Help picking mobo so i can finalize build

[treyvon]

I need some help in picking a motherboard, id' like to keep the price of it under 300$ and id like it to support sli/xfire for at least 2 cards (without an express slot performance hindrance) more is fine though

I believe this should be all the information a person would need for compatibility concerns right? if not more than needed.

System Usage: Gaming

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Whatever is cheapest, i usually just use amazon

Country: USA BABY!

Overclocking: Yes, definitely

SLI or Crossfire: in the future

Case: Corsair Obsidian 650D

CPU: 2500K

GPU: Radeon 7970

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16 GB DDR3

Cooling: Corsair H100

HDD: Western Digital WD Scorpio Black 750 GB SATA 3 GB/s 7200 RPM

SSD: Crucial 64 gb for boot only and a crucial 128gb for games and most used programs

MOBO: now i have the
ASUS LGA 1155 - Z68 - PCIe 3.0 and UEFI BIOS Intel Z68 ATX DDR3 2200 LGA 1155 Motherboards P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 in my amazon cart currently but i would like suggestions on an upgrade to this mobo as it only has 1 slot running at 16x

 

[yanjustin98]

If you honestly want a motherboard that's going to run more than 1 PCI Express 2.0x16 slot, I would take a look at this one. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157269 It's an ASRock Z68 motherboard with 5 PCIE 2.0x16. Since you'll probably use the 1st and 3rd because of space issues, I compensated for that and you can still run both at x16 speed. Pretty pricy, but that's probably one of the closer matches you will get. For all the hardware stuff and software, I would suggest looking at Newegg more frequently than Amazon. Hope I helped!

 

[amuffin]

8x/8x doesn't make any difference, as for your board. The asrock fataility professional is a good choice.

 

[treyvon]

8x/8x doesn't make any difference, as for your board.

explain please?

 

[amuffin]

From benchmarking/performance tests, there is 1% performance difference between 16x/16x and 8x/8x that is why board manufactuers don't bother adding 16x/16x support on all their slots.

 

[e56imfg]

From benchmarking/performance tests, there is 1% performance difference between 16x/16x and 8x/8x that is why board manufactuers don't bother adding 16x/16x support on all their slots.

Seriously? I always thought that it would cut the performance in half, since 16 / 2 = 8 lol.

Thanks for telling me this

As for the mobo, the Asus PRO will do fine No need to get a mobo with 5 PCI-e slots.

 

[palladin9479]

8x/8x is enough for ~this~ generation of GPU's, and honestly probably enough for the next as well. Similar to the PCIe 2.0 vs 3.0 debate.

Do you want to buy another MB in the next three years? If you don't mind, or are planning on upgrading within that period, then don't worry about 16x/16x or PCIe 3.0. If you want it to last at least through the next two to three generations of GPU's then you should look for a board that supports 16x/16x and possibly PCIe 3.0. I don't know when Intel will change CPU socket types, they seem to like to do that constantly, so it's a safe bet that if your upgrade your CPU in a couple of years you'll be forced to upgrade your MB.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been moved from the section CPU & Components to section Motherboards & Memory by Mousemonkey