Should I worry about a Z77 board?

[intensity254]

Currently I have a 2600k and I am going to be buying a new motherboard sometime soon. Should I even bother going with a newer Z77 motherboard, when I can get an older Sandy Bridge chipset for cheaper with the same features?

 

[Hazle]

depends. what's your current board, and why the upgrade?

if you already got an OCable board, and have no plans to upgrade the CPU, i see no reason for you to upgrade at all.

if you're seriously upgrading for the sake of USB3.0 or any other ports/features, well if you're unhappy without it and willing to spend, why not?

if you plan to upgrade to an Ivy bridge cpu than yeah, getting a Z77 would be better if you care about RAM speed. most Z68/P67/H67 boards would require you to update the BIOS to use an IB CPU, assuming it's compatible at all.

if you plan to keep the 2600k for a long while, then yes, an old SB chipset is good, better when it is cheaper.

 

[intensity254]

depends. what's your current board, and why the upgrade?

if you already got an OCable board, and have no plans to upgrade the CPU, i see no reason for you to upgrade at all.

if you're seriously upgrading for the sake of USB3.0 or any other ports/features, well if you're unhappy without it and willing to spend, why not?

if you plan to upgrade to an Ivy bridge cpu than yeah, getting a Z77 would be better if you care about RAM speed. most Z68/P67/H67 boards would require you to update the BIOS to use an IB CPU, assuming it's compatible at all.

if you plan to keep the 2600k for a long while, then yes, an old SB chipset is good, better when it is cheaper.

Well, my old motherboard died on me, and MSI wont cover it for some reason. I'll probably go with a Z68 board to be honest. My current graphics card runs fine in PCI 2.0, most motherboards support past 1600Mhz on the Z68 platform, and I can always just get away with a BIOS update if I every feel the need to upgrade my 2600k.

 

[Hazle]

well that was rather unfortunate. MSI has been rather bad as of late, be it in quality of their products or customer services. a pity how i used to recommend them for the price.

well, there's still the usual Asus and Gigabyte, but Asrock has been doing very well ever since the Z68 boards were introduced, especially for the price, though they still have their problems from time to time i.e; no sound, defective PCIe lane, board flexing, etc, but i guess even Asus and Gigabyte aren't prone to that. some examples of their boards and the customer's response.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157279

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157296

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157293

 

[Smeg45]

Any Asus PRO or Gigabyte UD3+ are quality and built to last. I wouldn't buy Asrock and I don't recommend it.

 

[amuffin]

So you just contradicted yourself with that statement? ^^

 

[Smeg45]

So you just contradicted yourself with that statement? ^^

Edited. Rebuilt my own PC today and I'm tired.

 

[arzbhatia]

I TOTALLY recommend you buy a Z77 board. If you don't wanna spend much. you could go for the Asus P8Z77-V board, which is a fantastic board for it's price