Mobo Madness

[vultusprime]

I'm in the process of buying a new pc and I'm not quite sure on which Mobo to get.

The cpu will be an i5 2500K (although chances are 90% I'll not overclock it anyway, but I like to keep the option open)

ENGTX570, (only one, therefore don't need sli configuration)

4GB DDR3 ram corsair 1333

WD caviar black HD 1T (no SSD, don't need one)

the rest is not so important here.

I have been reading forum after forum, as well as reviews, articles etc...

What scares me is making the wrong choice. You think you've found the mobo you want and then read something bad about it. You find another one and something else negative pops out.

At the moment I have quite a list of options, but I'm not even sure if I should go P67 or Z68.
I don't need a super mobo with many frills, so many sata ports, triple sli/crossfire nonsense.
The most important thing is that it is bug free, without problems like infinite power cycle, freezing, double bios boot, entering sleep mode and not waking up, etc...etc...etc...I just want a good solid and reliable mobo.

My "many options are:

Asrock P67 extreme4
Asrock p67 pro3
asrock fatal1ty p67 performance
asrock Z68 pro3

Asus p8p67
asus p8p67 LE

MSI P67A GD55
MSI P67 GD65
MSI P67A C43
MSI P67A C45 (I think it's C45 ??)

Gigabyte P67A UD3
GIGABYTE P67A UD3R
GIGABYTE P67A UD3P

as you can see I've focused mainly on p67 boards because if have to go through the z68 as well i'm sure i'll go crazy.
I want/must keep the price under 180$

Please, take me out of my misery :'(

 

[bankster55]

The ASRock P67 EX4 is the most trouble free P67 board, esp since you are not a fanatic overclocker, and dont need all the endless tweaking options

However I would get the ASRock Z68 since that platform has solved many (but not all) of the probs with the P67, since they are related to Intel's issues. And the bios updates will last longer since its a newer board - the one they are now focusing on

The two biggest issues are not waking from sleep reliably and not reccognizing some USB devices causing random hangs and freezes, slow boots. The answer to that is dont sleep/hibernate and only buy big name well distributed USB devices from well financed companies. If you do confront a prob, remove one at a time to see the offender. And Intel is trying to get its driver act together.

 

[Soundmanred]

Gigabyte P67A UD3

 

[vultusprime]

The ASRock P67 EX4 is the most trouble free P67 board, esp since you are not a fanatic overclocker, and dont need all the endless tweaking options

However I would get the ASRock Z68 since that platform has solved many (but not all) of the probs with the P67, since they are related to Intel's issues. And the bios updates will last longer since its a newer board - the one they are now focusing on

Yes, I heard good things about asrock mobo and the z68 pro3 seems to be one of the cheapest z68 out there, but does it mean that it's "low end"? It's even cheaper that all of the above P67 boards, it seems strange.

The two biggest issues are not waking from sleep reliably and not recognizing some USB devices causing random hangs and freezes, slow boots. The answer to that is don't sleep/hibernate and only buy big name well distributed USB devices from well financed companies.

I could be wrong but I always thought that sleep/hybernate was only used for laptops to save battery life, why would a desktop need to sleep/hybernate for? My current pc has been running win xp for the past 5 years and I have kept all the sleep/hybernate options disabled without a problem.

Gigabyte P67A UD3

why this model and not the UD3P one?

 

[BogdanH]

Hi,

I have always used Gigabyte MoBo's in the past, but with 1155 socket, they became somehow expensive compared to competition. So this time (a month ago), I've decided for Asus P8P67 and I don't regret my decission so far. I'm no overclocker either, so stability, connectivity and price was relevant.
Performance differences between Mobo's are "academic" (IMO), but it can come very handy in the future, if MoBo has internal USB30 connector for front USB's (just an example). Btw. Gigabyte P67A UD3 doesn't have these.
Z68 chipset? Well, after reading this (see Conclusion):
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainboards/display/asus-p8z68v-pro.html
-I still don't regret getting my MoBo.
I don't say you should get the same one I did. Just (double)check connectivity and features you really need. One big plus for Z68 is option to use CPU's internal GPU -so you can get rid of external graphic card (and fan noise). Because of that, I was even thinking to get H67 MoBo... but none of them had internal USB30 header.. so I've gone with P67.
As said, I don't regret my decission (at that time), but if I needed to decide now, then I would probably read above review again (and again)

Greetings
PS: sleep/hibernate? Well, when I'm done with my work, I simply turn PC off

 

[vultusprime]

I've decided for Asus P8P67 and I don't regret my decission so far. I'm no overclocker either, so stability, connectivity and price was relevant.

I'm also interested in this mobo, and probably will not OC either. I'd like to know if you have had any problems with your P8P67, like double boot, crashing or freezing. i mention this because these are the problems associated with this mobo that I have seen on people's reviews.

 

[BogdanH]

Hi,
Before continuing: I'm not trying to convince you into anything -even further: I'm very sure, that today, every MoBo works as advertized. Yes, sh*t can happen, but there are so many factors involved... some are trying to OC to max (just because it is possible).. or some 3rd component (RAM, SSD) can cause troubles.
To stay with Asus P8P67... no problems whatsoever till now. If you decide for it, keep drivers by hand, so everything will go smooth:
1. Install Intel chipset driver
2. Install LAN driver
3. Install USB30 driver
-that's a minimum you absolutely need (after installing Win7). Everything else you can find on Asus pages install only if you're sure you need. Btw. sound works fine even if you don't install "dedicated" audio drivers -of course, if you'd like to use your PC in multimedia manner, then audio driver/tool might give you some further options.
Finally, there's a famous Asus AI suite... Speaking for me, 500Mb of mostly fancy/useless stuff -OC's might not agree with me on this, though. By not knowing what to expect, I've installed AI Suite, but uninstalled it after an hour -there are better ways to check temperatures, voltages and fan speed.
That's it. If I would have some similar Gigabyte MoBo instead of Asus, I would probably write similar things. In my case, it happened, that Asus was a bit cheaper (compared to others with similar specs).
Hope, this was some usefull info.