I put together my z68 rig this past Friday. It's been running like a champ, though I did have one BSOD after installing the 2nd video card (arrived today). This weekend I'm going to start overclocking.
-not trying to derail you but , the z77 boards are out tomorrow.It's looking like I'm going to be putting a system together using this motherboard sometime in the next week or two. I'm getting a 2500K and planning on overclocking a bit with it (otherwise I'd shoot for a 2500 non-K). I've never bought an ASRock board before, but after having HORRIBLE luck with every ASUS board I've ever bought and reading about Gigabyte's boot-loop issues with Z68, this seems like the safest way to go. Anybody have any warnings of things I need to be prepared for with this board?
-not trying to derail you but , the z77 boards are out tomorrow.
-z77 are 3rd [4th?] gen. of the 1155
-the Gigabyte's mb seem to be using the same vrm as the power hungry x79 boards ,so with the new vrm controllers should be way over built for sb or ib.
lots of new tech . on the z77.
It's looking like I'm going to be putting a system together using this motherboard sometime in the next week or two. I'm getting a 2500K and planning on overclocking a bit with it (otherwise I'd shoot for a 2500 non-K). I've never bought an ASRock board before, but after having HORRIBLE luck with every ASUS board I've ever bought and reading about Gigabyte's boot-loop issues with Z68, this seems like the safest way to go. Anybody have any warnings of things I need to be prepared for with this board?
It's looking like I'm going to be putting a system together using this motherboard sometime in the next week or two. I'm getting a 2500K and planning on overclocking a bit with it (otherwise I'd shoot for a 2500 non-K). I've never bought an ASRock board before, but after having HORRIBLE luck with every ASUS board I've ever bought and reading about Gigabyte's boot-loop issues with Z68, this seems like the safest way to go. Anybody have any warnings of things I need to be prepared for with this board?
+1. After the two Gigabyte boards looped before even hitting the BIOS I went with the Extreme4 Gen3 MC deal with the i5-2500K. Because of the hassle with the Gigabyte boards I got it at the same price ($104.99). It was easy to set up and installed the bundled front USB3 bracket.
This is my first build in quite a while and I found the documentation to be a little light and part of the CD manual was in Chinese. A quick call and they are mailing another one out.
My Antec P180 is a little short so connecting the pwr, led, etc connectors was a bit of a pain...but not the board's fault. I really like the power and reset buttons on the board. I was able to make sure it fired up before connecting the tiny connectors. It also has a CMOS button on the back so no need to open the case to set jumper pins or remove the battery.
My only suggestion it to not use any of the drivers on the CD especially due to the crappy Etron USB3 drivers. Their downloads are rather slow too FWIW. Also I used the easy flash BIOS and am running BIOS version 1.20. instead of 1.0 it shipped with.
Really? The manual that came is the thickest I've ever seen with a mobo. Lol.
Just my opinion. It's the thickest because there are so many languages. Lol.
I haven't built a new desktop since my AMD Athlon so a lot was new to me. Still mostly use my notebook. I've seen better manuals with a much more readable type. I should be getting the English version of the CD manual soon. I'll spend more time on it once I replace the 4X3 Sony LCD with a decent size 16X9 LED tomorrow.
Back to LED research...