X79 mATX

[BrutalGreen]

any decent X79 mATX boards out there with a blue color scheme? At worse a mostly black one, with minor accents kinda like the Asrock stuff? Basically anything that isnt overly colorful/red/green like the ASUS RoG board?

Is the MSI GD45MA any good? I'm usually not a fan of MSI and not to mention the 45 is the lower end of their spectrum...should I expect a total system meltdown with this board?

[Stosh]

I never had any problems with MSI builds that i've done. Pretty simple setups, actually.

And I really like the way they have a memory channel on each side of the cpu.
Whether it's statistically significant or not, having one channel further from the cpu than the other, just isn't the ideal way. Longer wire traces, etc.

Now for the cons. That board only has a pair of sata 6Gb/s connectors. And if you keep this build for a few years, you could easily wind up in a position where you need to populate more than two of them with ssd's, as the prices are coming down fairly fast.

Is there a particular reason you're leaning towards the X79 chipset?

[MARSTG]

Originally Posted by Stosh

Now for the cons. That board only has a pair of sata 6Gb/s connectors.

Why would that be a con? An add in card with a respectable SATA III controller would take care of that.

[Stosh]

Originally Posted by MARSTG

Why would that be a con? An add in card with a respectable SATA III controller would take care of that.

seems like a waste of time, money and effort to do that when better boards are available.

[BigPhatPaulie]

Especially when space is usually at a premium in MATX builds