hm which Z170 motherboard do you guys recomend?

Dread Lord

Dread Lord
That has at least 2 USB 2 for HOTAS and a number of USB 3s for the Rift etc... Andy ideally also 2 of the new 3.1 ports for the future and an M.2 for the fast SSD...

Th eonly one I can find is the Asus Z170 Pro gaming socket 1151 ATX but it has very mixed Reviews and lots of People seem to have issues with the bios and whatnot... so maybe there is a good alternative to that one?
 

HeavyGroovez

HeavyGroovez
Get yourself a Scan bundle :)

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/msi...sair-8gb-ddr4-ram-corsair-h100i-gtx-watercool

Add an NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/512...sd-ubx-3d-v-nand-read-2500mb-s-write-1500mb-s

Put it all in an awesome case

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/cor...se-direct-airflow-path-cooling-for-revolution

Some power

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/750...r-80-plus-bronze-single-rail-1x120mm-fan-atx-

Kickass GPU

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/msi...eady-graphics-card-with-twin-frozr-vi-plus-rg
 
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CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE

CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE
ASUS Maximus VIII Hero covers all those requirements you listed and is a quality bit of kit. I've had no BIOS issues (and the BIOS has had regular updates). The AI Suite software is not the best quality software ever written but I only use the fan control element and don't install anything else.
 

PIXEL

PIXEL
Oh lord not another hardware bookmark for VR (-:

Thanks HeavyGroovez.. tho can't afford the M.2!

I would rep but haven't the necessary power-up

Asus Z170-DELUXE seems ok... probably just before I buy it?
 
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GvilleGuy

GvilleGuy
I have the Asus Z170A Gaming M5. Been running it for 6 months. Built the PC for CV1 and the motherboard runs great with it. Video card is Nvidia Gforce GTX 980.
 

Chainguns

C
Well look at the user reviews on newegg for the top dollar stuff - I know a lot of the people on there have super high expectations (give 1/5 because their sound wasn't as good as their old dedicated old Creative), or fried their board by over overclocking or dropped their cpu cooler onto it and claimed it was DoA ... but still, seems like quality control and customer service is lacking. Read the stuff on Asus Heroes, Gamings etc and weep.

So I started doing research that led me to understand Mosfets and VRMs and capacitors... After all that, it seems that the Gigabyte Ultra Durable boards might be less bad than the others (UD3, UD5 series) or if money is no object, the MSI Titanium or M9ACK.

As for the "super fast ssd" this seems like snake oil to me. After tons of research it seems these offer huge jumps in areas not used in gaming or indeed real life. 4k sequential read/write is the true test and NVMe doesn't do much better here. It does however cost more and heat up a HUGE amount more. If you really need bragging rights, then google AHCI vs NVMe and PCIe vs M.2. Then decide if what you see is worth upwards of 1 EUR premium per 10 GB over tried and tested SSDs.
 

HeavyGroovez

HeavyGroovez
Chainguns said:
Well look at the user reviews on newegg for the top dollar stuff - I know a lot of the people on there have super high expectations (give 1/5 because their sound wasn't as good as their old dedicated old Creative), or fried their board by over overclocking or dropped their cpu cooler onto it and claimed it was DoA ... but still, seems like quality control and customer service is lacking. Read the stuff on Asus Heroes, Gamings etc and weep.

So I started doing research that led me to understand Mosfets and VRMs and capacitors... After all that, it seems that the Gigabyte Ultra Durable boards might be less bad than the others (UD3, UD5 series) or if money is no object, the MSI Titanium or M9ACK.

As for the "super fast ssd" this seems like snake oil to me. After tons of research it seems these offer huge jumps in areas not used in gaming or indeed real life. 4k sequential read/write is the true test and NVMe doesn't do much better here. It does however cost more and heat up a HUGE amount more. If you really need bragging rights, then google AHCI vs NVMe and PCIe vs M.2. Then decide if what you see is worth upwards of 1 EUR premium per 10 GB over tried and tested SSDs.
Click to expand...

I'm using a Samsung M.2 - the performance is outstanding.

If you want to stick to classic 2.5" Sata drives, then sure, they still offer high performance. I use them for storage.
 

Chainguns

C
I'm not saying M.2 or NVMe is bad. It offers a marginal real world improvement and a large synthetic benchmark improvement in exchange for huge amounts of heat and money. If that is a trade-off that suits anyone then great, but it should be an informed decision rather than just NVMe > SSD because speeeed.
 

Ben_BigBen

Ben_BigBen
Not sure if the Asus Hero's have changed but one annoying feature for me is that the Realtek chipset on my Hero VI doesn't support Dolby Digtal Surround (DTS Only). And you really don't want to be installing the AI Suite - it doesn't uninstall - ever !
 

HeavyGroovez

HeavyGroovez
Chainguns said:
I'm not saying M.2 or NVMe is bad. It offers a marginal real world improvement and a large synthetic benchmark improvement in exchange for huge amounts of heat and money. If that is a trade-off that suits anyone then great, but it should be an informed decision rather than just NVMe > SSD because speeeed.
Click to expand...

Sure, researching is something that any sensible person does before buying into new tech.

As far as heat goes, its not been an issue at all for me.

Money wise, cutting edge tech is always expensive, im happy to pay the premium if i think its going to deliver value.
 

Chainguns

C
HeavyGroovez said:
Sure, researching is something that any sensible person does before buying into new tech.

As far as heat goes, its not been an issue at all for me.

Money wise, cutting edge tech is always expensive, im happy to pay the premium if i think its going to deliver value.
Click to expand...

On many smaller tech sites they reported NVMe throttling so its performance was actually worse than SSD after intensive use. This does not happen at all on ssds. Being keen on laptops myself I'm extremely sensitive to heat - the less of it gets generated, or the more you can dissipate the better your performance and longevity. Even in a desktop - for me - if you don't use water or ln2 it's better to have 15% less heat in exchange for 3% less performance. There is also the OS question - if you're not on Win 10 Microsoft has said they will not be putting much effort into NVMe drivers to encourage "upgrades" from Win 7 and getting the drivers to work at the moment can be a bit of a pain - in particular if you want to make your NVMe drive your boot drive.

Essentially, I would use an Elite Dangerous analogy where SSD is pulse laser, NVMe is beam laser, except maybe slightly less of price and dps differential : - )
 

CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE

CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE
Agree with Chainguns 100% re the NVME SSDs. After reading lots of reviews I decided it just wasn't good value for money compared to, say, an 850 EVO given the difference in performance. And owning an AMD GPU (;)) I didn't want any additional heat in my case, even 1 degree extra. The only advantage IMO is that it's two less cables. When they reduce the heat and make them look more aesthetically pleasing I'll re-consider.

Ben_BigBen said:
And you really don't want to be installing the AI Suite - it doesn't uninstall - ever !
Click to expand...

I uninstalled it (and re-installed) just this morning no problem. Though I did have to run AI Suite Cleaner to uninstall two of the services (any software that requires a Cleaner to remove it can't be a good thing :)).
 

-zalamander-

Z
Asus Z170 Deluxe here. It has all the stuff I wanted. I like the M.2 thingy (Samsung 950 PRO SSD 512 Gt). Expensive stuff but very happy with my purchase!!
 

PIXEL

PIXEL
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