Buying Decision Advice: ASRock Z97E-ITX/AC or Asus Maximus VII Impact

[Edward Fernandez]

I'm preparing to downsize but upgrade to a mini itx build and need assistance/suggestions/opinions on motherboard choice. I've narrowed it down to ASRock Z97e-itx/ac and Asus Maximus VII Impact. The greatest difference between the two is price-about $100 and the reason for this post is to determine whether there is or isn't justification for the difference. Both offer features that I'm interested in: socket 1150, M.2 expansion, exceptional on board sound. It seems like the ASRock board offers a better bang for buck value however there are a few things that concern me such as clearance of cpu water block because of the VRM molules near between the cpu socket and I/O panel plus the cpu power connection isn't next to the 24 pin atx connector making it a challenge to route and from what I've been reading with the Asus board it offers better power management with its extended circuit board, better cable management but only 3 audio source connections except it's been reported as 7.1 surround. In your opinion, is the added cost of the Asus board worth the investment or is the ASRock board the better value?

 

[Onus]

I chose the Asus board myself, but my reasoning probably does not apply to you. It includes Asus' Sonic Radar, an overlay that you can use in some games to visually show you the direction of sound. Some people consider that cheating, but I'm deaf in one ear, so it is the ONLY way I can tell direction of sound.
The Asus board also offers three chassis fan headers (two on a riser). If you install a M.2 SSD, the PCIe slot drops down to x8. I do not know what the ASRock board does, so you might want to download its manual and take a look.
The Asus board also comes with some interesting and potentially useful utilities, such as the Keybot keyboard macro software (I've not played with it yet) and Daemon Tools, that lets you mount images of game (or other) CDs in a virtual drive.

 

[theyeti87]

Asus makes some of the best consumer motherboards around. $0.02 given

 

[Edward Fernandez]

Thank you for the input, on the ASRock board the M.2 slot is shared with the SATA express connector and only one of those can be used at any time.

 

[Edward Fernandez]

Update-I may have to inquire with owners of the ASRock z97e-itx board. From what I've been researching M.2 and SATA express both utilize pci-e lanes so I suspect that in using the M.2 or sata express ports will cause the pci-e 3.0 slot to reduce to x8. If that is the case then my decision becomes clearly to choose the ASUS board.