My desktop motherboard has just died, so I'm looking for advice on good price/performance options for replacing it. It's an Asus P8Z68-VLX with an i5 processor from about 5 years ago.
I will probably keep my existing tower case and PSU, as I tend to load my cases with drives and will also want to keep the two HDD's and BD-R drive that I already have. I may also keep the 256GB SSD on which the (Windows 10) O/S is currently installed, but have not made a final decision.
Other than general internet/MS Office/admin use, the PC is used for multi-track audio recording (using Reaper and an external USB audio interface), other music software (e.g. Band-In-A-Box), home video editing from time to time (Vegas Video), photo editing using Photoshop, and music/video playback. I'm a very occasional gamer (only F1 or Pro Evo), but probably don't use it for gaming for whole months at a time. I also do a little Android app development using Android Studio.
I have a 3 monitor setup (2 monitors plus an HDMI TV), but could probably keep my existing Asus GTX 550 TI graphics adapter which offers 2 video ports, so a motherboard with a single graphics port would probably be fine in conjunction with the Asus card.
The only other "special" requirements that I have are:
If I keep my existing case, drives and graphics adapter I guess I'm looking for a motherboard with CPU/cooling and 32GB RAM. Also something which will allow me to use the onboard graphics in parallel with the 2 displays on the GTX 550 TI. My budget isn't fixed, but I was thinking around £500-600 (without O/S).
I believe that Ryzen now competes well with Intel for price/performance, and have had a quick look at Ryzen 7 3700X based solutions - for example this:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CCL-4-4G...599027?hash=item1a7fc270f3:g:iyoAAOSw3Dtdyy-I
...but would really appreciate any recommendations (and places to buy for a good deal).
I will probably keep my existing tower case and PSU, as I tend to load my cases with drives and will also want to keep the two HDD's and BD-R drive that I already have. I may also keep the 256GB SSD on which the (Windows 10) O/S is currently installed, but have not made a final decision.
Other than general internet/MS Office/admin use, the PC is used for multi-track audio recording (using Reaper and an external USB audio interface), other music software (e.g. Band-In-A-Box), home video editing from time to time (Vegas Video), photo editing using Photoshop, and music/video playback. I'm a very occasional gamer (only F1 or Pro Evo), but probably don't use it for gaming for whole months at a time. I also do a little Android app development using Android Studio.
I have a 3 monitor setup (2 monitors plus an HDMI TV), but could probably keep my existing Asus GTX 550 TI graphics adapter which offers 2 video ports, so a motherboard with a single graphics port would probably be fine in conjunction with the Asus card.
The only other "special" requirements that I have are:
- Ideally alot of USB ports - I currently have 10 USB devices connected, either directly or indirectly (via a powered hub)
- ALOT of RAM 32GB? - I often run one or two Windows or Linux VMs concurrently, each of which have at least 4GB RAM allocated. My existing machine has 16GB RAM, and usually runs at 100% RAM usage.
If I keep my existing case, drives and graphics adapter I guess I'm looking for a motherboard with CPU/cooling and 32GB RAM. Also something which will allow me to use the onboard graphics in parallel with the 2 displays on the GTX 550 TI. My budget isn't fixed, but I was thinking around £500-600 (without O/S).
I believe that Ryzen now competes well with Intel for price/performance, and have had a quick look at Ryzen 7 3700X based solutions - for example this:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CCL-4-4G...599027?hash=item1a7fc270f3:g:iyoAAOSw3Dtdyy-I
...but would really appreciate any recommendations (and places to buy for a good deal).