Ok so a few months ago my brand new PC died. There's been a whole lot of farting around since then and I've pissed away a fair bit of money taking it to repair shops only for them not to be able to find the problem. The closest thing to a diagnosis was the last repair shop I took it to who said they 'think' that the GPU died and took the mobo with it.
The good news is that the retailer has accepted my RMA request for the GPU and I'll be shipping it off shortly.
The bad news is that ASUS have no interest in replacing my mobo and so I'm gonna need a new one. I'm not really sure I want to buy another ASUS board based on my customer service experience with them, so I'd really like some help picking a new one. I thought the AsRock z77 extreme 3 looked ok, but I'd really appreciate some input before buying anything.
Here be my specs:
i5 4670k
Corsair RM650 PSU
EVGA GTX 760 ACX 2GB
Corsair Vengeance (low profile) 2 x 4GB
Corsair Carbide 200R Case
WD Caviar Blue 1TB
Kingston 120GB SSD
ASUS Z87-K Motherboard: Deceased
I think I'm gonna stick in an aftermarket cooler too, so if anyone can offer any suggestions for one in the range of about £20-30($30-50US?), that would be helpful too.
Has both SLI and crossfire. Number of gaming features. Trust it a lot more than some of the cheaper alternatives. I am partial to ASUS products, but their customer service does suck. I don't blame you for not wanting to use them again.
Or there's the G43 equivalent without SLI.
Here's a cheaper Gigabyte Sniper series motherboard:
I think out of these I like the G43 board. I'm only running a single card, and it's right in the price range too. I'm not sure about Gigabyte boards as I seem to remember people warning me about them before. From what I know their graphics cards are good, but their mobo's not so much. I can't remember why I think that though lol.
But yeah that MSI board's in the lead. Although I'm looking for function over fashion, it look's really cool too.
I wouldn't generalise based on brand. Sure, cheaper AMD Gigabyte and MSI motherboards can be problematic. There were inherent design flaws in the power phase design.
However, the premium MSI and Gigabyte boards for both Intel and AMD are nice.
You should always consider quality with cheaper boards, or older revisions.
I think the G43 is a good choice. I'm referring to this one:
Yeah I'm on your page I was referring to the gaming version.
I'm sure over time I'll gain a better knowledge and will be able to form better decisions of what to buy by myself. The thing is, being a relatively new PC gamer who's had a pretty crappy time luck wise I'm a bit weary of buying parts, so when I hear something bad about a brand it makes me look elsewhere.
Oh I know. You helped pick that ASUS board for me, and it was great. Easy to install, the BIOS was a breeze it was all good. But this long period of trying to find out what was wrong with it and my experience with their customer service has really put me off ASUS. I know it happens, but I can't help feeling a little butthurt. But it's all done now. I'm just looking forward to having the PC back. I've got a shit load of games waiting for me in my Steam library which I wanna get playing.
I have an ASUS Z87 plus and have had a problem with the clock being reset every few hours. I fixed it searching the web on their site. Other than that no complaints.
I use a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO, and highly recommend it. I was skeptical at first, due to its massive size. I used a stock cooler before, in a 2 fan (front and back) linked through a plastic tube to the CPU area. My previous c2d was very cool, but the haswell heats up more.
I must say, you can run any CPU with this without the fan and still stay cool (I've tried with an i7 4770, while using iGPU under stress - under 60 deg, idling 5-8 degrees higher than while using fan).
There are some really good silent noctua coolers I've researched about before purchasing. The LH 12 is very good for it's size.
Hi Mystery I may do some light overclocking at some point but as I've never done it before I'll be using it at stock speed for the time being. The G43 has what I need so I don't think I'll stretch for the G45.
Though, for the sake of £10-15 difference, you should consider the G45. You might want SLI GPUs in the future. Your gold rated 650W power supply should handle any SLI or crossfire configuration. You're probably going to be using this motherboard and i5 combo for near 7 years. It's £10 now to give yourself more options in the future.
£5 difference if you consider purchasing the G45 from Ebuyer and use their free shipping. Takes about a week to arrive.