Recommendations for a new motherboard (Asus/Intel)

[Guest]

Hey everyone!

I'm willing to build a new PC for gaming. Neither cheap nor too expensive though...

- CPU will be i5 3.4 Ghz - willing to upgrade to i7 in one year or so.
- RAM Corsair 8Gb 1600Mhz (1x8Gb is faster than 2x4Gb?)
- GeForce GTX 650 2048 MB GDDR5 PCI Express
- SSD 32Gb (OS only)

Now, as I'll be getting an offboard Video Card, I'm looking for an **ASUS/INTEL** motherboard **WITHOUT ONBOARD VIDEO**.

What is your recommendation for mid-way motherborad with USB 3.0?
Thanks!

 

[ksham]

A few suggestions:
1. dual-channel > single (2x4GB > 1x8GB)
2. GTX 650 Ti Boost if that fits your budget.
3. 32GB is far too small for SSD unless you are running Linux. For Windows, the OS itself will take up over 60% of it. And you should leave about 15% free space at all times on the SSD. So that gives almost no space left, especially considering configs, updates, etc.

Before we talk about motherboards, what is your budget for the build?

 

[Guest]

A few suggestions:
1. dual-channel > single (2x4GB > 1x8GB)
2. GTX 650 Ti Boost if that fits your budget.
3. 32GB is far too small for SSD unless you are running Linux. For Windows, the OS itself will take up over 60% of it. And you should leave about 15% free space at all times on the SSD. So that gives almost no space left, especially considering configs, updates, etc.

Before we talk about motherboards, what is your budget for the build?

thanks

Since I'm in Brazil, the price here is not the same tagged in US retail (even making the conversion).

This is the memory I'm willing to get
http://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/MLB-492015587-8gb-memoria-corsair-ddr3-1600mhz-vengeance-1x8gb-lacrado-_JM

these are the mobo that fit in my pocket for now:
http://compare.buscape.com.br/proc_unico?id=3623&xro=0,4291&precomax=519,99&precomin=400,0&xrc4291=220900
(or anything similar to those)

All of them have onboard video. That really pisses me off!

 

[Guest]

Dual channel corsair 2x4gb is almost twice the price!
Does it really worth it? I mean, is it twice faster?

 

[Tradesman1]

Look at the Asus Z77-A it can use the i5s onboard graphics or a discrete graphics card, maybe a 3570K CPU

 

[Guest]

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Z77A/#specifications
Yep! This one is kind of what I'm looking for.
It's sad it comes with onboard video... waste;

intel Z77 will be! I'll just pick a flavour!
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Platform_Products/

 

[Tradesman1]

The mobo doesn't COME with on-board video, those ports are for output from the integrated GPU in the CPU, if the CPU you pick has it - most do.

 

[Guest]

hmm... i didn't know that! I was stuck in the old days when the mainboard had a video chipset on it... :-O

"discrete graphics card" what does it mean?
I was looking at this one and it is not discrete at all
Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 TI Boost 2GB GDRR5 192 Bits PCI Express 3.0 ZT-61201-10M Zotac

Intel i7 vs i5:
Here in brazil, an i7 is twice (about US$ 450.00) the price of an i5.
Will it worth? Will this make all the difference when playing modern game? Or encoding Flac/M4A/H264 formats?

Which one performs better?
[ ] i7 with single channel 8Gb Corsair 1600Mhz
[ ] i5 with dual channel 8Gb Corsair 1600Mhz

 

[Tradesman1]

Discrete is a add-on GPU card - i5 w/ dual channel (preferably a K model CPU and the 5 is about equal to the 7 unless you have a need for Hyper Threading, then the i7 gets called for