I thought I was spending a lot of money on a mobo last time I built my rig - and it was only 150 bucks.... I didn't even know $300+ boards existed.

 

I've been looking at those Asus ROG boards - do they really allow easier OCing and have better features or is it just a marketing gimmick?

Easier overclocking - not really.

 

Better overclocking features - yes, but you would probably never come close to using all the added overclocking features unless you are the type of person who is willing to spend days on end tweaking and testing to see if each of the settings you can change will make a difference.  In paticular the Asus ROG boards allow a large amount of tweaking to the ram settings.  Also unless you are the type of person that is going to go for every ounce of OC you can get out ot the CPU then you would probably not benifit.

 

Whether or not they are worth the money is really up to the person buying them although the average person would never come close to even using half the extra overclock settings.

 

Then there can be cases where they are worse.  The Asus Maximus VI Extreme took more vcore to run the same 4770K at the same overclock as a standard Asus board like a Sabertooth Z87.  At least two different reviewers of the M6E ran into this when they were testing the M6E.  They just happened to still have the same 4770K they had when testing a regular Asus Z87 board.  I also verified this with an M6E I had and then got a Sabertooth Z87.

 

I got rid of my M6E because I could not get a stable OC above 4.4GHz, by the time I decided something was wrong with the MB I was so tired of messing with it I did not want another one and got a Sabertooth Z87.  On the other hand with my 980X I had a R3E and it was so easy overclocking that 980X to 4.4GHz that I thought that R3E was great and well worth what I paid for it.

 

Here is an overclocking guide from Asus for the M6E, it will give you an idea of all the extra OC settings an Asus ROG board comes with.

http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?33488-Maximus-VI-Series-UEFI-Guide-for-Overclocking&country=&status=

ASUS is my mainstay. I have always stuck with them for motherboards and I have a ROG motherboard, but like the above poster mentioned it's overkill for what I needed. The O/C utilities are smart/easy and I love the stability. Would I buy another ROG over a standard ASUS probably not as I'm not some fanatical tinkerer and need all the bells and whistles.

Thanks - so what's a decent Asus non ROG Z97 board?

 

Would this work?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132118&cm_re=assu_z97-_-13-132-118-_-Product

Today a prefer Gigabyte they do very good MoBos.

I have 4 ASUS mobos today only a FM2 is not a Rog board.

if you shot for less than 4,5ghz it dosent matter wich board or vendor all ar very close.

My experiance is that the ASUS Rog is very good when overclocking mems thats the reason wy i prefer Rog.

The mainstrem Rog cards like the Hero is cheap but oc like a normal Z97 nothing extra.

Thanks - so what's a decent Asus non ROG Z97 board?

 

Would this work?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132118&cm_re=assu_z97-_-13-132-118-_-Product

 

It should be fine as long as it has the features you want and you are not expecting the best overclocking motherboard on the market.

 

Here is a table that shows what each Asus Z97 board has:

http://www.asus.com/us/site/motherboards/Z97/comparison/

 

Here are offical Asus Z97 support threads that you can look through to see if anyone with that board posted good or bad reviews.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1488891/asus-z97-motherboards-official-support-thread

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?288988-ASUS-Z97-Motherboards-Official-Support-Thread

 

I would also google reveiws for that board and read any reviews from good tech sites that people have made.

I never fiddle with the clock on my RAM (or my GPU come to that). I stick to the basics for OC'ing my CPU and have been very happy with the user friendliness of the basic Asus boards.

 

One thing that I noticed (I used to use the Rampage Boards) before realizing I was paying for something I wasn't using, was that those boards gave me annoyingly long boot- up times.

Gigabyte and Msi are very nice, but I generally stick to Asus. Then there are ones I stay far away from, like Biostar and Foxcon.

 

The higher price boards generally offer better control of overclocking options, and that control, used correctly and with other quality components can give you an edge in overclocking. If you are a modest overclocker, then something less expensive will probably do fine.

 

I do tend to get the higher specced boards though because the build quality, not to mention other nifty features (and sheer bling) tend to be attractive to me, as well as the implied future-proofing.

 

I have the Z97-A board with 4790k and Trident X 2400 mhz ram. The 4790k is currently OC'd to 4.6ghz (on air!) and ram is running at 2400. I highly recommend the Z97-A.

Cool thanks...

 

As for being a modest OCer... Ugh I wish I could have gotten more than I had - but my CPU was ultra picky - I think I got the worst binned 2500K out there lol