Best sub £150 motherboard?

[mrshinyshoes]

Hi, having decided to go with the i5 2500K from the previous thread, I now need to decide what motherboard to pair it with. I'm looking to spend around £100 - £150 at the maximum being the Asrock Extreme 4 gen 3 board. I would get this right away if I knew whether it was worth the extra £30 or so over a £120 gigabyte motherboard, It's more ivy bridge compatable I believe and it supports a new graphics card pci express, correct me if i'm wrong?

So yeah whats the best mid range motherboard at the moment for overclocking, not massively and as ready for ivy bridge as possible if i decide to upgrade in the future?

Thanks

 

[Azurite]

Would stick with Asus, Gigabyte or Msi. The UD3-UD4-UD5 from Gigabyte is nice, and from Asus you got the Sabertooth, Pro and Deluxe. I would recomend the Z68 chipset, because there are a few nice features that the P67 dont have.

 

[mrshinyshoes]

Yeh i'm definitly going Z68 considering the reviews it's been getting, Yeah I must say that gigabyte board keeps cropping up in a good way.

 

[Azurite]

Yeh i'm definitly going Z68 considering the reviews it's been getting, Yeah I must say that gigabyte board keeps cropping up in a good way.

How mutch do the UD5 cost where u live?

 

[mrshinyshoes]

Erm i can't find it online but the UD4 comes in at around £150

 

[mrshinyshoes]

http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials...DDR3+PCI-Express+Motherboard+?productId=46896

Just seen this on aria not sure on it's performance over the gigabyte for the price though.

 

[Azurite]

Very nice looking Mobo. Never had an EVGA MB, but from what i hear, they got a good reputation.

 

[mrshinyshoes]

mm it's hard to find it's actual specs though :/

 

[Mumbles37]

My two cents:

As Azurite said, Asus and Gigabyte are the safe bets (I'm not big on MSI for motherboards, though their video cards are nice). I'd also consider EVGA boards and a lot of people have been high on ASRock recently, I think their Sandy Bridge mobos have been getting decent reviews.

However, I personally do not have any use for Z68 features. Z68 is the same as P67 with two extra features: option to use your CPU's integrated video and SSD caching. I'm always going to have a separate video card so the first holds 0 value. And SSD caching is, to me, a pointless feature when you could just install your whole OS on a cheap 64GB SSD, get full SSD performance, and not worry about it.

In addition, you will definitely save some money going P67 instead of Z68. And since the title of the thread mentions a price, I'll bet budget is important to you.

P67: save yourself a few quid and get everything you need anyway.