Best LGA 1150 Gaming Motherboard under $300 (from selection)

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DelTacoWaco

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Hi guys,

I have ordered most of the parts for my new pc except the motherboard. I ordered the ASRock Z97 Extreme6 from Newegg but they messed up the shipping so I got a refund and I have $300 NZD to buy a motherboard for this build: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/NMnvmG

I am going to buy it from either here or here

I could maybe stretch my budget to ~$325. I want SLI support, PWM fan support, don't need WIFI, needs to be Z97 ATX, lots of USB 3.0 and SATA 6gb/s is great.

Thanks
 
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sirstinky


The Extreme 6 is an enthusiast motherboard, and does all the same stuff the Fatality model does. The difference between the two is in the arrangement of the PCI express slots. The Extreme 6 only has two 3.0 x16 slots and one 2.0 x16 slot. The z97x has three 3.0x16 slots that run at 8x each in triple card configuration, and 4x in quad SLI or CrossFireX. The Extreme 6 can only handle dual cards at 8x. Anything more is going to run at 4x. Both can do tri or quad CrossFireX and SLI, it's just the z97x Fatal1ty Killer does it better. Unless you're...
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sirstinky

sirstinky

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A couple of things: Are you going to be overclocking? Some MB's are better for that than others. All things considered, Z97 motherboards come with lots of USB 3.0, 2.0, at least DVI and HDMI, digital audio, and at least 2 SATA 6 ports. I am partial to MSI's Gaming series motherboards, and Gigabyte's higher-end boards. Asus are good boards, but I'm biased I guess. Either way, Gigabyte or Asus are good. If you want a good deal, go ASRock.

Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H Intel Z97 Motherboard
Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 7 Intel Z97 Motherboard
Asus Z97-Pro Gamer Socket 1150 ATX Motherboard
ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 (or the Extreme 4) Intel Motherboard (these are a popular board)
Asus Z97-A is a good board, too

Like I said, it depends on what you want to do. All of those boards do good in overclocking and have tons of features (the Z97 chipset is only capable of running so many USB's, SATA ports, audio, and memory channels), but all of those basically max the Z97 potential. If you aren't going to be doing that, you can go with a cheaper Z97 board from Gigabyte, Asus, MSI, or ASRock, but at the sub-$150 (US dollars) category, the ASRock and MSI boards are my favorite.
 
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DelTacoWaco

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I will be overclocking, and I was originally looking at the Asus Z97-A but someone pointed out to me that it has a relatively high RMA ratio based on Newegg/Amazon reviews. I think the ASRock Extreme6 is good but it only has two 4 pin fan connectors. Can I increase this in some way ie splitter cable?
 
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DelTacoWaco

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Also I don't know how well optimised/focused the Extreme6 is on gaming as it doesn't have much information on that, and ASRock has the Fatal1ty series which is specifically for gaming :/
 
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sirstinky

sirstinky

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4-pin connectors are PWM (throttles up and down based on CPU load or preset temperature (you can specify in BIOS). Most motherboards except for the very high end ones only have one or two of them as they are mainly for the CPU cooler or other mission critical cooling device, the rest being the standard 3-pin for chassis fans. There are fan splitters for headers.
 
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sirstinky

sirstinky

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The Extreme 6 is an enthusiast motherboard, and does all the same stuff the Fatality model does. The difference between the two is in the arrangement of the PCI express slots. The Extreme 6 only has two 3.0 x16 slots and one 2.0 x16 slot. The z97x has three 3.0x16 slots that run at 8x each in triple card configuration, and 4x in quad SLI or CrossFireX. The Extreme 6 can only handle dual cards at 8x. Anything more is going to run at 4x. Both can do tri or quad CrossFireX and SLI, it's just the z97x Fatal1ty Killer does it better. Unless you're going to be running triple or quad graphics configurations, the Extreme 6 is going to work fine. Compare the two here: http://www.asrock.com/mb/compare.asp?SelectedModel=Z97+Extreme6&SelectedModel=Fatal1ty+Z97X+Killer
 
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