Looking for LGA 1150, With dual PCi Express 3.0 X16 Slots, CrossfireX

[Naeem Rahman]

I am looking for cheapest motherboard which supports 1150 Socket having dual Pci Express 3.0 "X16" Slots so that I can add two R7 265....
Any brand
Secondly i don't know about these X16 or X8 what are these?
Plz help....

 

[Eximo]

Better off buying a single faster card in this situation.

Pretty much all H97 and Z97 boards will support crossfire at 8x/8x

No need for 16x/16x That would put you in the $250+ dollar range for a motherboard with a PLX chip for tri and quad crossfire/SLI configurations.

 

[Math Geek]

here is what newegg has along these lines http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007627%20600438202%20600176035&IsNodeId=1&name=2

in crossfire, both slots won't run at x16 anyway and should be x8 for each slot.

and the x8, x16 means how many pci lanes go to the slot. so x8 has 8 lanes and the x16 has 16 lanes. it has been shown over and over than x8 is plenty enough for 2 cards to run with no issues, especially lower cards like a 265.

do you already have the 2 r7-265's? if not it seems like a strange way to go. for the cost of 2 of those, you can get a single card that will probably outperform the 2 r7-265's. and you won't have all the headaches of crossfire.

 

[mlga91]

For light overclocking, or no overclocking at all:

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asrock-motherboard-z97extreme3

For a better overclocking:

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asrock-motherboard-z97extreme4

But i dont recomend you to do crossfire with two R7 265s, not all games scale well with crossfire, or even support it, you're better with a single good performing video card than two budget video cards in crossfire, this has a comparison of a 260x and a 7790 in crossfire, two 265s should do a little bit better:

 

[Naeem Rahman]

First I can't buy H97 its not overclock able, So its out
I have to buy Z97 with dual 8X slots but they are still expensive......
Some are there with some with one X4 slots or (PCI 2.0 X16), and they are a bit cheap, how much there will be decrease in the Performance

 

[Math Geek]

it should not cause any performance drop with those 2 cards to run one at x4. seen benchmarks that show very high end cards with almost no performance drop at x4 if any. i'd shoot for 2 x8 slots but if you have to, the x4 slot should be of no issue for you.

here are some z87 boards with 2 or more pcie slots. little cheaper than z97 ones http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007627%20600438202%20600438204%20600176035%20600176036&IsNodeId=1&name=3&Order=PRICE&Pagesize=30

it just seems your budget does not match your expectations. it never hurts to look but in the end your going to have to settle for less if you want to xfire those cards. do some searching as some of the other chipsets (h97 maybe?) have enabled oc'ing through bios updates.

this site used a cheap h81 board to oc the new pentium g3258 cpu with a bios update. it's possible you can as well if you do the homework to find a mobo that has done this updating.

 

[Naeem Rahman]

Sir Math Geek what will I be missing if I opt for Z87 or H97 Board?
Thanks

 

[Math Geek]

http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/What-is-new-in-Z97-and-H97-561/

this is a good rundown of z97 vs z87 and h97 vs h87. basically the difference is m.2 support. keep in mind this is only what each chipset is capable of, the motherboard maker decides what actually makes it onto the mobo. overclocking is also different from board to board and can be enabled with a bios update on some older non-oc boards but they should be quality boards or the oc will overpower the board and cause issues. lots of research is at hand for you unless someone here has personal experience oc some of these boards.

i'm sure you can find some older reviews and benchmarks using some of these z87 boards to show you it's potential.

in conclusion, you loose very little with the 87 series and only should worry if m.2 is in your immediate future.