Trying to get the best motherboard for intel's 4770K (help please)

[luisma96]

Before I tell you guys my problem I’d like to give you a little introduction to my self so you can understand this situation better: this year I’m going to be in my first year of college and my daily used workstation is 6 years old now so I thought that it’s time for an upgrade; because I wanted a changed since I’ve been using Windows all my life I wanted to go to the mac world in special this awesome hackintosh community that is this page.

So I started to look at the hardware that I wanted (and could afford) and I decided that I wanted the Intel 4770K and some fast ram; because I already have all the other components that I’ll need the motherboard is the last thing that I needed to look for.
I went to the wonderful buyers guide and I picked three boards, the GA-Z87X-OC (because it had a lot of features at a great price), the GA-Z87X-UD5H and finally the GA-Z87X-UD4H (because it was cheaper than the other two and it matched perfectly the color scheme of my new machine which is red and black).

So after the selection of the boards I went and made some big research on tohse components and I came to the conclusión that, the oc board is way too much for me in terms of features and I won’t be using all the power that it can offer;with the UD5H (wich was my favourite board of the three)turns that a lot of people were having problems with the installation of Mac OS X(http://www.tonymacx86.com/mavericks...ast-3-0-1-unable-install-10-9-a.html);freezes wich is a very common problem with this board, it seem that it could be fixed with some specific brand of ram, but it happens when you have all the four slots of ram ocuped and I need all the space for future upgrades (see froghammer’s thread, everything that I’m talking about is there: http://www.tonymacx86.com/general-help/110874-i7-4770k-z87x-u5dh-build-freezing-6.html and here: http://www.tonymacx86.com/general-help/110874-i7-4770k-z87x-u5dh-build-freezing.html) and last but not least the UD4H, wich seem to be not so different to the last one, has the optimal color scheme for me and seems to work fine even with 32 gb of ram (BacMook’s build for example: http://www.tonymacx86.com/user-buil...gabyte-ga-z87x-ud4h-32gb-ram-gtx-760-2gb.html) and even in 10.9.2 (Hattrick’s thread: http://www.tonymacx86.com/mavericks...-10-9-2-install-ga-z87x-ud4h-mb-i7-4770k.html)

So, to finish up, I would love if you guys can give me some advice in wich mobo could be the easiest one to get working and the most reliable one, I would be very grateful if this community could help me out this time.

Pd: sorry for the enormous post but I had to explain my sef very precisely to get my point across.


Thank you all beforehand, this community is awesome.

 

[trs96]

The Z87X-UD4H is a good choice that should be able to do what you need it to.
If you go with a 32 GB kit of either the Crucial Ballistix or G.Skill ram you can
avoid the freezing problems that many have had with that motherboard.
You could also look at some of the User and Golden builds with the Z87X-UD3H
and also some of the Z87 Asus motherboards to see if those may be a better fit.

 

[Shiitaki]

I would suggest you buy the simplest motherboard that will do what you want. The fewer the 'features' the better in my experience. I don't mean you have to buy a base model, but buying a more complicated motherboard than you need is a waste of money and can produce complications.

When it comes to memory, more is not always better. Again, unless you need massive amounts of ram, don't bother doing it. Most of the time people will pack the ram slots because they have windows in their case. The reason for this is that regular desktop computers don't have registered ram, the registers clean the signals up, and reduce the load on the memory controller. When you use a lot of memory, the memory chips have to drive each other, and the memory controller. It is like you keep adding speakers to your stereo, eventually it can't keep up. When it can't you computer will mysteriously crash. Generally, if you combine 2 1600hz kits, you should expect the ram to run at 13333. If you buy a kit with 4 sticks with an advertised speed, then it should work as a system. You have to realize that those four slots are not individual, they are connected in pairs.

It is not uncommon to find lots of complaints of a problem, when in reality there really is not a big issue. Happy people don't complain, by definition you will see far more issues than happiness on the net.

Last but not least, be sure you can return parts. It's rare anymore, but sometimes random parts simply don't work well together.

 

[luisma96]

If you go with a 32 GB kit of either the Crucial Ballistix or G.Skill ram you can
avoid the freezing problems that many have had with that motherboard.

You mean the problems with the UD5H or the UD4H?

Thank you so much for the reply sir.

 

[luisma96]

When it comes to memory, more is not always better. Again, unless you need massive amounts of ram, don't bother doing it. Most of the time people will pack the ram slots because they have windows in their case. The reason for this is that regular desktop computers don't have registered ram, the registers clean the signals up, and reduce the load on the memory controller. When you use a lot of memory, the memory chips have to drive each other, and the memory controller. It is like you keep adding speakers to your stereo, eventually it can't keep up. When it can't you computer will mysteriously crash. Generally, if you combine 2 1600hz kits, you should expect the ram to run at 13333. If you buy a kit with 4 sticks with an advertised speed, then it should work as a system. You have to realize that those four slots are not individual, they are connected in pairs.

Do you think that this memory (http://www.amazon.es/dp/B007V9PZFI/?tag=tonymacx86c03-21) would work with the UD4H?

It's supported on the official page of the memory so in theory it should to work...

Thank you very much for your help sir.