z68 motherboard suggestions please

[number58]

I'm planning on upgrading to a sandy bridge system, but can't find a motherboard that has all the features I want within my budget. My priorities are:

1. Overclocking. I want a board with great overclocking potential.

2. I want at least two 4-pin fan headers, for a push-pull setup on a heatsink.

3. A usb 3.0 header would be nice, because I plan on getting the Corsair 400r whenever its released, and it's got front usb 3.0 ports.

The hardware I plan on buying for the system:

Intel Core i5 2500k
Radeon hd 6950 2gb
8gb ddr3
possibly a new cpu cooler, like the Thermalright Archon, if not, I've got a corsair H50

What I'm reusing:

Pc Power & Cooling silencer 750W
Intel SSD 320 120gb
Samsung spinpoint f3
dvd burner
Asus Xonar DX

My price range is as low as possible, preferably below $150. Recommendations?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I'm planning on upgrading to a sandy bridge system, but can't find a motherboard that has all the features I want within my budget. My priorities are:

1. Overclocking. I want a board with great overclocking potential.

2. I want at least two 4-pin fan headers, for a push-pull setup on a heatsink.

3. A usb 3.0 header would be nice, because I plan on getting the Corsair 400r whenever its released, and it's got front usb 3.0 ports.

The hardware I plan on buying for the system:

Intel Core i5 2500k
Radeon hd 6950 2gb
8gb ddr3
possibly a new cpu cooler, like the Thermalright Archon, if not, I've got a corsair H50

What I'm reusing:

Pc Power & Cooling silencer 750W
Intel SSD 320 120gb
Samsung spinpoint f3
dvd burner
Asus Xonar DX

My price range is as low as possible, preferably below $150. Recommendations?

There are certainly a lot of Sandy Bridge Socket-1155 motherboards "out there." If you check another recent thread, P67 motherboards are "on their way out." Z68 is "in."

That being said, I have the ASUS P8Z68-V-Pro -- one of about four incarnations of "P8Z68." [-V, -V-Pro, -Deluxe, and -V-LE.] Certainly, your requirements are more than met with these boards. Some of those boards can be had for less than $150; some are priced above $150. The -V-Pro (and probably the others) have two CPU fan headers that are 4-pin with the 3-pin option. The boards thermally control 3-pin fans on these 4-pin (PWM) plugs -- and the chassis-fans (2) very well.

You can look at ASRock and Gigabyte Z68 boards as well, and at least the ASRock Z68 "Extreme 4" has its proponents. I can accept their appraisals second-hand as fairly reliable.

Be sure and research the compatibility of your DDR3 RAM candidates with any of these boards by visiting board manufacturer compatibility lists at their web-sites. If the RAM doesn't appear to work with these boards, you should be able to find an 8GB kit that does so for less than $80. And since I haven't checked prices in about a month, it could be for less than that.

Otherwise, I recommend the G.SKILL "-GBRL" and "-GBXL" kits, only because I've had longstanding good-luck with the manufacturer through 3 generations of PC-building, and I'm using the GBRL kits -- which work great. G.SKILL tech-support says that the GBXL are made "especially for" the Z68, but the GBRL kits require no special attention to configure properly . . . .

 

[number58]

Thanks for the info. I went with the Asus P8Z68-V-LE. I haven't put anything together yet because I'm waiting for the cpu cooler to arrive. About the RAM, the 8gb kit I bought isn't on the official compatibility list, but it is a G.SKILL GBXL kit. Specifically its this memory. I hope I don't run into any issues.