admin89 Wrote:MSI Z87 G45 Dragon - Gaming mobo is a good competitor to Asrock Z87 E4
It has the same high-end onboard codec as Asrock E4 (Realtek ALC1150) , killer LAN (no lag)
I personally buy Gigabyte mobo if can't find any Asrock mobo though
MSI doesn't have the best reputation on the internet. There warranties aren't as good, their defect ratings are higher, and lots of people complain about bios issues that take forever to be fixed. I generally try to steer clear of them. Although they do seem to have improved a lot in recent years.
It looks like the audio system is indeed similar to asrocks Z87 boards. Although they don't list any SNR or THD ratings so I'm willing to bet that they're still worse, though probably not by much. The killer LAN chip is really just an arm cpu used for packet management. Tests have shown that it has little if any impact on lag. Especially if you're running over the internet since most of the latency comes from the ISP and routers. And of course it's useless for a wireless connection. It's really intended for LAN parties.
I'll agree that gigabyte is a nice alternative. For me personally it's asrock > asus > gigabyte. Though I haven't used a whole lot of gigabyte products so that might be a bit biased. I would certainly be comfortable buying from biostar, asus, or gigabyte given that they all have good reputations.
(06-19-2013, 09:27 PM)ninjin Wrote: [ -> ]Upgraded to haswell (4670K), here are my results:
Stock (turbo'ing to 3.7 or 3.8?):
90
68
108
4.12 GHz
103
80
124
4.50 GHz:
113
89
133
Currently studying for exams etc. I'll be able to fine tune the overclock, and upload images of the results in about a week.
Fuck. I knew I should've waited. I upgraded from a Phenom II x6 to a 3770k back in April. These Haswell scores are really good. Here I am with my specs in sig, save for CPU clock which is at 4.2Ghz right now.
85
71
105
Damn I'm jelly. Wish I waited for the 4770k
That MSI board is £20 cheaper than the ASRock board.
As for what I've seen recommended on my travels, I've mainly seen recommendations for Gigabyte boards, and not much else. If I did end up going for one, what would be a similar model?
It doesn't really matter. Almost any ATX sized chassis will fit micro-atx boards too. The only two boards they have with a high end audio chipset are that one and the GIGABYTE GA-G1.Sniper 5, which costs twice as much.
I suppose you could try to get a cheaper board + an audio card instead. But you were looking for one with comparable features and those two are the only ones I could find.
You mean was still in stock a few hours ago. Anyway, it costs more, and the only advantage is that I can actually buy it.
Does it have to be from scan?
I'd really rather it was. They're close enough that when something breaks for no reason I can shout at them, and much cheaper than anywhere else I can fully trust to actually give me what I pay for (amazon etc have sent me dead products/fake products which I've paid full price for (although technically it was amazon marketplace, but regular amazon claim not to have any extreme4s).