Choose a motherboard for me please!
 

$144.99 Gigabyte Z68X-ud3H http://ncix.com/products/index.php?s...2&promoid=1359


OR

$149.99 Asus P8p67 http://www.ncix.com/products/index.p...S&promoid=1336

About me and my requirement:

My budget = not to pay more than $150.
I will be overclocking a 2600k (I am new at this), hopefully over 4.0ghz (on Air cooling)
I will not need fancy features like highend motherboard has, cuz i am a noob who cant be bother playing with too much settings.
I will be buying a video card for gaming later. Right now, I have an old 8400GS nvidia card in storage full of dust.


Thanks in advance. I know poeple loved Z68X-UD4 in another thread, but due to budget I can't do it, eventhough its pretty cool.

I think the answer to your question depends on whether you have the budget or inclination to purchase a SSD. What are your plans in regards to a SSD?

I just got the Z68X-UD4 basically for the SSD caching. Plus the Z68X boards look really nice without all the blingy blue heatsinks.

You should keep your 600T case.

Msi p67a-c43. It only has one pciex16 so you won't be able to xfire/sli (basic board with 1 gpu). This board has oc genie 2 so it will auto oc the 2600k to 4.2ghz. However since you want to just use air cooling.... It might not be the best idea. I recommend also buying a coolermaster hyper 212+ to go with this. Both these things will still be under 150$. Im pretty sure Linus has reviews or something on both these items.
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MSI uses crusty components for power delivery. I've seen many of their boards explode and catch fire.

I am not exaggerating.

EDIT: also, for the CPU cooler the Hyper 212+ is a good choice, but the 3rd revision for it is coming out very soon under a different name.

I am about to review a Gigabyte Z68A-D3H-B3. It has slightly lower power specs than the usual 'overclocking' boards, but is about $30 cheaper. Should be interesting to see if it still overclocks well.

i dont see a reason why anyone would choose a P67 over a Z68 board

Where can I read your reviews on products?

www.hardcoreware.net. My last mobo review was the Asus Crosshair IV Formula

Also working on a big SSD review, comparing 4 or 5 drives around the $200 price range

how's this http://ncix.com/products/?sku=51321&...n&promoid=1334for SSD caching, if I choose to go z68x-UD3h-b3? IS the extra $60bux worth it for the 5-10 second speed increase from booting or loading programs? I am not an impatient person and casually use my computer for internet, movies, gaming, uploading photos...etc

SSD is the single biggest upgrade you can make right now, provided the rest of the system is decently spec'd, and absolutely worth the money, IMO. It would be smart to knock a few bucks of your budget for the rest of the system in order to buy an SSD if you can. For caching, even a 60GB will be enough too.

EDIT: But that 30GB drive is pretty slow, so probably not worth it. Get something with at least 200 MB/s write. So you're looking at $90 or so, not $50. Still worth it.

Bought the gigabyte Z68x-UD3H-B3. Everything seems to run well. Dont have SSD, so cant comment on the SSD caching feature. Onboard video card is sufficient for movies. Not playing any game right now.

I guess you can upgrade later then :)

I am upgrading soon. I'll be using an SSD as my main install drive, and an SSD cached 2TB Seagate XT as my storage drive, and a pair of 1TB's in RAID1 as my backup drive :fullofwin: