Z68 Motherboard M-ATX Upgrade

[alexander]

Hi all,

I currently have an Asus P8P67-M Pro motherboard, because of the cougarpoint issue I am returning it to Scan for a refund of £100.

This makes the upgrade to Z68 a possibility.

I have currently seen two M-ATX Z68 boards, listed at Scan for identical prices:

MSI Z68MA-ED55-

and

Gigabyte GA-Z68MA

Are these pretty much identical in terms of features, which one would you suggest?

And lastly, will I need to completely reformat my Windows drive or could I just reinstall Windows and keep my data?

Any help would be appreciated!

[Skulltrail]

I would take Gigabyte over MSI - will give similar end performance, but should be easier getting there on the Gigabyte. You should just be able to swap the drive over, but be sure to change any board specific software installed.

[DWhitley]

I'm looking at mATX Z68 boards as well. MSI has a UEFI inferface but apparently it's in need of refinement compared with ASUS's. Gigabyte has a traditional interface. Gigabyte's fan control is disappointingly basic.

The ASROCK Z68 Pro3-M looks promising but doesn't seem to be available yet. Any thoughts on this, anyone?

ASUS has nothing to offer in mATX.

[alexander]

Scan have now got another Gigabyte board:

Gigabyte GA-Z68MX-UD2H-B3

I take it as this is the most expensive one, it is probably the best? I do prefer the USB layout on this one.

Views?

PS: Can anyone confirm that I can just swap my hard drive without any reinstallation of Windows 7? I have no proprietary software from Asus currently on my PC. Also, I was under the impression that the Gigabytes do have EFI?

[mrt9888]

Yes you should be able to use the old install, it would be better if you uninstall motherboard specific driver etc from the control panel, some motherboards have USB charging when sleeping and power saving features which are motherboard specific. Uninstalling the graphics card drivers and then installing them once you've installed the motherboard would also be preferable.

The Gigabyte Z68 are supposed to have EFI, thats what they say on their website.

[DWhitley]

"The Gigabyte Z68 are supposed to have EFI, thats what they say on their website."

They do, in that they support 3TB HDDs but unlike ASUS, they don't have the GUI and mouse interface.

[Pob255]

personally I prefer MSI to gigabyte, however the gigabyte boards do support sli or crossfire where as the msi one is crossfire only, looks like msi saved costs by not paying the licence fee to nvidia for this board.

[watercooled]

You might be best sticking with a (cheaper) P67 board, Z68 is just P67+IGP support according to the specs. Since you'll already be using a discrete GPU with P67 I see little reason to specifically seek a Z68 board unless one has particular features you're after.

@Pob: I'm somewhat put off MSI because a fair few of their AMD boards have been failing due to poor VRM design/components.