around here

Well, to the point.

With a decent H97 you have more than enough, unless you have a micro K, several graphics cards, small hard drives (cards that connect to the motherboard) or a desire to show off your signature

If you have answered no to everything, you can still buy a Z97, which is not that much more expensive, but I would spend the money on something else that you notice more, like memory, graphics or SSD.

Cheers!

[amd125]

I think the fundamental difference is that the H97 doesn't allow OC and the Z97 does. Then the Z97 can have one or more graphics cards (depending on the board) and the H97 only one graphics card.

If you are clear that you are not going to do OC I wouldn't buy a new board and I would stay with the one they offer you. Basic, but it allows 16 Gigas of RAM which is what you are going to put in. As long as they let you have it at a very good price. Let's say about 30€ maximum. Then if you can't buy a new basic H81. There are some for 45-55 €. Basic, with two memory banks but for normal use without OC they should go well.

Otherwise, of the ones you indicate that are Z97 I would stay with the Pro4, it has 6 phases compared to the other, and is more complete. Also more expensive, but about 30€ which I don't think is excessive. If one day you do OC this board will go better than the other. Maybe when your micro becomes insufficient, in a few years, you want to stretch the platform a little more and look for an I7 4790 K for example. As an example micros 1155 like the I5 2500K are still being sold at about 120-125€ and they are still very competitive micros.

I had a Q6600 at 3.0-3.2 and I was delighted. Now I have an FX-8350 (I bought an 8320 but it blew up and they gave me this one with the RMA) and I don't do OC because it's a hotter micro and I have a decent cooler but not TOP; but if I had an I5-I7 K with good cooling I would do some OC. It's that with current micros OC is easy, at least moderate OC, and Intel K's are made for this.

A Q6600 is still a more than decent micro, but the I5 will make you feel the PC is more relaxed both in office work and in games. That micro with an SSD and enough RAM will give wings to the system.

Look if you see any CL 9. memory that are around similar prices. Brands like G. Skills have them at similar prices to Kingston. And Kingston also has CL9 models. If you are tight on cash, buy only one 8 Gigas RAM module and in the future the other module. Unless you do video editing, photography, etc., for lighter use, with 8 Gigas, even for games you will be more than enough.

Otherwise enjoy the new machine.

[Namiga]

Thanks to both of you for responding...

Indeed, I have no interest in doing OC... because now I'm looking for more reliability than speed

and for the moment K to arrive... I have to win the lottery... and that's going to be complicated

I'm not staying with the Asus because it doesn't have normal PCI slots (I have an Audigy 2 ZS and a TDT), that's why I'm considering a new motherboard

Although you may not believe it, I'm still looking... I'm not satisfied with what I see.
For the price, I would have stayed with the anniversary, but the position of the SATA connectors pulls me back
I bet that the 7970 will cover two of them...

The use, apart from the normal, will be the use of premiere and Photoshop... so I prefer the 16Gb base instead of 8 to save something...

I'll keep looking... and thanks for the opinions.

EDIT: I've opened the range to Gigabyte... and I found the Gigabyte GA-Z97P-D3
http://es.gigabyte.com/products/page/mb/ga-z97p-d3rev_10

It has the SATA connectors far from the graphics … but the heatsink of the chipset seems so small to me...

[Espinetenbolas]

I see everything fine as you have commented except for the memos.

Get a minimum CL9 if you are going to put 1600Mhz memos... although without going for faster memos that probably won't work on the H81 (OC issue) I would get these Crucial with CL8 :troll:

16GB kit (8GBx2) DDR3 PC3-12800 Unbuffered NON-ECC 1.5V 1024Meg x 64, BLT2CP8G3D1608DT1TX0CEU from Crucial.com

On Amazon 100€+ shipping

They will allow you a little more performance without touching anything of OC simply by selecting the XMP profile in Bios.

As for future updates I wouldn't worry too much especially about what's coming in terms of RAM and Storage that to use it you need a new platform within one or two years. I'm talking about high speed SSDs via PCI-e and high density RAM with HMC (Hybrid Memory Cube) memory which is similar to the HBM of the new graphics that is one step ahead as it is already implemented in AMD Fiji Graphics.

That is, prohibitive prices and only available in High End ranges

[Namiga]

Thanks for your feedback

A question about it... the boards I'm looking at.... the RAM support at 1866 is in all of them by OC...
but how???

to get the ram to go to 1866 should I do OC to the processor by whiskers??? or will it be a different multiplier of FSB to ram??

[Espinetenbolas]

@Namiga:

A question about this... the boards I'm looking at.... the RAM support at 1866 is in all for OC...
but how???

to get the ram to go to 1866 I have to do OC to the processor's whiskers??? or will it be a different multiplier from FSB to ram??

I have the ASRock > Z97 Extreme6 and Z97 is for OC… in the Bios you can put the speed you want on the RAM up to 3600Mhz (if my memory doesn't fail me) even though officially LGA1150 supports up to 1600Mhz... it does it by dividers with respect to the 100Mhz Bus.

On the one hand in the bios you select the speed (as I told you) and on the other you choose the XMP profile for the timings... otherwise it is possible that it won't start with timings on auto or set by hand since there are hundreds of thousands and it's a bit crazy.

What the board does is apply everything automatically, you don't have to touch FSB or dividers or anything... everything is very simple with the Z97... unless you touch the FSB, dividers and other stories but that's not your case.

I would go with the H81 and the memos I told you... it's not worth the Z97 for a non-K micro... unless you look for a specific feature from that chipset apart from OC.