Help me choose: P67 vs Z68

[Vincy Boy]

Hello fellow TPUers. I just want some community advice on choosing a motherboard for my 2500K. My budget is limited ($100-110.... I'm married now) and I want the features I found in this motherboard on Amazon.
ASUS P8P67 Rev 3.1
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004ZMGBG6/?tag=tec06d-20

It is the cheapest P67 I have seen with a feature set that I appreciate (firewire, front-panel USB 3.0 header among others). I have had my mind on a Z68 but I cannot find any at just over $100 that are not really short on the features I want. Now is there any truly major loss to "settling" for P67 over Z68? I don't encode video often and the SSD cache thing really is not something I see myself doing as I have a 64GB SSD which is more than enough for my needs along with my 2TB and 1TB storage drives. Also is there any reason why I may want to stay away from this particular ASUS board?

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[BarbaricSoul]

how's this one look for you? I't one of the more recommended socket 1155 boards on this forum.

ASRock Z68 PRO3 GEN3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA ...

 

[Vincy Boy]

Thanks, but this has no firewire or front panel USB 3.0 support. Quite a funky layout on certain components there. Seems a bit anorexic

 

[MN12BIRD]

I know exactly what you mean. I was looking for a decent Z68 motherboard last week for a customer. He didn't want to spend more than apx $120 and I was surprised at the lack of decent Z68 boards for that price. I couldn't find any with front panel USB 3.0 in that price range from a trusted brand. I mean ASUS, Gigabyte or MSi. I found a Biostar but I've had bad luck with Biostar and I know it's a budget brand and some of their boards are probably fine but I'm not going to use one. I was really surprised to see some Z68 boards that didn't even have USB3.0 at all! I couldn't believe anyone would make a board with the latest and greatest chipset and not have USB3.0. I mean in contrast all A75 boards I've seen not only have USB3.0 but front panel USB3.0. Even the cheap $75 Gigabyte A75 board has both! Other AMD 900 series Gigabyte boards in the $120 range had front panel USB3.0, Firewire, eSATA, TOSLINK optical etc etc etc. I know AMD chipsets are cheaper though. I just found to get a decent full sized Z68 board with ALL the I/O you have to spend at least $130-140.

Now don't quote me on this but this is what a customer told me. He said the P67 can potentially OC better than the Z68 (obviously the specific motherboard would make the difference but in general on boards in the same range) because the motherboard isn't even sending power to the GPU portion of the CPU while the Z68 is always sending power to the GPU portion even if the Z68 board doesn't have video I/O! Like I said I don't know if he's right or not and quite honestly I'm not an extreme overclocker so I don't even care anyway. That wouldn't push my decision one way or the other.

Now as far as I'm concerned the only real advantage to Z68 is the Intel SRT. Other than that I would be perfectly happy to take a P67 esp if it has more I/O features for the same price.

 

[Vincy Boy]

Great info you gave me there. I'll still look around a bit but I'm really leaning towards the ASUS more than ever.

 

[Beertintedgoggles]

I decided to go the ASUS P8P67 Deluxe route (I wanted the extra mosfet cooling, etc.) but I had my mind set on the Z68 at first. My reasons are actually the same as yours in that I didn't want the SSD caching (just wanted to use the SSD as OS and the mechanical drives as storage) and I have no interest in using the GPU on the CPU. Now some of the Z68 boards are claiming PCIe 3.0 support which I haven't seen on any P67 boards (might exist but I don't know of them). I don't see this being a bottle neck in my future but everyone's requirements are different.

 

[caleb]

Is the deluxe sound worth the extra cash over the PRO ?

 

[maleficarus]

Is the deluxe sound worth the extra cash over the PRO ?

No not really...

 

[purecain]

@MN12BIRD - your customer was wrong dude... you have the choice with Z68 chipset to use the gpu/apu at the same time as the dedicated gfx card....

the chipset is a refinement and also a combination of features provided seperately in h67 and p67. the best part for me about the z78 chipset is ''SSD Speed with HDD Capacity....''

Intel® Smart Response Technology boosts overall system performance. It uses an installed fast SSD (min 18.6GB available capacity) as a cache for frequently accessed data. Harness the combination of SSD-like performance and response with hard drive capacity, that's 4X faster than a HDD-only system.