The Motherboard tier list

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I can go till $180 for mobo. So price is not a parameter until reaches my limit. Between those two mobos which one is best on performance side??
 
They are about equal. They have similar features and performance. Personally, I like the Gigabyte boards better myself, but there really isn't much to not like about the ASUS either. The ASUS Z170-Pro Gaming, ASUS Z170 Hero VIII and Gigabyte Z170-Gaming 7 are all a bit more money, but are very good choices as well. If you don't need any specific features offered on those boards and don't plan to do any serious overclocking (Medium-ish overclocking is ok) then I'd just go with the two boards already mentioned.
 
As far as i i am aware, the motherboard Tier list is not about quality of the motherboards, rather of the order that the third party components such intel deliver their chipset to
Tier 1 get them first and so on
 
Probably not, unless I decide to tackle it at some point. I don't know what happened to Meteorsraining, but after multiple attempts by PM and by email to contact him, it seems like either something has happened in his personal life or something happened here that left him disgruntled. I'm not sure either way, but I didn't get so much as an "I've just got a lot going on right now" so I don't expect to see any changes happening to this thread anytime soon. More's the pity.
 
Darkbreeze i'm looking for a good gaming mobo and i ended up with MSI Z170A Gaming Pro and ASUS Z170 Pro Gaming..Which one do you think is better? :)
 
Gigabyte Z170X-Gaming 5, Z170 Pro Gaming or ASUS Z170-A if you want the better of the budget options. In reality, the MSI board is probably fine too, I just don't particularly like MSI motherboards from past experiences. I know they are not like they used to be, but it's trained behavior.
 
I did not see a class for the new socket that Intel has released, the LGA1151. Do you have any plans to add them to the list?
 
this really is a great post, gave me great place to start when I built a system last year. The power supply post too, I think I'll go thank them also!
 


Dark Breeze,

I was looking at the Gigabyte Z170XP-SLI and the Asus Z170-A. Any thoughts or experience on these motherboards?
For my local store, the Gigabyte Z170XP is about $35 cheaper than the Asus Z170-A.

Thanks in advance
 
I'd go with the Gigabyte Z170x-Gaming 5 in that price range. The Z170-A and AR are very good boards for the price too. Whichever is less expensive or matches your color scheme better if you have one, is fine. Both the Gaming 5 and A are excellent budget overclocking boards.
 


Darkbreeze, thanks for your quick feedback! Just out of curiosity how does the gigabyte z170-xp fit in there? Currently the XP is about $30 cheaper than the z170-gaming 5 and even cheaper than Asus z170-A. Is there a big difference between gigabytes gaming 5 and XP model in terms of build quality and features? Sorry this is my first build and am trying to get the right one!
 
The XP-SLI is ok if your budget dictates a slightly cheaper board. Seems that board overclocks ok, but has fewer power phases than boards slightly more expensive, and doesn't have the greatest UEFI BIOS, lacking some features like advanced fan controls. Overall, it's probably fine unless you're nitpicky like many of us are. I think the difference in price is justified going with the Z170-A or Gaming 5, but only because I know specifically what I have to have and what I don't. For you, it's probably ok.

It has everything else you'd expect, like an additional CPU_OPT fan header for water cooling and 3 system fan headers. I kind of like to see four system fan headers in addition to the CPU and CPU_OPT headers, but even the gaming 5 only has that many so it's really kind of a Gigabyte thing on the Z170 mid class boards. I'm sure you'll be fine with any of those boards.

I did see mention of a bios bug related to memory on the XP-SLI though, so you might want to make sure that has already been addressed in a bios update before purchasing that model.
 
Where are the X79 chipsets? Although the Sandy-bridge processors are becoming a bit dated and lack the graphics capability's of Haswell processors they provide a viable alternative for business work stations.
 
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