What was the best Z97 motherboard?

[mrpixel3x2]

In your opinion, what was the best motherboard for the 1150 socket?

My two candidates are:
1) Asus Maximus VII Hero
2) Asus Z97-WS

Thank you guys for all the advice.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Asrock Z97 OC Formula

 

[DR4G00N]

Asrock Z97 OC Formula

Exactly what I was going to say. Only the full size board though, the Z97M OCF is nowhere near as good.

The Z87 OCF & Z87M OCF are also very good boards if Z97 is not an explicit requirement.

 

[bonehead123]

I've had the 2 boards the OP listed above plus a Gigabyte & an MSI gaming something something, and each one had minor differences here & there, but all were extremely reliable and great for normal (air/AIO-cooled) overclocking, set-up and installation...

My best advice is to do your research and compare prices vs. feature sets, and also the mfgr's QVL for best ram compatibility before buying...

good luck with whatever you end up buying

 

[Ruyki]

Asus VII Hero is pretty alright. I'm saying that as someone who's had it for 6 years.

 

[phill]

Asrock Z97 OC Formula

Exactly what I was going to say. Only the full size board though, the Z97M OCF is nowhere near as good.

The Z87 OCF & Z87M OCF are also very good boards if Z97 is not an explicit requirement.

I love my OCF boards I was toying with a Z87 but figured as I have the Z97, didn't seem much point...

Definitely grab one of them if you can You'll certainly get the best from any CPU in one

 

[Toothless]

I'll vote for the MSI MPower. Just retired it as my main yesterday and I already miss how stable it was.

 

[bobbybluz]

ASRock Z87 Extreme6. The two I have (one bought new, the other used) refuse to die after years of 24/7 use. The extra front USB 3 header is a nice touch too.

 

[Keullo-e]

No experience from Z97, but Sabertooth Z87 was awesome.

 

[king of swag187]

Z97 OCF easily

 

[8BitZ80]

I'll always go for anything that ends in "WS". Can't beat the workstation-grade stuff for validation hours and reliability.
In my personal rig I'm still running the Asus Z97-E which has been flawless, and an Asus Z87-C prior to that.
For some reason the Z87 board died on me (hence the upgrade) but then a few months later it was magically working again ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[dorsetknob]

Asus Z97 -Pro Gamer is quite a good board

 

[EarthDog]

In your opinion, what was the best motherboard for the 1150 socket?

My two candidates are:
1) Asus Maximus VII Hero
2) Asus Z97-WS

Thank you guys for all the advice.

Best for what? OC Formula is awesome, but 99% of users dont need an overclocking board like the OC Formula. Using ambient cooling methods, you wont get any more out of the CPU on the OCF verus another board if this is your goal (big if.. there is maybe 1-2 tpu users that know extreme cooling).

Either board you listed will be fine for your uses. Just make sure it has the features you need and you'll be set.

I'll always go for anything that ends in "WS". Can't beat the workstation-grade stuff for validation hours and reliability.

The stuff isn't really any different on WS boards (at least in a reliability way). Marketing.

 

[John Naylor]

Asus was not in the running w/ Z97. I had some serious issues and performance was uniformly lower than the competition in performance test comparisons. Z87 also had some major issues, especially in the early steppings. I know this well from having two of them still in use. First was the bug whereby external SATA devices would not awake when PC came out of sleep mode. The 2nd problem was a bug whereby the BIOS clock would freeze w/o your knowledge resulting in new driver being unable to b loaded as date were newer than the frozen system date. Both problems were commonly posted on Asus VIP forums. The C2 stepping on the RoG boards eliminated the 1st problem but the promised BIOS fix for the clock issue was never delivered.

As to the performance, Asus was a distant 3rd to MSI and Gigabyte w/ Z97 ... The "Gaming 5" boards from MSI and Gigabyte were were the big sellers of that time.

The most common competitively priced model was the Asus Z97-A, looking at that against the MSI Gaming 5 (Giga was virtually identical)

-MSI was 21 % faster in fps in above chart
-MSI supports faster memory .... wasn't a big deal then, no one was likely be using 3000+ anyway at that time
-MSI has more SATA ports (6 vs 4) ... significant
-MSI has better audio (ALC 1150 versus ALC 892) .... very significant
-MSI has better LAN port .... significant for on line gaming
-MSI has 4 more USB ... significant for gamers with potential mouse, KB, speakers, headset , throttle, flight stick, head mouse, external HD, smartphone, BT adapter.
Note that newegg has 30% negative reviews (1 or 2 eggs) on the Asus board and only 18% on the MSI.

While Asus showed considerably slower performance with Z97 / Z87, It must be noted that before Z87, they usually had the performance edge ... since Z170 tho, no brand has shown a significant edge performance wise... Asus just had a rough patch with those two generations. There's little difference between brands since then performance wise.

Interesting side fact ... I always liked the WS boards because they came with a higher level of TS and premium RMA service ... they shipped you a new board and after you installed it, you sent old one back. Well the new one arrived shaped like a banama ... it was so warped, the I/P section could not even be forced into the case opening... at the top, it completely missed the opening ... bend was 1.3 inches

It took 3.5 months for me to get a working board. If you remember, this was back in the day when Asus spun off ASrock so they could address the low end builder market w/o harming their rep. AsRock then became part of Pegatron. Well all RMA emails back and forth ***for my Asus WS board*** came to / from Pegatron