Inexpensive Z97 board with three PCIe 3.0 slots?

[kbear99]

Looking for a reasonably priced Z97 board with *three* PCIe slots that meet the PCI Express 3.0 standard. Most Z97 boards only have two. (I want Z97 because I have a perfectly capable i7-4770 and also because I have tonnes of DDR3 ram.)

Of the ones that have three 3.0 slots, I understand most will operate at x8/x4/x4 when fully utilised which is fine for me. I intend to have only one GPU and use the other two slots for a couple NVMe SSDs in RAID. I need the 3.0 spec so the SSDs will not be bottlenecked. (Yes I know it's probably really unnecessary to RAID NVMe's, but please let me indulge myself.)

Finding this kind of board at *reasonably price* is not easy, especially since they're mostly not being manufactured any more. I found a couple of cheap ones, ASRock Z97 Extreme4 and MSI Z97 Gaming 5, but I've already dismissed them because they seem to have some serious inherent problems in terms of reliability.

I found a couple of other ones that are little more expensive but seem ok in terms of reliability:
Gigabyte GA-Z97X Gaming 7 (roughly $135)
ASRock Fatal1ty Z97X Killer (roughly $155)

I slightly favour the Gigabyte because it has a legacy PCI slot. What do you folks think? In particular, are there any other good contenders I should be looking at that are comparably priced?

 

[Insert_Nickname]

If you can still find one, I'd suggest the Asrock Z97 Extreme6 or Extreme9.

It will not give you 3x PCIe 3.0, but both do have an M.2 slot wired directly to the CPU, and another PCIe slot that can run at x4 or x8.

 

[kbear99]

If you can still find one, I'd suggest the Asrock Z97 Extreme6 or Extreme9.

It will not give you 3x PCIe 3.0, but both do have an M.2 slot wired directly to the CPU, and another PCIe slot that can run at x4 or x8.

A very intriguing suggestion. I never imagined a Z97 board having a gen3 M.2 socket like the 'Ultra M.2' on the ASRock. And from what I've briefly read, a RAID between an M.2 socket and a PCIe socket should work. Good to know this other option -- thanks!

 

[Insert_Nickname]

And from what I've briefly read, a RAID between an M.2 socket and a PCIe socket should work.

Of course it'll "work". PCIe is nothing more then the connection used for the controller. So long as you can see the drives in the BIOS, and in Windows, you can RAID pretty much anything.

Just be aware you cannot use Intel's onboard RAID option, since it relies on the RST driver, which will not work with direct-to-CPU connected drives. So any RAID'ing you do has to be software based.