Motherboards Asus Z87 Sabertooth or Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD4H?

Rather than butcher the thread I opened yesterday about whether or not you would buy a motherboard without reading a review first I thought I would open a new one.

Anyway, as the title suggests, I would like opinions on what ATX (not bigger or smaller) Haswell motherboard to go for. Some points to consider:

• I have a max budget of £200
  
• I plan to SLI in the future but only really dual cards rather than anything T_G would be proud of so 3 or 4 PCI-E slots is not essential. As they'd be on air I'd rather 2 or 3 well-spaced ones than 4 crammed together.
  
• As for overclocking, I will be overclocking but I'm not a compulsive fiddler lol - more a 'find an overclock that works and stick with it' kind of guy so loads of awesome OC'ing features may be lost on me.
  
• I would prefer something that's black and red (or at least not black and luminous green) but would prefer a better board over one that fits my colour scheme.

I have narrowed it down to the following boards but am open to suggestions I've not mentioned.

Asus Z87 Sabertooth - £199.13 in stock at Scan. Looks awesome and great board but most expensive option - I wouldn't mind paying that but it's a fact that the rest I've looked at are cheaper.

Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC - £170.10 in stock at Scan. Good range of feature (most of the OC'ing ones I'd never use) but garish colour scheme and closely packed PCI-E slots.

Asus Maximus VI Hero - £173.99 pre-order at OCUK. Again, looks awesome but not in stock anywhere.

Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD4H - £165.60 in stock at Scan. Cheapest option, fits with my colour scheme, least fancy options but maybe all I would need.

Any thoughts? As usual, I'll reward help with rep!

Cheers!

George

 

My honest answer would be to wait for Bit-tech's big roundup review of all the Z87 motherboards since no one can give you any personal hands-on insight right at this moment. I'm personally partial to Asus and the Maximus range of boards have always been great, but Gigabyte have made huge strides in improving their UEFI and software this time round (AnandTech video) so it's hard to determine objectively which is best.

 

Good idea - I don't suppose you happen to know when that'll be out do you?

 

I'd guess sometime this week

 

Hmm - have to have a think... The more I think about it, the more that the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD4H make sense...

Edit:

Has anyone seen something like this before - on the GA-Z87X-UD4H there's a SATA power connector next to the SATA ports to provide extra power to the PCI-E lanes if you're using multiple GPUs:



(Picture from eteknix)

 

5 year warranty on that Sabertooth and it has the most features out of the lot

 

All i would say is that imo the asus boards are currently some of the best put together ones out there.
Personally I would go for the sabertooth, whilst I've obviously not had a look at this one, I have had two previously and they're built like tanks and oc pretty well. It also has the asus software, fan expert and the like which is simply the best around. The one downside is asus' rma procedure, but then i've never had an asus mobo break on me.

 

Not biased though? Lol - only kidding! It does look gorgeous and I'm a fan of having the slot covers installed too... Good point about the warranty - I hadn't even thought to look into the lengths of the warranties. I think the Gigabyte boards have 3 year warranties... What about the Hero - do you know what that has (I assume you do!)

Hmm - decisions, decisions...

 

Yes, that has appeared on some previous motherboards but as a molex connector instead of a SATA power connector. The issue with four or more GPUs is that each GPU takes up to 75W of power from the motherboard via the slot. This power comes from the 24-pin ATX connector. However, that's only rated for around 30A of current (so around 350-360W), meaning that running that many GPUs at full load will burn out that connector with excessive current.

This auxiliary power connector allows you to supply that current from another cable to reduce the current going through the ATX connector. It's particularly useful for cryptocoin miners or others who run four or more GPUs at full load constantly, otherwise there's not much value in it.

 

Fair enough - thanks for the help! I wish Asus would update their website/s - I like to have a nosey through the manual of boards before I buy them and whilst I can find the one for the Gigabyte board, I can't find the Asus one anywhere!

Edit: Lol - just seen this:



Now with added DRAGONS!

Joking aside, it's very well priced (less than £160) and seems fairly decent - reviews rave about it (mostly for what you get for the price) - one site does list "Not everyone likes dragons" as a downside

 

I have been looking at Haswell M-ATX motherboards but think I'll wait on reviews and my bank balance to recover.

 

Found it - took a while though! In case anyone else wants to know, all Gigabyte boards are 3 years as are all non-TUF Asus boards but the Sabertooths and the new Gryphon M-ATX ones are 5 years...

Hmmm... Still can't decide...

 

Seemingly you will be able to get armour for the Gryphon boards. http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/05/17/a...e-mainstream-with-a-z87-based-hero/gryphonak/

 

2-3 years for most people now outside server boards I think. Some low-end boards might have 1 year. Also regionally there's differences too iirc.

You can get the full kit for Gryphon, it's just sold separately to not add cost for those who might not want it as it's cheaper than the Sabertooth.

Our site will update tomorrow with all the new boards. There's also a lot of fuss about NDAs and media reviews versus selling dates. Crazy and frustrating but give it a few days and you'll have the product pages live

 

Yeah - seems odd to me that it's not included as standard... Must be to keep initial costs down (or to make more later maybe...)

Edit: Ninja'd! Cheers for that Bindi - I'll take a look tomorrow and see what other reviews surface before making a decision

 

Updated things a little in the OP (including the title!) - I've now narrowed it down to either the Z87 Sabertooth or the GA-Z87X-UD4H. Really stuck between the two - I keep thinking that I've made a decision and then I change my mind again. I'm keen to buy from Scan due to the delivery being free and the fact I can get scansure (which I only tend to do for motherboards / CPUs really)

As far as I can tell they have a great deal in common - both have 8 SATA 6Gb/s ports, both support SLI at x8/x8, both look good, both support the same amount of RAM, both have decent UEFIs etc

This is where I've got to & would appreciate any further thoughts

Sabertooth
Pros

• More features
• Thermal Armour
• Longer Warranty
• Better cooling (?) due to Thermal Armour / little fans

Cons

• More expensive (£35 or ~20% more at the time of writing)
• RMA centre is abroad if something was to go wrong
• Brown & beige is a bit meh although there's not much of it
• Would I really use all the features?

Gigabyte
Pros

• Cheaper
• UK Based RMA Centre
• Black and red
• 3 USB 2.0 FP Headers (that genuinely is a plus point for me - FP USB ports, H100i & card reader make up 3)

Cons

• Shorter warranty
• Worse cooling?

Now I know that from the lists above the Gigabyte board would seem the better option as it fewer negatives but they are fairly important things...

Please help!

 

I would get the board with the most dragons. So I guess that means you must go MSI.

 

Hahaha.... hmm...

 

As much as I like the Sabretooth range the colours have got very dull now, I know it is in fitting with the whole military theme but I think the idea needs to evolve a bit.

The Gigabyte would get my vote, had stacks of their 1156 and 1155 boards and they have been top notch.

 

Yeah - I don't dislike it, but it's definitely very 'meh'... You wouldn't see much of it with slots populated or covered by the dust cover things. I wouldn't let the colour me put that off though but the difference in the price does. The difference in the prices is basically half the difference between a 4670K and a 4770K... I'm currently running one of their 1156 boards (see sig) and it's always been rock solid (even when I bled on it a little oops...)

Also, the features of the Sabertooth & the Thermal Radar 2 software do look awesome but I use a fan controller for my fans so essentially it'd just be a load of thermal probes for monitoring stuff rather than controlling anything...