Pentium I7 - Simple Mobo Recommendation Please

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kmiklas

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Heya Peeps,

I'm coming off a bad experience with an ASUS Z97 pro [wifi] board. It is very unstable; sometimes it starts up; other times, no. Not sure if the now-defunct Tiger Direct sent me a poorly refurbed board or something, but it is very unstable.

Anyway, I have to eat the loss on the mobo, and put about 40 hours into researching issues, so I'm a little soured on the z97.

I'm looking for a simple, reliable mobo for a Pentium I7 LGA1150.

Can anyone recommend a decent replacement? Would you advise getting a z97 from a more reliable and trustworthy vendor, or go with a different board?

Thanks for your help.

Sincerely,
Keith

 
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Eximo

Eximo

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ASUS is actually quite well known for the motherboards. I believe they are actually the largest manufacturer of motherboards in the world, possibly second to Foxconn. Gigabyte would be my next choice. ASRock is an old offshoot of ASUS and has some decent boards. MSI has a decent reputation of late, but I still don't trust them from back in the day.

Z97 is pretty much your only option. No idea what a Pentium i7 is though, so the exact processor would be helpful. Rest of the system specs wouldn't hurt either, as the motherboard may not actually be the problem.
 
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Eximo

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Still not enough information. Quite a few LGA1150 i7s, all relatively similar, but your problems could come from a lot of places. You may not even technically need a Z class board, really reserved for overclocking and multiple GPUs. H class boards offer pretty much everything but that.

Particularly the power supply can be a source of intractable problems.

But more importantly, to select a motherboard, we need to know how big it can be. E-ATX, Full ATX, ATX, uATX, Mini-ITX?
 
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kmiklas

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In my troubleshooting efforts I've stripped the rig down to a pretty simple config:

- Mobo: ASUS z97 Pro (WiFi AC) - Full ATX
- CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K LGA1150
- Fan (CPU): Cooler Master Hyper 212
- Hard Drive: Seagate 1TB Desktop SSHD
- Power Supply: Cooler Master 500W RS-500-PCAR-A3
- Memory: Two 8GB sticks, 16 GB total: Corsair Vengeance DDR3
- DVD player (Not sure of brand, had it for years)

- Keyboard: Tried both USB and the old-fashioned port type
- Mouse: Tried about three different mce
- Monitor: An old one that a friend gave me. VGA cable.
- Ethernet cabled connection

I've got two separate drives set up: One with W10, the other with CentOS linux. The symptoms are the same for either boot config: If I properly shut down, pull the plug, plug it back in, it won't boot. I also get the same symptoms when trying to wake from sleep.

The only way that can get it back up is to fiddle with the "Flash Bios" button. After a few tries it sometimes comes back on.

Once I finally get it started up, it runs very well. No problems; I've left it on for days and it's stable.


 
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Eximo

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That power supply is rather small for that computer. It would be more appropriate to call that a 360W power supply, as it has two tiny 180W 12V rails. Little light on the 5VSB+ voltage. Doesn't meet the 80+ standard, so it is rather inefficient, which means heat generation. Technically not supported for Haswell's low power states either, which might explain your booting problems, but stability once started.

Do you have a GPU? If not, the reason they rated power supplies for Haswell was that many older, and older style supplies, have trouble with a very small load. Their designs rely on a balanced load between 3.3, 5V, and 12V to operate correctly. (No-Load startup) Contemporary computers consume almost exclusively 12V which may be causing dirty power to get to the motherboard during startup.

I would replace the power supply or borrow one to test and see if your problem persists.

You'll want to stick with this list, or newer power supplies that have come out in about the last two to three years. http://techreport.com/review/24897/the-big-haswell-psu-compatibility-list
 
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kmiklas

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Thank you, Eximo.

Funny you should zero in on the PSU. I just called ASUS, and the guy told me exactly the same thing.

I do have a GPU, in the form of a Zotec GTX 750ti, but I yanked it and went with onboard video during the troubleshooting process.

Could I be so bold as to ask for a couple of PSU recommendations/options?
 
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kmiklas

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First, thank you again. I do very much appreciate the help.

> Now a 750ti is a little underwhelming to be paired with the
> top-end gaming processor that is the i7-4790k.
> What are your goals there?

For the most part I'm using the box to run financial C++ algorithms. After the market closes, I swap out the drives, and play... UT2004!

Sad, I know, but I do love that game. All my peeps are on that server. The 750 is adequate for that game, although (surprisingly) in "Holy Sh*t" mode (that is, all settings maxxed), in the searing heat of the most intense battles, my fps will drop below 30 with that card.

Honestly, I'm a little afraid of buying a high-end vid card for fear of losing the next year of my life to Crysis or some epic flight simulator. History has shown that rock-star vid cards have a negative effect on my romantic life, sleep time, and employment status.




 
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Eximo

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I like UT99 and UT3, they were two best. Always the latest UT on Unreal 4, free to play. It is a close match to UT99 even in its unfinished state.

https://www.epicgames.com/unrealtournament/

Though you do need a high end GPU to play (GTX970/GTX1070)

I can't put that many hours into an FPS like I used to, so I don't worry about it.

 
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kmiklas

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Eximo, just to follow up on this, I got the 550.

Hooked it up today, and it fixed the problem!
- The machine does not hesitate starting up after being unplugged
- Hibernating now works!
- Sleep is still a little flaky, but that seems to be a CentOS thing. I'm going to try with Windows soon.

In the process, I did find that the main mobo cable was a little loose. This could perhaps have been the cause of the problem. In theory, I could try and hook up my old PSU and return the 550... but...

...this is a sweet power supply! I really like it. Pluggable cables on the PSU side so that I don't have all those extra cables crowding my case. The machine seems really happy with it; it's humming nicely. It just _feels_ right.

So now, aside from my old DVD player, I have a pretty solid stack of components:

- Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA GS 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply
- Mobo: ASUS z97 Pro (WiFi AC) - Full ATX
- CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K LGA1150
- Fan (CPU): Cooler Master Hyper 212
- Hard Drive: Seagate 1TB Desktop SSHD
- Memory: Two 8GB sticks, 16 GB total: Corsair Vengeance DDR3

I'm using the box for high-speed algorithmic trading, so I want to keep it simple. No frills. I _might_ add my vid card back in (maybe) but it's running just fine using onboard video. Given the performance requirements of scrolling code in Sublime Text and issuing terminal commands, I'm not planning on overclocking my GPU.

Honestly, most of this power is a complete waste, because I'm limited to 50 transactions per second by my broker's API. My CPU runs at 4GHz (4 billion, or 4,000,000,000 cycles per second), so I have about 80,000,000 clock cycles per transaction. To get faster service in this business costs...

Anyway, thanks for your help. I really appreciate it.

Sincerely,
Keith
 
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