Building a new Haswell PC, Need MoBo advice

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Vlatko

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Feb 28, 2006
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Hi,

I am planning to buy a new Haswell i5-4690k based PC and I am looking for Motherboard advice.

I am not a gamer, the PC will mostly be used for browsing, development (Eclipse, MS Visual Studio. etc). I am not even buying a dedicated GPU as I plan to use the CPU one. So that part is not too important to me (even if I buy a graphics card in the future it will be a mainstream one, not the SLI /Crossfire or whatever the hardcore gaming stuff are called).

I want a z97 based board as I plan to overclock the CPU (a modest one, 4Ghz or so).

I know you would say that I don't need an overclocked 4690 for my type of work but I am currently working on a 6 year old Core Q8300 and I desperately need an upgarde, plus the board + CPU is not that expensive anyway and I want to get the max speed for that amount of money.

I had a look at some budget Z97 boards and found the following:
1. ASRock Z97 Anniversary
2. Asus Z97-P
3. GigaByte GA-Z97M-DS3H / GigaByte GA-Z97M-D3H / GigaByte GA-Z97-HD3
4. MSI Z97M-G43 / MSI Z97-G43
5. ASRock Z97 Pro3 / ASRock Z97M Pro4

Which one would you recommend? Please feel free to suggest another one in their price range.

Thx
 
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aygent543
The Intel i5-4690K is a good choice for your work and for any future upgrades. You need an Z97 board as you are overclocking, but it seems that you can still OC on lower mobos like H97 with a BIOS update. But I'd recommend Z97 since you're setting up a new one and they are made for OCing. Asus mobos are great in terms of build quality and are very reliable. So I think it'd be better to choose any Asus motherboards. The Z97P is a good board, but other choices are Z97C, Z97K etc.

Your integrated GPU will be enough if you are not intending to run any graphics intensive applications like video games. But that's not just video games but your web browsers too. Above boards will support any dedicated graphics upgrade in the near future. So it...
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aygent543

aygent543

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Aug 29, 2014
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The Intel i5-4690K is a good choice for your work and for any future upgrades. You need an Z97 board as you are overclocking, but it seems that you can still OC on lower mobos like H97 with a BIOS update. But I'd recommend Z97 since you're setting up a new one and they are made for OCing. Asus mobos are great in terms of build quality and are very reliable. So I think it'd be better to choose any Asus motherboards. The Z97P is a good board, but other choices are Z97C, Z97K etc.

Your integrated GPU will be enough if you are not intending to run any graphics intensive applications like video games. But that's not just video games but your web browsers too. Above boards will support any dedicated graphics upgrade in the near future. So it is recommended that you should get at least a cheaper dedicated GPU for now because an OCed i5-4690K will seem unpowered without any dedicated graphics. And you can decide it later after setting up it for now whether you need a GPU or not. Good luck with your build and happy new year for sure. :)
 
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