Mobo suggestion for g3258?

sulblazer · 10-22-2015, 06:56 PM #1

I managed to snag a used (never been overclocked said previous owner) Haswell G3258 for 40 bucks. I have a spare 460gtx, 8gb of memory, plenty of spares HDD, and an old 800 watt PS I pulled from HP work station (overkill, but whatever). All I'm missing is a decent Mobo. I would like for it to be under 100 bucks, ITX form factor, and allows easy overclocking. I was thinking this'll be my HTPC, Emulation gaming, and some PC gaming (Final Fantasy 14, Ultimate Street Fighter IV, Guild Wars 2, Steam indie games, and Street Fighter 5 when it's released...nothing too demanding @ 720p...yes, i'm still rocking that resolution TV). Suggestions?

**KHg8m3r** · 10-23-2015, 09:13 AM #2

Get a Z97 board. Go to PCpartpicker.com, it lists most major retailers, and you can sort by price and reviews.

sulblazer · 10-23-2015, 10:35 AM #3

I settled for an H81 board from my local Fry's that price-matched Amazon. After everything said and done, all I really wanted was a simple, inexpensive board that accommodates overclocking and with at least 1 usb 3.0. My research has led me to believe that there's very little performance difference between an H and Z board. So I settled with an MSI H81. The store return policy allows me 2 weeks to play with it and decide whether I like the board or not.

**KHg8m3r** · 10-23-2015, 02:05 PM #4

H boards don't have official support for overclocking

sulblazer · 10-23-2015, 02:49 PM #5

True. From what other reviewers claim, however, over clocking the g3258 is just a matter of a few clicks on this msi board and seems very stable up to 4.2g. Also, after looking at the tutorial...it doesn't seem difficult at all. I think I can manage without official support, thanks.

ENAI · 10-23-2015, 05:56 PM #6

As far as I know, only Asus has confirmed OC support for all H81, B85 and H97 boards. There are models from other companies that allow for this too, but you should be really careful and make extra sure that they do. There can also be quite significant differences in the OC results when using "non-qualified" mobos.

I don't know if you already bought the MSI board but let's post this anyways. Here is a pretty trustworthy list on what should work and how well: (http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2389948)

sulblazer · 10-23-2015, 06:45 PM #7

Thank you for the resource! I'll post my oc results and some benches against my main desktop in my profile when I get to assembling the system next week. Probably by the middle of next week!

sulblazer · 11-07-2015, 10:16 PM #8

Aww man. I think I might have to go with a Z-board or stick to Win 7 or some other OS. Apparently, Intel snuck a microcode that affects the overclockability of their chips on non-z boards for windows 10. Furthermore, took me a whole night trying to figure out how to install windows 10 without getting an error code. I just updated the bios to my mobo (returned the MSI H81 for an Asus B85) and Win 10 upgrade installation finally went through...but we'll see if it'll allow me to overclock the g3258.

So, a bit of warning to anyone OCing a G3258 on a non-z board...be careful with your updates. I read on reddit that some people are having issues with the microcode even on windows 7. There seems to be a workaround that involves deleting/renaming a file out of Windows/system 32...but that's always a risky endeavor. Good luck, all.

**mbc07** · 11-08-2015, 01:15 AM #9

* sigh *
That's not true. The booting issues with Windows 10 aren't related to your motherboard, they are related to the build you're using: if you use a Technical Preview or an Insider Preview build of Windows 10, in almost all cases it'll refuse to boot if you have OC, and that's something MS did to prevent false bug reports caused by unstable OCs. RTM build of Windows 10 doesn't have this "lock".

sulblazer · 11-08-2015, 06:58 PM **#10**

That's strange because it seems that most folks with Z series board do not have the same issue with the bootloop associated with OCing while H and B series board seem to be the overwhelming majority of the overclocking issues. Maybe I'm reading incorrect information, but that's what I gathered from what I've read so far. So what you're telling me and the information I've gathered so far seem to be contradictory. And please...don't do the "* sigh*" bit...it comes off as condescending and unhelpful.