Which 1155 Board?

[PowerPie5000]

I've acquired a couple of motherboards and I intend on using one with my old i7 3770K PC (which is now my girlfriends). It's currently using a Biostar TH67XE which has been a great board, but it's lacking in the OC department as you'd expect from a H67 based board. I currently have a Biostar TP67XE flashed with the latest BIOS and also an Asrock Z77 Extreme4... Which one would you guys pick and why? I want to do a mild overclock on the 3770k to around 4.2 - 4.4GHz. I heard the Asrock Z77 Extreme4 uses crappy D-PAK mosfets, but wouldn't that only affect overclocking with high voltages?

Help me out guys! I'll just get rid of whichever board I don't use.

Cheers .

[pastymuncher]

It would be the Asrock for me. It's a known board with plenty of reviews which show overclocking not to be a problem. It's also a much better looking board. Biostar tend to launch boards and then abandon them and looking at the downloads page for the one you have shows only a single bios update from 2012. The Biostar just looks cheap too with that awful colour scheme.

[PowerPie5000]

It would be the Asrock for me. It's a known board with plenty of reviews which show overclocking not to be a problem. It's also a much better looking board. Biostar tend to launch boards and then abandon them and looking at the downloads page for the one you have shows only a single bios update from 2012. The Biostar just looks cheap too with that awful colour scheme.

The Biostar board has the updated 2013 BIOS installed which is not on their site. The Asrock board does look better, but I must admit the Biostar board feels more solid than the Asrock board which feels a bit thin and flimsy in comparison (PCB wise). I know the Biostar board has a better quality power phase setup, but the Asrock board is newer and probably has more features (not looked in to the features too much yet).

It's a tough choice! If I was going to overclock past 4.5GHz and bump up the voltage past 1.25v then i'd definitely choose the Biostar board... But only for that reason I suppose. I've heard the D-PAK mosfets on the Asrock board can get a bit too hot and throttle with high'ish overclocks.

[shaithis]

AsRock Extreme vs BioStar.

To me that's like cashmere vs sandpaper.

I have found the AsRock Extreme and Pro boards to be fantastic. Rich in features and completely stable. I have built a ton of machines around their various boards (often picking them up from Dabs B-grade), both Intel and AMD and all have been great.

The last Biostar board I had fused itself to the ATX connector.

[PowerPie5000]

AsRock Extreme vs BioStar.

To me that's like cashmere vs sandpaper.

I have found the AsRock Extreme and Pro boards to be fantastic. Rich in features and completely stable. I have built a ton of machines around their various boards (often picking them up from Dabs B-grade), both Intel and AMD and all have been great.

The last Biostar board I had fused itself to the ATX connector.

Both Asrock and Biostar can be a bit hit and miss, but so can the bigger companies. I decided to use the Asrock Z77 Extreme4 board in the end for my girlfriends PC and will probably get rid of the Biostar TP67XE. As for the cashmere vs sandpaper comment, i'd say the Asrock board is more like sandpaper in this case when it comes to overall build quality and choice of VRM components (same crap D-PAK mosfets found on my daughters cheap £30 MSI B75 based board!)... My Asrock Z97 Extreme4 is miles better .

Anyway, the Z77 Extreme4 is still an upgrade compared to the micro-ATX Biostar TH67XE that my girlfriend was previously using (which i can say has been a very reliable board).

[Gpro]

I got the Asus Maximus 1150 motherboard and couldn't be happier but might be a bit of an overkill for some