Question about the Gigabyte GA-B85M-D3H

[Northwain]

For an entry level board is the Gigabyte GA-B85M-D3H a good buy if I'm using a i5 4690 and a GTX 970? If not could any of you recommend a better alternative? Nothing too pricey please.

Thanks in advance.

 

[geofelt]

That combination works.

Considering that a i5-4690K costs only about 5% more, I would buy that.
A conservative overclock gets you perhaps 20% more compute power.

You will need a Z97 based motherboard to overclock.
Here is an inexpensive one @ $60 the combination actually less than what you listed.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135389

 

[yeskay]

For an entry level board is the Gigabyte GA-B85M-D3H a good buy if I'm using a i5 4690 and a GTX 970? If not could any of you recommend a better alternative? Nothing too pricey please.

Thanks in advance.

Hello Northwain,

I suggest you get the most popular non-K i5 4590 3.3Ghz $189.95 instead of i5 4690 3.5Ghz $214.99, as the only difference between them is only 0.2Ghz. So the performance difference between them will be high negligible. Paying extra $25 for negligible performance difference is not worth the money.

The Gigabyte GA-B85M-D3H is B85 chipset based motherboard which may require BIOS update even for it to recognize the either of the Haswell Refresh processors i5 4590/4690. So a motherboard with H97 chipset is desirable to make everything work out-of-the-box.

Consider this quality combo of stability, durability and performance:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($189.95 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H97-D3H ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($86.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $276.94
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-06-20 12:59 EDT-0400

If you're looking for Micro ATX board, then consider this:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($189.95 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H97M-D3H Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($75.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $265.94
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-06-20 13:08 EDT-0400

Why Gigabyte motherboards are the best?

Because they make stable, durable and performance oriented Motherboards with lowest RMA %. See the images below:

Gigabyte with least RMA percentage over the past two years

Major Motherboard and Graphics Card Manufacturers RMA Ratings

Read the full article here - Reliability report: Gigabyte top for motherboards, MSI for graphics cards


Cheers!