HR Forums

I am in the process of building a new desktop PC and got lost amidst the myriad of motherboards on offer. I would like some help with picking the most suitable LGA 1155 chipset. I will use 1 discrete video card so no need for an integrated GPU or SLI support. I will not overclock or use RAID. I will use a boot SSD, which as far as I understand makes Smart Response redundant. Four DIMM slots and Quick Sync support would be nice but not mandatory. I need SATA 3.0 for the SSD and USB 3.0 for future use, although I have no idea if them being natively supported is important or not.

Here is the setup so far, just in case:

CPU: i5-3550
GPU: GTX 560 Ti or HD 6950
RAM: 2x4 kit
PSU: XFX Core 550 Pro
SSD: Sandisk Extreme 120 GB

I don't need much in way of PCI slots, but I need four SATA 2 and two SATA 3 ports, as well as eight USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports at least.

Based on the above, can you recommend a chipset for me?

(Some actual motherboard recommendations would be nice too if only as pointers, since price and availability is very different in my country. I am aiming for a budget of $120 tops, though $80 is what I am comfortable spending on it.)

Thanks in advance!

An asrock P67 motherboard should work fine. You can find some recommendations in the game and workstation lower tier builds on this site.

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You can get an ASrock P68 extreme3 on Newegg for $121.

Wikipedia actually has a few excellent tables showing the capabilities of all 1155 chipsets (including the new ivy bridge chipsets if you're interested).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1155

But I think this is pretty close to what you are looking for. It only lacks 2
USB 2.0 ports.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...813157265R

Just FYI, tdot linked to an Open Box which usually people want to avoid. The big thing is their ?(help) button says it might not ship with all the accessories. So i don't think it's worth risking that to save a few bucks.

Can't order from newegg or any amason site anyway, not worthwhile because of shipping costs. Prices are very different here, that's why I am more interested in chipsets than actual motherboards. That wiki page is an excellent summary, thank you. Are those features all there is to it, or is there a difference in CPU performance? So say, would the same IB CPU show significantly different results in a H67 than a H77?

I would expect the results to be similar. The difference is mainly in the features the chipset provides between those two.