Bad and Feature Lacking Motherboards

[navalweaponsofficer]

Do you guys think the quality and features of motherboards has improved or degraded over the years? I ask because I am completely frustrated over two motherboards that I have tried in the last month. ASrock Z77 Extreem 4 that turned out to have a bad 1155 socket. I replaced it with a Gigabyte Z77X-D3H and it has too many compatibility problems. It will not run my memory at 1600 MHZ the ASrock board at least did that when it worked. I spoke with Gigabyte Tech support last night because I could not get the system to boot from the intel RAID with an add in raid card installed. Their answer, the motherboard does not support two controllers in RAID at the same time. So now I need to send this board back also. By the way that is not listed as a limitation of the board in any of the boards documentation. So here I ask for help. I need a board with a Z77 chipset, that has 8 onboard SATA connectors and will support the use of an add in RAID card while using the intel RAID. I am thinking of going back to the ASRock board that I had before. Not looking to spend anymore than about $150. Thanks

 

[inzone]

In tying to keep within you requirements it looks like the Asrock Extreme 4 is just about the only board that can meet the 8 sata ports for under $150.