Asus MB socket 1155

**bk T** · 13-12-2011, 08:33 PM

Going to build a new machine to replace my problematic Gigabyte MB (as in my previous thread). I am looking at this Asus P8Z68-V LE MB. What do you guys think of this board? It has onboard VGA which I do not need. Am I actually paying for something which I don't need? Looks like most of the Z68 boards are with on-board graphic.

Or, any other recommendations? I don't want another Gigabyte board.

**wainuitech** · 13-12-2011, 08:51 PM

A lot of the boards come with Onboard Graphic's these days, Onboard VGA DVI HDMI.

Some that dont, and require a Graphic Card are, in no particular order:

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Int...68_DELUXEGEN3/

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Int...1155/P8P67_LE/

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Int...s_IV_ExtremeZ/

**bk T** · 13-12-2011, 09:48 PM

Those without onboard graphic are mostly higher end boards. Have a tight budget.

Also looking at this P8Z68-V which is about $80.00 more expensive than the P8Z68-V LE; worth it?

CPU: i5 2500 3.3GHz or i7 2600 3.4GHz still undecided.

What brand/made of RAM would you recommend?

**gary67** · 14-12-2011, 06:45 AM

I was quite happily using onboard graphics not being a gamer, but then I needed to add another screen so bought a cheap GPU

**BBCmicro** · 14-12-2011, 07:43 AM

The instructions with my Z68 say that if I want to use Virtu (a facility that splits graphics processing between CPU and a card) I should connect my monitor to the on-board graphics. The card is just used for processing horsepower

(For some reason Skype doesn't render properly with my monitor connected to the GT 440 but works OK connected to on-board graphics.)

(The on-board graphics exits via HDMI which is hopelessly unsuited to thick monitor cables)

**bk T** · 14-12-2011, 08:07 AM

Anyway, I'll be using my old 4850 card (I'm not a gamer).

As for RAM I'm looking at:
Kingston KHX1600C9D3K2/8GX 1600MHz DDR3 Non-ECC CL9 DIMM vs CORSAIR CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9B VENGEANCE 2X4GB DDR3-1600 CL9

The price of Corsair is almost double of kignston; do they make any difference in terms of performance?

And, i5 2500 vs i7 2600, is another difficult dicision to make. Views, please.

Cheers

**Snorkbox** · 14-12-2011, 08:36 AM

Kingston RAM will be fine.

**dugimodo** · 14-12-2011, 11:14 AM

It's a bit of a misleading thing actually, the graphics is in the CPU core not the motherboard so all sandybridge systems have on-chip graphics. The difference is that not all chipsets and motherboards give you access to it.

H61 & H67 - use onboard graphics or discrete card, Quicksync support for GPU accelerated video encoding using onboard graphics, not designed for overclocking or SLI/ Xfire
P67 - no onboard graphics support, can overclock and use SLI / Xfire, no quicksync support
Z68 - combines the features of H67 & P67, if you don't care about quicksync really not much different from P67

I think I'll go find your other thread, my gigabyte board has not thrilled me with it's stability since I built it but my asus boards are rock solid.

Edit: on the i5 vs i7 front, 100mhz + hyperthreading is it worth it? If you are a gamer no it isn't, neither makes a difference to games. If you do a lot of multithreaded CPU intensive tasks such as video encoding then the i7 will be a bit faster so in that case probably yes.

As you can see in my signature I went for an i5

**bk T** · 14-12-2011, 10:08 PM

Thanks for all the feed backs.

Have bought and built my PC. Here are my specs: Asus P8Z68-V Pro, i7 2600, Kingston 1600 2x4GB and the PSU, box, etc., are existing stuff. Have loaded Windows but there are lots of other stuff to be loaded and configured. Very pleased with it's performance at it is now.

As regards my old Gigabyte MB, it is still in Australia (they have sent it to Aus for repair). PB gave me a "repaired" Gigabyte MB (looks like my original board), connected and set it up, worked OK but ONLY for 3 days and it's dead, again! What a joke! Returned it to PB and this time they gave me another 'repaired' Intel MB, took it home and hooked it up, turned on the switch, the fans spinned but nothing shown on the monitor. Returned it to PB and told them that I'll wait for them to repair it. But, frankly, I've totally lost confidence in Gigabyte's repair service. That's why I decided to get myself a new MB and CPU and RAM. Can they actually repair a faulty MB? I've my doubts.