Gigabye vs Asus?

[gerardvanschip]

I noticed that on the buying guide it ALWAYS lists Gigabyte boards but when I open up the whole board list I see Asus boards. Are Gigabyte boards better suited to a hackintosh? Online search shows me that for Windows machines it makes no difference, just a personal preference of buyers.

Asking because Gigabyte boards are hard to get or very expensive here in Japan. Asus boards (called Asustek here) are everywhere.

 

[Going Bald]

I noticed that on the buying guide it ALWAYS lists Gigabyte boards but when I open up the whole board list I see Asus boards. Are Gigabyte boards better suited to a hackintosh? Online search shows me that for Windows machines it makes no difference, just a personal preference of buyers.

Asking because Gigabyte boards are hard to get or very expensive here in Japan. Asus boards (called Asustek here) are everywhere.

Gigabyte boards have a history of the BIOS being very friendly to OS X. With UEFI and Clover patching "on-the-fly" this is less important than it was. Asus makes good boards also, as do Asrock and MSI (although Asus support is lacking IMHO compared to Gigabyte or MSI). I have used all of them at one time or another and find little difference in ease of use since the 7 series Ivy Bridge boards. I have MSI and Asus Z77 and Z87 builds that are working fine, along with the Asrock X99 build. The last Gigabyte board I used was the X58A in my sig.

 

[gerardvanschip]

Thanks for the helpful reply. I'm looking at the Z170 boards. Stick an i5 6600 on that and a decent graphics card. I have a 2011 iMac right now and while the ssd upgrade helped in getting annoyed with the crappy graphics performance and new iMacs feel like a step backwards. Hackintosh it is!

 

[DrBEN]

(...)

Asking because Gigabyte boards are hard to get or very expensive here in Japan. Asus boards (called Asustek here) are everywhere.

Are you sure? Both companies are in Japan. Amazon.jp sells both brands.

For example, a Gigabyte z170x-ud5 is ¥21,543 and an Asustek z170 Pro Gaming is ¥23,817. A Gigabyte ga-z170x-ud3 is only ¥14,980.

The Gigabyte ud5 is available from another Japanese vendor (https://www.pc-koubou.jp/products/detail.php?product_id=575067) for ¥18,990

 

[gerardvanschip]

Are you sure? Both companies are in Japan. Amazon.jp sells both brands.
For example, a Gigabyte z170x-ud5 is ¥21,543 and an Asustek z170 Pro Gaming is ¥23,817. A Gigabyte ga-z170x-ud3 is only ¥14,980.

I was just looking at the two top boards at customac matx, thinking they were there because tonymac thought they were the best suited. Reading the forums I have come to realize that other boards are fine too. The GA-Z170m-D3H cost 99 bucks on Amazon US but 15000 yen on JP which is 150 bucks. I found a similar ASUS board for 11000 yen at another vendor.

Btw, I noticed that the DDR3 boards have a big price cut. Is there a huge performance difference? Saving 60 bucks sounds tempting.

 

[vinodh]

Btw, I noticed that the DDR3 boards have a big price cut. Is there a huge performance difference? Saving 60 bucks sounds tempting.

Very small difference in performance. Definitely an option if you are on a tight budget.