I'm finally going in to build a new PC. I have a lot of things figured out, however the motherboard is a bit of a conundrum. My problems come to with me wanting to keep some hardware I currently have. What it comes down to is the fallowing : I need at least 1 PCI slot (two is possible), at least 5 SATA ports, and I want to put in a Skylake CPU in. A big part of the issue I am running into is finding one with those features and that seems to be stable. I would prefer to keep the board under $200, but I am aware that may not be possible. Any ideas on a few boards? I'm in the USA, can order online, and have a Microcenter and Frys Electronics
May I know what the PCI slot for? The others are not really a problem especially if you are not looking for any overclocking special. Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk
I just set up Tech ARP's new Skylake testbed using Asrock motherboards. So far, I'm quite impressed with it. Their Z170 motherboards are expensive but you can always opt for the H170 models.
The PCI slot is for my Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum. I use it to decode the digital audio from my XBox. Only problem with Asrock is that the two boards that have a PCI slot don't seem to be very available.
I'm not too familiar with Frys, don't have a B&M store here. But I bought my i5 quad Motherboard+CPU bundle from Microcenter. My boss bought the same i5, and then the i7 combo not too long ago. They have very competitive pricing for the CPU it self, much better than NewEgg, and you save about additional $20 for the combo. Most new motherboard don't have PCI, my best guess, get a PCI-e to PCI adapter, I haven't use one of those, nor do I know what's the disadvantages.
The only issue with that is the card is a full height PCI card. The adapters that don't cost at least $300 and have an external enclosure are for half-height/low profile only.
That's what I was thinking, but it would seem the Gigabyte boards with a PCI slot are not doing too well, even after updating to the latest BIOS. I have some time, so I will be doing more research. I was juts hoping to get a little options that I might have missed.
How do you decode the Xbox audio? Is there anything that a new sound card can't do now? I would avoid using PCI slot if possible since it is a legacy port and you are limiting your choices because of PCI slot. I got rid of my last PCI slot based sound card and didn't have to worry about PCI slots anymore. Now my new board is legacy port free.
Ahhh... missed the part about the PCI slot. The "problem" with the new Intel 100 series chipset, and even the 80 series and 90 series chipsets, is that they no longer support PCI. So any motherboard with a PCI slot is really using a PCIe to PCI bridge.
I'm using a SPDIF input and having the sound card hardware decode the Dolby Digital/DTS audio to analog speakers. The only other options are to either get another $500 set of speakers (not in the finances) or find a Creative Labs DDTS-100 decoder (or something cheap and small with the same features). That decoder has been discontinued for years and anyone who has it only sells it for an insane amount. I would LOVE to drop the PCI slot, but it's not in the budget, and I need to quicker computer to take online classes.
The last option would be to replace the sound card, will that work? http://www.amazon.com/Blaster-Perfo...&qid=1449253910&sr=8-1&keywords=sound+blaster
Unfortunately, the Audigy 2ZS platinum was the only sound card that decoded Dolby Digital and DTS to analog speakers. That's the reason I have held onto the card for this much time.
It's looking like Gigabyte GA-Z170XP-SLI will work well for me. I don't plan on doing overclocking or using more then one GPU.