Micro LGA1156 recommendations

[niko084]

I've been using the ASUS P7H55-M/CSM, and it's a decent board but I seem to run out of overclocking room very quickly...

So I'm looking for another micro to use with onboard video to clock i3's on mainly.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated, I'm open to about anything just as long as they stay fairly cheap, not expecting amazing results but if I can step it up a bit for a few bucks I would be happy.

 

[WhiteLotus]

gigabyte do some. The one I have in my specs hasn't let me down one bit.

 

[Easy Rhino]

ive been told the asus maximus extreme 3 blah blah blah is a great micro atx clocker.

 

[niko084]

ive been told the asus maximus extreme 3 blah blah blah is a great micro atx clocker.

That I have no doubt about just trying to keep the price a bit lower, if I were to spend that I would buy an ATX board and a graphics card.

 

[cadaveca]

Maximus III Gene is what I recommended Easy Rhino. I paid $130, Easy found it for $115 or something. TOTALLY WORTH EVERY PENNY.

But no onboard video..I have no recommendation for that...yet. I have P7H55-M PRO...don't bother with that one.

 

[niko084]

I have P7H55-M PRO...don't bother with that one.

I used a few of those as well, some with good results some with bad....

I think I might try out the MSI H55M-ED55, reviews look good, crossfire on a MATX is kinda cool even though they generally get nvidia cards (F@H).

Still looking.

 

[cadaveca]

Yeah, I got the Gene becasue it would do crossfire, but wasn't expecting much out of it..especially considering the low price...I've spent double that cost on full-size boards, and gotten less out of them, so I had to say something about the Maximus III Gene.

I played with a few P7H55's, none would do 200bclk with 2000 memory in 2x2gb for me. Could be a fault of my ram, but the Gene is running 8GB(4x2GB) at those speeds without an issue, so I call the H55 boards bad.

 

[niko084]

MSI H55M-ED55

Scratch that idea, that board doesn't have voltage control!

 

[cadaveca]

The ASUS Gene board has almost too many voltage options.

But there's more to it than just that, I think. The Gene needs less votlage, all around, for the same clocks as the P7H55-Ms.

 

[JrRacinFan]

How far were you able to push , niko?

 

[niko084]

How far were you able to push , niko?

On the P7H55-M/CSM I can generally get my i3's up around 3.6-3.8ghz without too much issue, i7 and i5's I'm fairly lucky to get nice and solid for 24/7 use around 3.5'ish.

On the P7H55-M Pro I have been able to get around 4ghz pretty easily on the i3's, when I had a few i5's in them I never pushed them higher than 3.2ghz but they went to that without any issue and ran for days without issue at 100%.

Most of these boards will be used for my WCG and F@H machines, so stability is a big piece.
Might go back to the Pro, the Gene I know is nice but at that price I can get something even better in a standard ATX board...

 

[cadaveca]

The main issue I found with the P7-boards is memory clocking. They clocked cpu speed jsut fine, needed slightly more volts, but given that temps are about the same, I say the Gene is just simply pushing out more current than the P7's at any given voltage.

I'm slowly moving all my rigs over to M-ATX i7/i5/i3, so I'm gonna pay close attention to what you do..the Gene is good, yes, but it's more than what I need for my other rigs.