MSI Z87 G45-GAMING vs ASRock Z87 EXTREME 6

I myself shy away from them, it's not that they are just BAD, but quality control at MSI is really poor, I don't build on MSI, but get more calls with problems with their mobos than any 2 other manufacturers put together

No problem, whatever you decide on, if you need help, give a holler

I think that if you don't currently use MSI boards then you might not have the best information on that brand. To that effect I have had about 10 MSI products this last year, and all worked flawlessly - and still do. When I needed support for a notebook question I had the service was much better than I expected. Not to be rash but I do recall you being irritated with MSI due to them not sending you a sample board. I have had both ASROCK and MSI boards within the last few months and personally I would take the MSI board any day *** Between just those two *** so hopefully that helps with how another user is doing with the boards - I have the GD65 Gaming and I like it for an everyday board/ gaming while I have a MPOWER on my bench setup. Gaming series boards have some nice features while saving some $$ over other and still being good.

Haven't been a fan of their's for a while, and when I get more trouble calls on them than any 2 other manufacturers put together, that tells me something about their QC (quality control)...and yes I did approach them at the urging of some members here at the forums, who were very pro MSI, So I contacted them by email, national sales here in the Staes, and explained what was going on, and that if they were to provide a mobo for me to test with and I liked it, I would be glad to add it to my offerings and suggest it to others, further I would go ahead and buy one or two of their mobos on my own and test, if good, I would offer them and suggest them.....my own logic there is the same as with other products I pick up, if I like them - I'll suggest them and build with them - if I do get one in that's defective - I already would have a backup...if I got more than one bad one - I'd drop it from what I'm willing to suggest...to the first email they didn't even respond, to a second email, I was informed they were to busy with their reviewers to do anything, which was interesting as the review period for Haswell was basically over and saw no further reviews come out - and normally when products go out for review web sites, publications etc, try and get them out fairly quickly -generally new products are sent out 2-3 weeks before the release, often a date for release is given along with the people getting the product are under a non-disclosure agreement about info prior to the agreed publication date, etc....so they were basically in a dead period, I've done this type thing befoer and offered up to be under a non-disclosure if I don't like the product, it's not like I'm going to write a review....and to be honest it surprised me, the items they send out for review (and this is all manufactures) are generally all hand culled and tested prior to being sent, so it's seldom anyone gets a 'bad' product, unless the product just generally sucks, this would have been a win-win for them....there's no doubt in my mind I would have gotten a good one, and they would have gotten more sales, at least until I got a stinker or two, at which time I'd remove them from my suggestions - I myself would love to expand offerings (i.e. have many that want me build AMD, but there's really nothing there for high end builds)

I totally understand that logic of recommending what has been good to you. I use whatever will get me the best performance and will go with what it takes to get that. I have had issues with ASUS before and upon my testing of the Z87 Sabertooth I just had enough of their adding crap to the board for no reason way of thinking. Just do bear in mind that MSI may be a bit more busy with things than you might think I know its been that way for much of this year

Might be, that's always a possible, i try and check the manufactures every so often and didn't see any news releases from them, a few weeks after, they released their 760 Hawk and a few weeks after that another GPU, think a 780, but nothing I saw in that time frame....and maybe it's just a MSI thing, most other manufacturers I've dealt with have basically always been ope to suggestions and ideas, especially those that might generate additional sales of basically any volume, so it seemed odd , when MSI sales have been slipping year in and year out for about 4 or more years now.

Between the 6 and the 4, Primarily the 6 has a couple extra SATA ports, and sorta odd but think the 4 has an xtra X1 PCI-E slot and also has an onboard D-SUB video port which I don't think the 6 has (both have DVI) also think the 6 comes with a on-board power plug for SLI/Xfire

Ok! tradesman, to be honest i'm getting kind of tired of your reasoning as to why MSI is awful at manufacturing MOBO's and that they're clearly terrible in term of offering bad 'QC' support... What in gods name is 'QC support' please indulge me. In all honesty it feels like not only do you copy/paste this answer into every thread involving an MSI board, this clutters every thread with the idea that MSI boards are awful because this guy "Tradesman1" had a bad experience. It would be greatly appreciated if you could actually explain your reasoning behind your obviously superior answer as to wether MSI can make a decent MOBO.

If you were familiar with computers, electronics, manufacturing at all you'd know QC stands for Quality Control....and QC and support are also two different things which is why they are separated by the word 'and'. Further you obviously haven't read many of the threads, I've also explained numerous times that while I don't build on them - I get more calls on computers with problem mobos concerning MSI mobos than any 2 other mobo makers combined...and they run the gamut of problems ports (SATA, Ethernet, USB, etc that fail within a month or two, bad PCI and PCI-E slots that again fail within a short period of time, same with DRAM slots, audio, wireless....so it's not design problems so much as just poor quality control on the production lines...There also have been lines of mobos released that were known to be flawed but put out for sale anyway (somewhat of an ethical and honesty concern)...BIOS's are also iffy and it takes them longer to get them up to snuff than the Big 3....Let's see, hmmm...others have also obviously noticed as MSIs sales have been dropping steadily since around 2008 or so, ASRock passed them for number three in mobo sales in 2009/10 and have been steadily pulling away as their sales continue to increase and MSI continues to drop...Since building is part of my systems business, I'm not about to take a chance and use one for a client build - they expect delivery on time - which can be hard to do if the mobo arrives DOA or fails the first time you run prime on it, also I provide follow support and guarantee my builds so if it fails 30-60 days or 6 months down the road then it starts costing me money out of my pocket - could go on and on but that's why I don't recommend them, nor touch them for builds and basically all the builders, consultants and IT folks I networkj with are of the same opinion, we all basically stick with only the big 3 for mobos, Asus, the Rock and GB.

not to be noseing in on this , but i have used asus, giga, and msi. i'm not a big builder or overclocker but i can say from what i have built is that i got old msi socket a rig sitting here that i can hit the switch and fire it up and use it as well as the day it was built, thats been a few years, so as far as that boared is concerned the quility is all there and i cant say that for the outher brands that i built. none have come close to them years of service. the asus builds ya they work but seems to always have issues with them this last [3] sabertooths have been nothing but buggy bsod junk. replaced them with a giga990fxa ud3 useing the same parts pulled off the sabertooths, and so far its been fine with no issues and before i got hosed with asus i was running a giga 590sli rig. i loved that board and it lasted 4 years and just went dead . looking it over there were a few sowellen caps on it and in the power supply. so now i am looking at asrock to give them a try. dont know what i will get [ex6 z77 or z87] but if you dont try you dont know but i do know asus is done with me.