Motherboard for 2500K and dual CrossfireX

[omber]

EDIT: After looking at suggestions I may not get a Z68 - I need two eSATA ports and those seem to be premium on Z68 boards.

Hello

With help of the Video Card and Graphics subforum I have decided to buy 2500K and two MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III cards. Now I need a motherboard to run them on.

Initially I wanted to use Asus Sabertooth P67 but it was suggested I should get a Z68 board instead.

Besides those I have these components I will use with my system:

RAM Two 4GB sets (2x2GB) of Patriot G Series ‘Sector 5’ DDR3-1600
PSU CORSAIR CMPSU-1000HX
Case CM Cosmos S
SSD Kingston V-Series 128GB
HDD WDC Black 1TB

I already have Zalman CNPS9700 NT cooler for my CPU.

I would like to achieve one of those massive 4.8 GHz overclocks .

 

[abekl]

My favorite board of the moment:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128494

 

[Kenmitch]

A comparable priced Z68 MB from either Asus or Gigabyte should do the trick. You just need to sift thru them and look at the features to make sure you get all the bells and whistle's you want/need. Also seing how you plan to run dual gpu's make sure you pick a board with some nice spacing between the pci slots. The above linked board is a good example of this as it has 2 pretty much worthless pci-e 1x slots between the pci-e 16x,8x slots. That is unless you need a pci-e 1x slot for something anyways.

 

[Jhatfie]

There are several good motherboard solutions for crossfire depending on your budget and needs. I personally picked up a Asus P8Z68-V and should have it built out in a couple days when I have time. Also in the sub $200 range, you also might want to look at the MSI Z68A-GD65 and ASRock Extreme 4. I was going to get one of the Gigabyte Z68 boards as I have had excellent luck with their motherboards in the past, but all the reviews I have read on the current Z68 boards for them have been pretty disappointing.

 

[you2]

I'd recommend asrock extreme4; a lot of folks like the msi gd65; be aware, on the gd5, that the reset switch will block the second card so you will have to do some very minor surgery to work around it (easiest is bend the pins or cut your connector 1/2 size).
[cute they fixed it on the z68 board; what i said was true for the p67 board but folks complained and they fixed it; a company that listens : ) ]

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a lot of folks have historically like gigabyte; but it hasn't been clear that there z68/p67 boards are any better than the rest. A lot of folks have had issues with asus.
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quite a few folks have been very happy with the biostar. 4.8 is not a given with the 2500k. It seems that 4.5 is pretty easy (from what i've read) but the jump above 4.5 requires upping the voltage some - this is herysey - i'm running my game system at 4.0 on stock cooler and my linux box is not overclocked (i needed a lot of ports hence a higher end board for that box - else $100 board would have been fine).

 

[guskline]

I have the ASrock Z68 Extreme 4 and am running a 2500k@4400 with 2 Radeon 5850s in Crossfire. I can tell you that this MB has a a 4 pin plug in the MB to add extra power for high end Crossfire/SLI rigs.