Good deal, I'm a big fan of the Gigabyte mobo's. Shame it isnt mATX, as I'm doing a secret build for my daughter, but i already have the case its going in.
pete_l
11 May 16#3
Same price as Amazon
NeoTrix to pete_l
11 May 161#4
They were fast on the price match, checked when posted. Cheers! Updated
xela333
11 May 161#5
Not a fan of gigabyte, just unlucky with their products but this is a good product for a great price. Heat
treacle13 to xela333
11 May 16#13
Their warranty process is good and in the UK.
LewsTherin
11 May 16#6
Damn so cheap
mxer450
11 May 161#7
I'm looking for a deal on a 1156, this would of been ideal ..
Hootwo
11 May 16#8
Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, Asrock - although mostly good, they've all made their share of lemons!
Good technical reviews of mobos by end users can often be found at newegg e.g. clicky This one looks good...
matt101101
11 May 161#9
I've got a Gigabyte Z97P-D3, which seems to be a slightly lower spec version of this board, and it's been nothing but fantastic for well over a year; my i5-4690k happily sits at 4.7Ghz at under 1.3v.
If you need a Z97 'board and don't need SLI support, these cheap Gigabyte models seem to be a fantastic option. Your CPU won't be any more overclockable even if you spend 5x as much (or even more...) on a top of the line Z97 'board, most people will just end up with a load of features they're never going to use.
The only real issue to bear in mind, aside from the lack of SLI support, is that these cheaper 'boards don't have Wi-Fi built in. I can imagine this is the kind of thing some people would just assume is present and then be disappointed when the 'board arrives.
Heat added, OP. :smiley:
xela333 to matt101101
11 May 16#14
It's pretty rare for any motherboard to have built in Wi-Fi tbh. Unless it's a small ITX board
chocolatenomlike
11 May 16#10
i wouldnt say ASrock is good, they're cheap and get the job done cheap, but not good :laughing:
rev6
11 May 16#11
They're good, just not great?
chocolatenomlike
11 May 16#12
damn, this and the upcoming NVIDIA 1080 is making want me want to start building a new rig, eventhough it has only been 2 years since I built my last one :smile:
rev6 to chocolatenomlike
11 May 16#15
No need if you have a decent CPU :wink:
fishmaster to chocolatenomlike
12 May 16#21
Your smiley will change to sad when it's every 2 months, trust me on this. Here's one I prepared earlier >:disappointed:
Donkii
11 May 16#16
I have an ASRock board, what's wrong with them? :disappointed: I have the Z97M Pro4 board and it's been great, nice easy bios, nice and cool and does everything I need.
arthurplank
11 May 16#17
I wonder what would be the best bang per buck CPU to go with this. All the Broadwell stuff seems so expensive at the moment.
moneybag to arthurplank
11 May 162#18
Pentium g3258 for general desktop use.
i5 4690K for gaming.
i7 4790K for rendering and encoding.
matt101101 to arthurplank
11 May 162#19
It's between the i5-4690k, i7-4790k for most people, it depends whether you have any use for the hyper-threading capabilities of the i7 chip. I don't know if these boards can use a Xeon E3 1231v3, which I believe is a cheaper version of the standard i7-4790 without an iGPU, I'm by no means an expert on Xeon chips.
matt101101
11 May 16#20
A fair few higher end 'board have Wi-Fi these days, presumably as a relatively low cost addition to bulk out the spec list and help justify the rather large price tags.
If you're a first time builder and aren't used to desktop PCs, I can see that it would be easy to miss the fact the average ATX 'board doesn't have Wi-Fi and end up shelling out for a standalone Wi-Fi receiver.
That said, it is probably cheaper to buy a cheaper board like this and get a separate Wi-Fi receiver than it is to buy an ATX 'board with built in Wi-Fi.
bigbloke
12 May 16#22
Nothing they are Asus' budget brand made in the exact same factories.
Uncommon Sense
12 May 16#23
They are no longer part of ASUStek, they are now owned by Pegatron, and have been for a number of years.
rev6
12 May 16#24
Pegatron is owned by ASUS.
MusicmanJP
12 May 16#25
I have built a computer for my friend with this motherboard and I would not recommend it at all. Awful for any overclocking, hard to even access BIOS reliably. All sorts of issues with not displaying through the correct output, really avoid avoid avoid. Spend another £30 and get a nice MSI Z97 or something.
moonkeh to MusicmanJP
12 May 161#26
You may have had it in Ultra-Fast Boot, which skips past the abilty to go into UEFI. I made this mistake, and had to download the Gigabyte software which allowed me to enter boot into UEFI from desktop and disable Ultra-Fast boot. Overclocking seems fine, not really delved into that. Can't speak for display output as I use a GPU.
matt101101 to MusicmanJP
12 May 16#27
Overclocking is fine on my even lower end Z97 Gigabyte 'board, a Z97P-D3. I'd say 4.7Ghz @ under 1.3v is perfectly acceptable for a 4690k.
As for not being able to get into the UEFI, you probably had the fast boot thing turned on which skips past the option to boot into the UEFI. Gigabyte offer a piece of software which allows you to boot into the UEFI from Windows, though personally I just have the fast boot option turned off.
As for the display output, I'm not sure what's going on there. The Z97P-D3 only has HDMI, so it can't really use the wrong output. Besides, I have my display connected to my GPU, not my motherboard.
moonkeh
12 May 16#28
...are we the same person?
matt101101
12 May 16#29
If you're the little voice in my head which keeps telling me I need to buy a GTX 1080 and is super excited for the new Witcher 3 expansion, yes :stuck_out_tongue:!
rev6
12 May 16#30
I'm sure there's plenty of people with that little voice :smile:
![Fresh Breakfast Meat Box (Using code) @ Campbells Meat [Haggis / Lorne Sausage / Bacon / Black Pudding & More]](/images/topics/208684_1.jpg)
![[Xbox One] Q. u. b. e: Director's Cut on Deals with Gold](/images/topics/208716_1.jpg)
Opening post
I'll pop the compatible CPU list in the first comment, in case you're fairly new to building your own PC and want to check.
Basic specs below (won't hammer them all in here because it might break you eyes, but they are of course in the link anyway)
Chipset: Intel Z97 Express
Memory: 4x DDR3-3000(OC)/ 2933(OC)/ 2800(OC)/ 2666(OC)/ 2600(OC)/ 2500(OC)/ 2400(OC)/ 2200(OC)/ 2133(OC)/ 2000(OC)/ 1866(OC)/ 1800(OC)/ 1600/ 1333 DIMM Slots, Dual Channel, Non-ECC, Max Capacity of 32GB
Slots: 1x PCI-Express 3.0 x16 Slot, 1x PCI-Express 2.0 x16 Slot (runs at x4), 2x PCI-Express 2.0 x1 Slots, 3x PCI Slots
SATA: 6x SATA3 Ports, Support RAID 0, 1, 5, 10; 1x SATA Express Port
1 x D-Sub port, supporting a maximum resolution of 1920x1200at60Hz. 1 x DVI-D
All comments (31)
Amazon match Thanks Pete_l
Good technical reviews of mobos by end users can often be found at newegg e.g. clicky This one looks good...
If you need a Z97 'board and don't need SLI support, these cheap Gigabyte models seem to be a fantastic option. Your CPU won't be any more overclockable even if you spend 5x as much (or even more...) on a top of the line Z97 'board, most people will just end up with a load of features they're never going to use.
The only real issue to bear in mind, aside from the lack of SLI support, is that these cheaper 'boards don't have Wi-Fi built in. I can imagine this is the kind of thing some people would just assume is present and then be disappointed when the 'board arrives.
Heat added, OP. :smiley:
It's pretty rare for any motherboard to have built in Wi-Fi tbh. Unless it's a small ITX board
i5 4690K for gaming.
i7 4790K for rendering and encoding.
If you're a first time builder and aren't used to desktop PCs, I can see that it would be easy to miss the fact the average ATX 'board doesn't have Wi-Fi and end up shelling out for a standalone Wi-Fi receiver.
That said, it is probably cheaper to buy a cheaper board like this and get a separate Wi-Fi receiver than it is to buy an ATX 'board with built in Wi-Fi.
As for not being able to get into the UEFI, you probably had the fast boot thing turned on which skips past the option to boot into the UEFI. Gigabyte offer a piece of software which allows you to boot into the UEFI from Windows, though personally I just have the fast boot option turned off.
As for the display output, I'm not sure what's going on there. The Z97P-D3 only has HDMI, so it can't really use the wrong output. Besides, I have my display connected to my GPU, not my motherboard.