Motherboard selection

[Cossack]

Yeah, MSI have pretty solid boards. For me its three companies to chose from - MSI, ASUS and Gigabyte.

And I was looking for MSI Mpower board as well... Its kind a OC people oriented but looks very clean.

ASUS P8Z77 V-Pro is solid board as well or you could go for Gigabyte Z77 UP4 or MSI Z77GD65 or GD80

[Steeps]

You just have to be aware that processors can rarely upgrade without a new board these days. This is due to a new socket every time a processor comes out.

[LITOralis.nMd]

Your link for the MSI Z77 MPower Intel Z77 looks like a good price, I am in the US but have helped a few UK guys find mobos in this forum.

It's a solid mobo, I looked at it but ended up buying the ASUS P8Z77 V-Pro because it was on sale and I don't think I'll ever go down the multiple GPU upgrade route. ASUS P8Z77 V-Pro is only pcie2 x8/x8 when using both slots.

All the technical points you added are spot on, the board you selected has two separate Pcie3 x16 slots, which means that motherboard will be able to take any new graphics card on the market for the next 3 to 5 years, at which point the motherboard and CPU will be antiquated.

[LITOralis.nMd]

As to looking at alternatives,

the pciex pipeline for the motherboards you are looking at have either 16 or 32 pipes for the two GPU slots.

The best when two GPUs are installed, are Pcie3 , slot one with x16 pipes and slot two with x16 pipes.

Cheaper ones will be pcie2 or pcie2.1 , slot one with x8 or x16, and slot two with x8.

The GTX 690, HD7970, (and possibly the HD7950) will fill the pciex2 x8 pipeline, creating a bottleneck in Dual SLI/Crossfire configuration.

Keep in mind that a pcie3 x8 pipeline is near equivalent to the pcie2 x16 pipeline in available bandwidth.

PCI express basics - Page 3

This will answer questions:
Can An Overclocked GTX 690 be bottlenecked by PCIe 3.0 X8 or PCIe 2.0 X16 ? | AlienBabelTech

Effective bandwidth is what you are looking for.

[Cossack]

Yeah - if you want full 16x/16x SLi support - go with x79 chipset. As far as I know that is the only modern chipset able to pull of. Z77 is 8x/8x.

But dont worry about it - difference of 16x and 8x most of the time is like margin of error. You will never feel it in real world scenario.

[LITOralis.nMd]

THe MSI z77 Big Bang is 3 PCI-E x16 3.0 (16/4/4; 8/8/4)

The Asus V Pro is PCI Express 3.0 x16: 2 (x16/0 or x8/x

same difference in the daily functionality.

regards,

[Knallkopp_02]

I had a lot of trouble with my last MSI board. It lost all its preferences, because of damaged capacitors. And it was only 1 and a half year old.

Regards

[Cossack]

I had a lot of trouble with my last MSI board. It lost all its preferences, because of damaged capacitors. And it was only 1 and a half year old.

Regards

Was it from low end or high end series?

[turdinathor]

asrock all the way

[Doc.Pock]

i trust gigabyte for my entire life now, but its really ur call

[turdinathor]

Im still using a asrock board from 07

[LITOralis.nMd]

Well, this is the tricky bit,
"unlock the potentail of the 'K's series CPU."

You just want to spend enough money to get quality components in the VRM (voltage regulator module ), which all of the specific models, and the one you first mentioned in this thread all have. The VRMs get extra voltage and remain hotter than at stock CPU speeds when overclocking. Cheapo socket 1155 boards will have these VRMs literally melt and explode over a few years of overclocking.

You want at least 8 VRMs, in general, and of high quaility.

I can't find my link to a listing of all Z77 mobo's # of VRMs, but here is a list of cheaper models and their VRM count:
Seven Sub-$160 Z77 Express Motherboards, Reviewed : Seven Affordable Z77 Express-Based Motherboards Get Dissected

[LITOralis.nMd]

Keep in mind, I'd say 85% of overclockers don't really pay attention to this info, so just refer back to only if you want to explore your new parts further,

Here you go, found it:

This list is maintained by Sin0822, he is one of the overclocking overkill guys,
VRM List
Double click on the spreadsheet image to expand it,

[Rabbit]

Kinda gonna hijack this, looking for a MOBO for my girlfriend. Anyone know of a good AM3 or AM3+ for around $110? All the ones I can find only have a handful of reviews.

[Cossack]

Definitely go with 990FX chipset. Here is one suggestion - ASRock 990FX Extreme3 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

Not sure about AsRock, but you could give it a shot.