New
#21
If you take a overclocking-enabled CPU you can save some money by looking at ASrock mobos. They lack some features to overclock a bit non-overclockable CPUs, (ASUS Multicore Enhancement) that you don't need as the 3570k is overclockable, and are pretty good for overclocking on a budget.
I'd go for the Asrock z77 extreme4, that you find at 114 bucks on newegg, and still has plenty of interesting things (check the full review).
Also check that liquid cooler, as it says socket 2011 when the CPU is now a socket 1155.
I never understood why people dump more than 50 bucks in fancy cases (that more often than not are f-ugly), I'd say that if you want to trim the fat you should start from that and buy a more normal case.
If the guy finds a case of his liking he can buy (at his own expense) and move the rig in it.
I'm not a gamer, so I have somewhat different requirements. But I just built a new machine (to replace one whose ASUS P5Q3 motherboard died) which is very similar to this. Many parts were retained from the original machine, but the new parts were bought from Newegg.
(1) motherboard - ASUS P8Z77-V Pro, $199. Naturally the current price is already $10 lower than what I paid ($209).
(2) the motherboard purchase surprisingly came with "free" memory (actually the $40 price was then discounted $40), Patriot Gamer-2 (2x4GB) PC3-12800, so that was $40 saved. FREE!
(3) since I was going to use a discrete graphics card from the old machine (ATI HD5770) I had no need for onchip graphics, so I went with an i5-3350p (3.1Ghz, 3.3Ghz turbo) Ivy Bridge CPU which has no Intel HD graphics to save money, priced at $189.
(4) I'm a big fan of Noctua fans and have no need for "massive cooling", so I went with a Noctua NH-U12P SE2 heat sink with dual NF-P12 (3-pin) 120mm fans priced at $72, which turns out to be essentially silent and works amazingly to keep the whole set of CPU temperatures at around 100F.
(5) I replaced the two case fans on my existing AcoustiCase with two super-silent Noctua NF-P12 PWM (4-pin) 120mm fans.
I'm using only one of the rear USB 3.0 ports for an external USB 3.0 drive. I had a strange intermittent failure on both of the two Intel USB 3.0 ports, so I moved the external drive over to one of the two Asmedia USB 3.0 ports where its seems totally stable.
Although there are four USB 2.0 ports on the front of my case, the motherboard only has two USB 2.0 port connectors on the rear. So I used an open backplane slot to install the extra two USB 2.0 connectors that are included (plugged into an available USB 2.0 header for them on the board), to provide the total of 8 USB ports on the rear.
But I have more than 4 USB 2.0 devices connecting on the rear, so I'm using one of the Asmedia USB 3.0 ports for a USB 2.0 device, and have temporarily left both Intel USB 3.0 ports empty (since I don't trust them yet) but will probably experiment with them again after a few more weeks of new hardware burn-in as I still have yet one more non-critical USB 2.0 device to connect.
I love the P8Z77 board. It has six fan headers (two for CPU fans, and four for use by case fans and/or power supply fan) all of which are 4-pin for PWM fans (or can be used by 3-pin fans, or even the 2-wire fan speed connector from the power supply).
Just one more comment about the P8Z77 board layout. There are three PCIe x16 slots, but if you populate the middle one (for dual card graphics) that forces both slots 1 and 2 to run at x8 speed.
However if you have a single dual-slot x16 graphics card in slot 1 it will obstruct the x1 slot to its south. That leaves only the other x1 slot to its north for an x1 card.
The third x16 slot (all the way at the south end of the board) can be used for single-slot x4 and x1 devices, and will not interfere with the x16 speed of the card in slot 1.
So you really only have two x1 slots available while still retaining x16 speed on slot 1 for your graphics card.
Also, there are two PCI slots (if you need them), but the south PCI slot cannot take a full-length PCI card because of the placement and size of the Z77 chip to its right. You can put a half-length PCI card in that slot, but not a full-length PCI card. So that leaves just the north PCI slot for a full-length PCI card.
I ended up using the top x1 slot and the bottom x16 slot to hold my two PCIe x1 cards, leaving the middle x16 slot vacant in order to give maximum x16 speed to my HD5770 in the top x16 slot.
The board has lots of BIOS configuration options relating to the x16 slots and USB 3.0 support. Fortunately, I was able to install everything I needed to, thanks to a single graphics card and the set of additional expansion cards I had to find slots for. WHEW!!
Hum makes me quite envious as I pay about on average 15% on top of what you fellows in the US pay and thats not counting the exchange rate!
mh, I had tons of Asrock mobos in my hands (from either old company stuff I buy used and the ones I buy to assemble cheapo gaming rigs for customers), and I see they usually fare like big brand ones, if not better (less weird things like ASUS mobos being picky about the PSU). They are not the top, but aren't that far behind, and all I used in my builds were reliable. Gaming rigs overclocked fine to 4.8-5 Ghz without major troubles (3570k or 2500k).
But I'm one of their fanboys (lol ), so feel free to do what you want of my opinion.
If you really really want them, there are ribbon PCIe extenders that allows you to pipe the connection around.So you really only have two x1 slots available while still retaining x16 speed on slot 1 for your graphics card.
Also avaliable all the way up to 16x size (and x1-mobo-to-x16-card size).
As long as you aren't piping around your GPU's slots it should be fine.