recommendations haswell board?

E

ebduncan

[H]ard|Gawd
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Feb 1, 2008
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I am thinking about building a new system.

Things to note. Haswell-E around the corner. 9 series chipsets are due soon.

desirable traits
-8 Sata connections
-Support for at least two way Crossfire/Sli at full speeds
-4 memory slots
Board color theme all black, or black and red
-waterblock available for board, or built in water cool capable.

I'm currently running a AMD 8320@5ghz on a Gigabyte FXA-990-UD3 Performance is fine right now, but I'm wanting to take that next step up.

I am thinking I should just hold off until Haswell-E comes out DDR4 and x99 chipset looks appealing, and well 8 cores + HT. I expect it will be rather pricey at release though. So may be only to manage the haswell refresh cpus (4790k), Think I could go haswell-E for 1200$? (cpu, ram, motherboard)

what are some of the boards you would recommend for a 4770k or the upcoming 4790k. I will be overclocking.
 
My question is:

Why do you feel the need to upgrade? Is there a particular task that you want to be sped up, or is it just a want? If it is just a want, wait for Skylake. It will be the first consumer DDR4 platform (unless AMD comes out with something first).

That said, to address some of your requirements:
Virtually all Z87 and Z97 ATX boards will have 4 RAM slots. Most mATX boards will have 4 RAM slots as well, though some will have 2.
6 SATA ports are standard, as that is what the chipset provides. Higher end boards will include additional SATA controllers. Just look for them.
LGA1150 CPUs have 16 PCI-E 3.0 lanes. That's it. PLX chips can "create" more PCI-E lanes, but the CPU will still only have 16 lanes to communicate with the GPUs. Additionally, testing has shown minimal (less than 5%, average less than 1%) performance differences between x8 3.0 and x16 3.0.
Haswell sucks down so little power that the board vrm cooling hardly matters.

There will be a ~$300 Haswell-E CPU. Motherboards will start at $250. DDR4 RAM will probably start at $200 for 4x4gb sticks. So it will most likely be possible to get an entry X99 platform for under $1000.
 
Tsumi said:
My question is:

Why do you feel the need to upgrade? Is there a particular task that you want to be sped up, or is it just a want? If it is just a want, wait for Skylake. It will be the first consumer DDR4 platform (unless AMD comes out with something first).

That said, to address some of your requirements:
Virtually all Z87 and Z97 ATX boards will have 4 RAM slots. Most mATX boards will have 4 RAM slots as well, though some will have 2.
6 SATA ports are standard, as that is what the chipset provides. Higher end boards will include additional SATA controllers. Just look for them.
LGA1150 CPUs have 16 PCI-E 3.0 lanes. That's it. PLX chips can "create" more PCI-E lanes, but the CPU will still only have 16 lanes to communicate with the GPUs. Additionally, testing has shown minimal (less than 5%, average less than 1%) performance differences between x8 3.0 and x16 3.0.
Haswell sucks down so little power that the board vrm cooling hardly matters.

There will be a ~$300 Haswell-E CPU. Motherboards will start at $250. DDR4 RAM will probably start at $200 for 4x4gb sticks. So it will most likely be possible to get an entry X99 platform for under $1000.
Click to expand...

I don't NEED to upgrade. However I do quite a bit of 3d modeling/rendering/video work which will always benefit extra speed. I wish to water cool the vrms, because I already have an extensive water cooling loop, and adding a vrm block is cheap.

I am speaking in terms of PCI-E 2.0 x16. I understand that PCI-E 3.0 8x is more than enough. That being said Dual PCI-E 3.0 x 8x would be fine. Note that Haswell-E will support dual PCI-E 3.0 x 16x.

I can build a IVY Bridge-E based system around the 4930k for under 1000$, So I figure I could build a Haswell-E based system for just a bit more as I would have to purchase memory along with it.

Amd didn't release a Steamroller FX cpu which I would have upgraded to. Seeing as they didn't I am looking for a new platform to move to. Sure the 8320 FX @ 5ghz isn't a slouch in tasks, but a 4770k @ 4.5ghz blows it outta the water. So like I said I'm looking for that next step in performance, and I have the money to spend.
 
In that case, I would go with the 4930k build or wait for Haswell-E. If they have an 8-core option for $600-700, that would be the best case scenario for you. It's also rumored that the $300 price-point Haswell-E CPU will be a 6-core, though I have my doubts on that (as well as the $600 8-core option).

Haswell-E (and SB-E and IB-E) have 40 PCI-E 3.0 lanes (I have an SB-E build myself, I know the specs of each platform). That means boards are capable of doing 16x/16x/8x, or 16x/8x/8x/8x. Or any other combination involving 40 PCI-E lanes depending on layout of the board.
 
Think I found the board i've been looking for.

At least for just a regular haswell, instead of haswell-e. Its a Z97 board that gigabyte will be releasing. Still waiting to see what the x99 boards will be like.
z97x-gaming-g1-wifi.jpg
 
I'm liking the new color schemes from gigabyte and asus- glad that asus got rid of the mustard yellow / piss gold colors.
 
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