Asus P8Z68-V vs Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3

[draggoth]

Hi all! I'm deciding on the components for my new build and I'd like some advice to choose between these two motherboards:

Asus P8Z68-V
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8Z68V/#specifications

Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3973#sp

For the rest of the system I'm gonna use:
Proc: Intel Core i5-2500K
RAM: 8GB (2x4GB) DDR 1600
GPU: Radeon HD 6870 (maybe GeForce GTX 560)
PSI: Corsair TX650 V2

I'm gonna use this form gaming with some overclocking and my biggest concern right now is about the reliability and endurance of the pieces, since I'm planning to keep this rig for a while. I'm leaning towards the GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 (can get it cheaper) but checking out the specs of the Asus motherboard it has a few more compelling features (like onboard power switch and more diagnostic LED's, Bluetooth).

Both motherboards have some really good reviews, but I'd like you to tell me about bad experiences you might have had with this specific models or with the brand in general, things like incompatibilities, weird behaviors, driver issues, sudden deaths, etc. When I buy things I prefer to look for the possible/know problems rather than the advertised features, gives me a better idea of what I'm getting into

I've read some post about the Gigabyte board being kinda picky with USB devices and to sometimes having problems booting after changing the BIOS settings, and I haven't found much being said about the Asus boards failing or doing weird things, what can you tell me about this?

Any insight or comments to help me decide are very much appreciated.

 

[kosak]

Gigabyte got a Displayport, Firewire, PS/2, 4 sata 6Gbps.

Asus got one additional Cpufan header, a "digital UEFI bios", a software that can control cpu fan speed.

I don't know for overclockability but from reviews they seems to be both potent overclockers.

Personally I would take the Gigabyte since I like their bios and I'm used to it. Also because it got a PS/2 connector (I love my old 1998 Microsoft ball mouse , no joke). And finally because I assume fan can be controlled with Speedfan software like I do with my actual EP45-UD3P. And it's cheaper. 30$ less here 8|

One more note, from my experience, Gigabyte got a better support department !

 

[grenade01]

You may have already purchased since this post is old, but I thought I would comment since I've had both boards. Well sort of I had the deluxe model asus not the v. The asus board was great, it seemed like better quality. More overclockable. The one I had was bad though it died after a couple months (Not that I automatically assume the board in general sucks but I was one of the unlucky to get a lemon) and I had a very bad customer experience trying to get it replaced. (I actually wasn't running it overclocked when It went out either so it wasnt my fault! I had only played with the options briefily. After a month without a computer and several interactions, and a "repaired" motherboard that was still broken, I gave up and got that gigabyte board.

The gigabyte board has a little less feature and and heat sink on the northbridge chip sucks and gets hot. My USB 3 header is broken but I dont really care bc it's got two usb3 in teh back and I have no usb3 items anyway. It overclocks well, takes a little more coaxing though... slightly higher voltages gets slightly warmer but I can get 4.5 relatively easy and that's as far as I wanted to push it anyway. I turned off most of the speedstepping/powerboosting/suspend c3/c6 options and just run it steady. if you get it and overclock you'll need to set the line load setting on at least 3 because the vdroop is a bit bad. But overall it's been a great board. I would recommend it. Also if you have a solid state drive you're going to want to disable c3/c6 because many gigabyte boards clash with the solid states with that setting on (google it) Who cares about c states anyway.

I had some quirky behavior with it not booting after changing some settings (settings i knew it should be fine with) I ended up popping out the battery and power supply power to reset the cmos, and then it resumed its normal behavior.

Like i said it took a little effort but now that I have it running, it's really running great and it was a great price. I would go with gigabyte in the future just based on the customer experiences Ive had with asus and gigabyte. The people at asus really have some bad issues and they respond nicely via email and phone but they are really no help and they do not make an effort to replace your product. They are really a terrible customer experience and I've dealt with them so many times Ive come to realize it's not an isolated incident (I work IT).

Anyway that's my two cents.

ps the gigabyte has some fan settings in the bios although they aren't individual. Just the slope of the response you want the fan to have as it gets hot. My cooling setup is ballin' so i have it set at the lowest setting so it stays relatively quiet. Wish I could set some to turn off at certain temps though.

 

[fmullegun]

Have this same dilemma if someone could comment further.


The Asus has a better VRM but does that matter for durability or reliability?


Both have more than enough features for me, but have no idea about quality or things not shown on comparison charts.

 

[kosak]

Like i said it took a little effort but now that I have it running, it's really running great and it was a great price. I would go with gigabyte in the future just based on the customer experiences Ive had with asus and gigabyte. The people at asus really have some bad issues and they respond nicely via email and phone but they are really no help and they do not make an effort to replace your product. They are really a terrible customer experience and I've dealt with them so many times Ive come to realize it's not an isolated incident (I work IT).

I approve what he said. (I work IT too)
Asus just don't care about their customers.
They offer good products but I hate them ! haha
Screw Asus, screw Creative, screw HP drivers !

 

[grenade01]

I forgot to mention (I said I decided to only clock to 4.5) I have a 2600k now. I have an upgraders addiction.

Fmullegun: I just wrote an even bigger spiel about my experience with asus since I kind of feel like warranty is a part of durability, but I didn't want to sound like I was giving Gigabyte a sales pitch so I deleted it. Haha. I imagine though (in terms of two motherboards that are working normally) the asus would be more durable at higher clock speeds since (in my experience) it took noticeably lower voltages and created less heat. I hate to say that ugh. I'm being kind of redundant though. I wish I could comment more. I guess if you get the Asus make sure you build it quick and fish out problems so you can return it to the retailer asap if you have issues. If you're like me you'll find that after your shipping time to them, 8-10 days of working on it, and the 4-5 days of it being shipped back to you, you will receive the same broken board over and over up until 3 or 4 times (and that many months) when they decide to finally replace it as a "lemon". I wish everyone was like intel in that regard because they ship you an overnight with postage for you to ship your bad product back. Intel is awesome for returns -_-


I can say that, for some reason, my OCZ Vertex 3 SSD is benching about 10% higher with the gigabyte for some reason (once I disable C-states as I mentioned above), which actually surprised me because I expected the Asus to do better in that regard. Also I was having problems in some DAWS I use being kind of skippy and poppy that I just couldn’t resolve when I was on the Asus... (ableton live and protools) which seem to have disappeared now that I'm on the Gigabyte. I'm not sure if it was a driver conflict with the software or with my sound interface or what because I had tried formatting to fix it with a nogo.

I found out that you can’t run raid off two sets of controllers on the gigabyte even though two sets of them support raid. At least I couldn’t get them both to work, and when I searched it I saw some similar posts with the gigabyte. I’m not too upset because up until now I was running one SSD for OS, one ssd for game installs, and had my two backup drives. I was just messing around to see what kind of raid performance I would get (I wanted to have my ssd’s in raid0 for performance, and storage drives in raid1 as well for reliability). But really at that price point one set of raid drives is enough. If that’s a deal killer then I’m pretty sure you can run two sets of raid drives on the asus… pretty sure. O0

I guess that's probably useless information as far as what you’re asking… but I figure if I'm being thorough maybe there's something that might apply to you.

-_-

 

[kosak]

Gigabyte mobos aren't without flaws too.
For example, on my EP45-UD3P i never been able to boot from a USB device ! I have to live with my floppy drive in case something goes wrong and burning a cd each time I want to try a new hiren's boot cd release .. damn that's irritating.
With a 333 FSB, Hybrid C-state doesn't work. I need to set a c-state that have to reinitialize bios each time it resume .. damn.
I also got stability issues when overclocked. No matter the voltages settings.
These are known issues with this board and Gigabyte never fix those with a bios update. That's sad.

Ive also already got a Biostar mobo that I loved. Never had an issue appart from limited overclockability. I really consider a Biostar for my next build.

 

[grenade01]

I know and I agree. All motherboards are subject to DOA's and quirky problems. I've actually found the Asus motherboards seem to have great quality control in that they hardly ever come doa or develop issues, but worst case you always fall back on customer service and they hold my worst experiences with any product ever multiple times.

As I mentioned the USB3 header for the front case connections on my gigabyte do not work (I tried another USB 3 header hookup thing I had and it's the board for sure). So I'm not trying to claim they are far superior. All electronics are wonky, but they have always been great about repairs and replacements though.

Also as I mentioned on my gigabyte I disabled Cstates completely to get my solid state benching at correct speeds. I think (I'm pretty sure) I read (According to gigabyte) it was a problem with the sata spec and "not their fault" but then my Asus did not have this problem so that's weird. Cstates are not important to me though.

I had stability problems on my board as well until I checked voltages and realized the vdroop is really bad on the gigabyte and setting the line load calibration setting up really made all the difference (and increased the heat a little). I was topping out at 4.2 and then with adjustment to that setting I can get my 2600k up to 5.1 stable (although I'm running it at 4.5). When I messed with the asus I was able to get it at 5.2 with about 10% lower voltages and 10 degrees C lower temps. I think I mentioned though that with the Asus for the couple months it worked, I wasn't running it overclocked though I had only messed with it briefly for a few days when I first got it.

My last biostar lasted 6 months before the whole rear IO panel blew out. I donated the phenom II x4 chip and ram to a friends upgrade fund, and built this intel system. I did not even try to deal with Biostar's warranty dept. since I wanted to build a new rig anyway so I cant comment on their customer support. I was quite happy with the biostar up until the back panel died, maybe someday I'll give them another try and hope it was bad luck. Asus though, never again.

 

[fmullegun]

Does anyone else have any thoughts? I am not a typical member here. I have only built 3 systems and don't play games. Not an enthusiast I just like good value and hate slow computers. I have used 2 ASUS 1 MSI and 1 Gigabyte. Why 4 MoBo's and 3 computers? An ASUS broke on me. With such a small sample size though I don't want to have bias.

Is the better VRM of the ASUS a sign of build quality? Any actual other reasons one may be easier to setup or hassle free?

 

[draggoth]

W00t! Thanks for reviving this old thread, I almost forgot about it! The thing is, I haven't put together my new rig yet, I've been waist deep in many other things. But I'm finally gonna buy everything and start building it this weekend, currently the shopping list looks like this:

CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
Motherboard: Asus P8Z68-V
Memory: Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM
Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 6950 1GB
Case: Cooler Master CM690 II Advanced
Power Supply: Corsair TX750 V2
Optical Drive: LG UH12LS28 OEM Blu-Ray Reader

I've decided to go for the Asus P8Z68-V (not Pro or Deluxe, just "Vanilla") for two reasons:

1 - I've read many many reviews and lurked around different forums, everything points that this is a great board.
2 - I'm from Mexico, so parts availability, support from the manufactures and prices are just f'ing insane over here. It's really hard to find the latest products at a reasonable price, most of the time you'll only find last year's parts priced two or three times the current U.S. price and on top of that the prices change daily because of the dollar/peso exchange rate.
If something goes wrong and you need to contact the manufacturer, well though luck, only a handful of companies have presence over here, so it's either send the component all the way to the U.S. or just buy something new.

Fortunately, Asus is one of the companies with local support offices and there's at least a well know retail distributor from them with very good prices, so that's a big incentive to choose Asus over Gigabyte (whom do have some degree of support over here, but not as much in my opinion).

I'll keep you posted on how things turn out after I start working with my new computer and let you know how the Asus P8Z68-V behaves

 

[grenade01]

Ah you make some good points.

Also as far as the V vs deluxe go, I think you'd probably find the same performance out of either one as long as the V has all the features you want. I think the only difference in the deluxe is some extra Sata III ports, a firewire port, and a (pretty crappy) built in bluetooth anyway if I recall. You're right, better to save the cash. :-]


Good luck with your build I think you're going to be really happy with it!

 

[noodles]

W00t! Thanks for reviving this old thread, I almost forgot about it! The thing is, I haven't put together my new rig yet, I've been waist deep in many other things. But I'm finally gonna buy everything and start building it this weekend, currently the shopping list looks like this:

CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
Motherboard: Asus P8Z68-V
Memory: Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM
Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 6950 1GB
Case: Cooler Master CM690 II Advanced
Power Supply: Corsair TX750 V2
Optical Drive: LG UH12LS28 OEM Blu-Ray Reader

I've decided to go for the Asus P8Z68-V (not Pro or Deluxe, just "Vanilla") for two reasons:

1 - I've read many many reviews and lurked around different forums, everything points that this is a great board.
2 - I'm from Mexico, so parts availability, support from the manufactures and prices are just f'ing insane over here. It's really hard to find the latest products at a reasonable price, most of the time you'll only find last year's parts priced two or three times the current U.S. price and on top of that the prices change daily because of the dollar/peso exchange rate.
If something goes wrong and you need to contact the manufacturer, well though luck, only a handful of companies have presence over here, so it's either send the component all the way to the U.S. or just buy something new.

Fortunately, Asus is one of the companies with local support offices and there's at least a well know retail distributor from them with very good prices, so that's a big incentive to choose Asus over Gigabyte (whom do have some degree of support over here, but not as much in my opinion).

I'll keep you posted on how things turn out after I start working with my new computer and let you know how the Asus P8Z68-V behaves

How did you new ASUS P8Z68-V behaves then?

 

[grenade01]

How did you new ASUS P8Z68-V behaves then?

I know you're talking to him, but since this thread is revived... I just wanted to make a blurb about my experience getting my mobo replaced.

3 repairs, 2 refurbs, and finally 1 new in box.

It took like 6 months. I haven't even tried the new one at this point since I've been using that gigabyte I mentioned.
I plan on building a friend a computer soon so I'm going to sell him the new asus motherboard.

I expect the new in box one to work though........... it better!

What an experience that was.

 

[spinitboy]

I know this is a little old now, but thought I'd add my 2 cents.

I bought an ASUS P8Z68-V in November - had to get it replaced within 2 weeks as couldn't get it to stay stable for longer than an hour even with no overclock etc. Found that I also got bad batch of RAM which also got replaced. Got another board and QVL RAM for the ASUS and managed to get it to work fine for 3 months, then 2 days ago (with no changes to the system and no overclock etc), it wouldn't even post and the BOOT_DEVICE_LED on the board itself was red. Removed all boot devices, still the same. Cleared CMOS and managed to get the ASUS splash screen, but then it would hang and the BOOT_DEVICE_LED was lit again. Tried changing the RAM and removing the GPU, but still the same.
Managed to get the board changed under warranty and I've have said I will NEVER go back to ASUS again (My reseller said I could swap it for another brand) Its a shame as I have an ASUS Graphics card and its been fine for over a year.

I am now leaning towards a GIGABYTE as I had a EP45T-UD3R and it was steady stable for nearly 3 years with no issues at all.
Am sending back the POS ASUS motherboard and going to get the GIGABYTE one as I know they're pretty damn reliable. (I was looking at the Asrock Extreme 7 too as its been given a good review).

anyways.... long story short - Asus boards are NOT up to the quality they used to be. They might win a lot of awards, but be warned, they'll probably die within 3 months if you don't throw it out of the window in pure frustration before that!

 

[TheXhosa]

I will tell only few things about Asus,Gigabyte and about how people build systems these days IMO of course :

1. Gigabyte relies on MoBo's and GPU's the only thing besides that is the keyboard + mouse ( osmium krypton series ) which is a little extra
2. Asus on the other hand makes Mo Bos , GPU's , monitors, tablets, laptops and the list can go on.
Main line is ( life experience ) : You cannot be a violin expert if you play the guitar, the drums, the sax and the xylophone at the same time.

About people building their systems I can see a fault, they are not looking for a pattern like if you buy a damn Gigabyte Mo Bo you should use everything you can to create your system from Gigabyte and if you do so with Asus again you should stick with Asus as far as they go with their products.
And when you have to choose other components for your PC search for the best suited components for your build see what does Gigabyte recommend or Asus recommend or experts recommend for these two specific MoBo for best performance don't just make a Brand Top Ten Christmas Tree because it doesn't work like that.
Main conclusion is ( life experience ) : You can't get stability from chaos .