Which Z270, really?

[Shujee]

The more I read MOBO reviews on Amazon and newegg, the more I get confused. I'm building a moderate gaming machine that does break the bank for me, but should be upgradable in the near futrue once I have more money. I have finalized almost all components except for the motherboard. Here are my picks:

* i5 7600K
* Corsair Vengeance 2x8GB (3000/3200)
* Samsung 850 Pro (256GB)
* 2TB SATA HDD
* EVGA 650 G3
* MSI GTX-1060 Gaming X

So as u can see, the only major component left is the mainboard. Here are my considerations for the MOBO:

* Must be under $200. Nice if it is under $150, but not at the cost of losing any of the following
* Want to use Optane once it becomes affordable.
* Want SLI
* USB 3.1 Gen 2 support
* Nice to have (but not required) 802.11ac WIFI onboard

My research tells that I'll need to go for Z270 to support these features. So I went to pcpartpicker and filtered the list of available motherboards for these criteria:

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/motherboard/#X=0,20000&f=2&c=119&R=5,4

The list is still huge and each item's reviews are mixed. People keep complaining about all sorts of things like IO shields, weak brackets, poor design, lighting and what not. At one point I had almost decided in favor of Asus STRIX Z270-E GAMING, but then I saw people complaining about Asus's aftersale support and difficulties in getting warranty replacements.

Which of these motherboards do experts here recommend?

 

[SinxarKnights]

Asus products are decent and they do support them with BIOS and software updates for quite a while, but yeah their support is the worst i've ever dealt with. At one time they were sending me links to some software that was giving a 404 when i clicked it and they straight up called me a liar even after verifying that it wasn't just me getting the 404 (by people on the Asus ROG forums).

MSI and Gigabyte has good support and good quality. I won't recommend a board to you but if you think there might be an issue you would need to contact the manufacturer about, go with MSI or Gigabyte. ASrock support I can't really speak of. I have used their motherboards in the past but they are really just underdogs with some decent products if a little gimmicky. I found they tend not to support lower end products as well but that is expected since they would likely lose money by doing so.

 

[Seanie280672]

The more I read MOBO reviews on Amazon and newegg, the more I get confused. I'm building a moderate gaming machine that does break the bank for me, but should be upgradable in the near futrue once I have more money. I have finalized almost all components except for the motherboard. Here are my picks:

* i5 7600K
* Corsair Vengeance 2x8GB (3000/3200)
* Samsung 850 Pro (256GB)
* 2TB SATA HDD
* EVGA 650 G3
* MSI GTX-1060 Gaming X

So as u can see, the only major component left is the mainboard. Here are my considerations for the MOBO:

* Must be under $200. Nice if it is under $150, but not at the cost of losing any of the following
* Want to use Optane once it becomes affordable.
* Want SLI
* USB 3.1 Gen 2 support
* Nice to have (but not required) 802.11ac WIFI onboard

My research tells that I'll need to go for Z270 to support these features. So I went to pcpartpicker and filtered the list of available motherboards for these criteria:

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/motherboard/#X=0,20000&f=2&c=119&R=5,4

The list is still huge and each item's reviews are mixed. People keep complaining about all sorts of things like IO shields, weak brackets, poor design, lighting and what not. At one point I had almost decided in favor of Asus STRIX Z270-E GAMING, but then I saw people complaining about Asus's aftersale support and difficulties in getting warranty replacements.

Which of these motherboards do experts here recommend?

Here's your choices: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/products/motherboard/#c=119&l=2&E=1,3&X=0,15116

personally I would go with this one: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/Z270-GAMING-PRO-CARBON.html#productFeature-section

Supports 7th / 6th Gen Intel® Core™ / Pentium® / Celeron® processors for LGA 1151 socket
Supports DDR4-3866+(OC) Memory
DDR4 Boost with Steel Armor: Give your DDR4 memory a performance boost
VR Ready and VR Boost: Best virtual reality game experience without latency, reduces motion sickness
Mystic Light and Mystic Light Sync: 16.8 milliom colors /17 effects controlled in one click with GAMING APP or mobile devices.
Lightning Fast Game experience: Twin Turbo M.2, Steel Armor, M.2 Shield. Intel Optane Memory Ready, Lightning USB 3.1 Gen2
Audio Boost 4 with Nahimic 2: Reward your ears with studio grade sound quality for the most immersive gaming experience
GAMING LAN with LAN Protect, powered by Intel® : The best online gaming experience with lowest latency and bandwidth management
Military Class 5, Guard-Pro: Latest evolution in high quality components for best protection and efficiency
MULTI-GPU: With Steel Armor PCI-E slots. Supports NVIDIA SLI™ & AMD Crossfire™
In-Game Weapons: Game Boost, GAMING Hotkey, X-Boost, Xsplit Gamecaster
EZ Debug LED: Easiest way to troubleshoot
Click BIOS 5: Award-winning BIOS with high resolution scalable font, favorites and search function
GAMING CERTIFIED: 24-hour on- and offline game and motherboard testing by eSports players