Non-K OC, what motherboard/chipset?

[Sakkura]

I'm going to be building a new system soon, but I'm pretty sure I won't be able to afford an unlocked K-series chip. So I'm looking at one of the cheaper Intel quad cores, like a Core i5-2310 for example. These can still be overclocked by 4 bins, but... what kind of motherboard would make sense for that purpose? Obviously I wouldn't go with some very high-end Z77 board (I'd have to put a Celeron in it to make it fit my budget), but I would like to know what chipset is required and how low I can go on the budget without compromising this overclocking potential, small though it may be.

My guess is that you need a Z75/77 chipset for IB, P67/Z68 for SB (or IB if you can get the BIOS updated) - H77, B75 etc. wouldn't be able to do the limited overclock either, right?

And next - how important is the number of power phases (and the big VRM heatsinks) if you're really only going to tweak the clocks a little, instead of bumping them by a GHz or more as you can with a K-series CPU?

 

[nna2]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157304 here is a cheaper lga1155 mobo

if you cant afford a K series CPU, dont expect to get much more than the turbo frequency

 

[Sakkura]

Nah, I'm not expecting much. I don't really expect to even *need* much; might just check what overclocking can be done, if any, and then run at stock for a year or two or however long it takes before the processor ends up holding my system back.

That motherboard does indeed look like a good solution for me, since it only barely costs more than the B75, H77 etc. budget boards. Nice to see an item I was already interested in being recommended.

 

[Sakkura]

Best answer selected by Sakkura.