Intel H87/H97 chipset motherboard, is M.2 (SATA express) port worth it?

10forward · Jun 10, 2014

Hi!

I'm building a new Intel-based system and stuck a little while selecting a motherboard.
I'm not going to overclock anything so H87/H97 chipset is fine, I don't need a Z* one (not for overclocking at least).

As H97 is more recent, the price is 30% higher now than H87 one where I live and availability is poor at the moment. From specifications the main difference between them is M.2 (SATA express) port. So the question is, is it worth it? No doubt we'll see a lot of SSD that exceed SATA 3 bandwidth in the near future, but are they going to use M.2 or maybe PCI express slot is enough?

Motherboards I'm considering are:

ASRock LGA1150 Fatal1ty H87 Perfomance H87

Gigabyte GA-H97-D3H

The first one (H87 based) looks better from any point of view (including the price) except lacking M.2 port.

What I intend to build is:

- a fast, cool and quiet system based on Intel Xeon E3-1230 V3 CPU.
- with 1 decent graphics card (not going to install a second one, so 2 PCI x16 is not required)
- with good onboard audio (both motherboards use Realtek ALC1150 audio codec with audio amplifier). Main use - music listening on middle to upper range acoustics. Basically the noise shouldn't be heard.
- with several HDDs and 1-2 SSDs
- storage and RAM should be upgradeable,
- built-in Wi-Fi would be nice but not necessary, if it isn't built-in, the should be a slot for an extension card.

Any recommendations/ suggestions? Are there some important features I should consider?

Thanks!

Zircoben · Jun 10, 2014

10forward :

Hi!

I'm building a new Intel-based system and stuck a little while selecting a motherboard.
I'm not going to overclock anything so H87/H97 chipset is fine, I don't need a Z* one (not for overclocking at least).

As H97 is more recent, the price is 30% higher now than H87 one where I live and availability is poor at the moment. From specifications the main difference between them is M.2 (SATA express) port. So the question is, is it worth it? No doubt we'll see a lot of SSD that exceed SATA 3 bandwidth in the near future, but are they going to use M.2 or maybe PCI express slot is enough?

Motherboards I'm considering are:

ASRock LGA1150 Fatal1ty H87 Perfomance H87

Gigabyte GA-H97-D3H

The first one (H87 based) looks better from any point of view (including the price) except lacking M.2 port.

What I intend to build is:

- a fast, cool and quiet system based on Intel Xeon E3-1230 V3 CPU.
- with 1 decent graphics card (not going to install a second one, so 2 PCI x16 is not required)
- with good onboard audio (both motherboards use Realtek ALC1150 audio codec with audio amplifier). Main use - music listening on middle to upper range acoustics. Basically the noise shouldn't be heard.
- with several HDDs and 1-2 SSDs
- storage and RAM should be upgradeable,
- built-in Wi-Fi would be nice but not necessary, if it isn't built-in, the should be a slot for an extension card.

Any recommendations/ suggestions? Are there some important features I should consider?

Thanks!

If you don't anticipate needing to upgrade your storage, don't worry about. The PCI-e SSDs are looking promising, so you should be good.

Do you want to upgrade your CPU in the future? If you do, consider the H97 board because it will be compatible with Intel's upcoming Broadwell CPUs.

10forward · Jun 10, 2014

Thanks!

Zircoben :

That's a good point. As far as I can understand, there won't be a spectacular CPU performance increase with Broadwell CPU's, so I don't think I'll be upgrading CPU in the near future.

Zircoben :

Well, storage is likely to be upgraded. There is much more action going on with SSD's than with CPU's. But it looks like H97 with one m.2 port will be obsolete before there are reasonable priced consumer-oriented m.2 SSD's available. So H97 is probably not future-proof either.

So, about those motherboards I listed, do you think ASRock is that different? Comparing objectively features of those two, there is not much difference, but ASRock present their product like it is something special. Does anyone know if this 'Purity Sound' and 'Digi Power' stuff is a real deal or more of a marketing thing? Because now the price for the motherboards is approximately the same.

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