Naw, still over budget. I just slimmed down the choices to 3. After recalculating my cost to build, the ASUS P8Z77-V is the most I'm willing to spend on a board at $209.99 as I'm also accounting for sales tax. EDIT: The ASUS board is $20 more expensive and the ASRock board is $60 more expensive in Canada ... which is bullsh*t since the Canadian Dollar is higher right now... deltatux
no, but its close to USD. CAD is .02 less than USD has to be another reason it costs more. that asrock should be 227CAD
After deep thoughts and countless hours of consultation with people on and offline, I've finally pegged down the final pieces of the rig design. I also went ahead and ordered the parts: Now to wait for the Intel Core i5 3570K to be in stock... Thanks for all your input and support. Cheers, deltatux
+1 for UD5 It just had the best expansion slot layout remaining, after removing 2 slots for a dual-width video card. asus loses : top slot = 1x pci-e is occluded bottom slot = nothing occluded, but mobo headers are slightly blocked asrock loses : top slot = nothing (since it has a gap) mid slot = pci is occluded ud5 loses : top slot = 1x pci-e is occluded mid slot = pci occluded bottom slot = nothing occluded, but mobo headers are HELLA blocked That said, the UD5 retains the most slot variety AFTER a card is mounted. But if you were going with the P8Z77 PREMIUM, than I'd choose that over all the others... edit My bad, too late. At least we agree -scheherazade
After a long cross country trek from Calgary, Alberta, Canada to Toronto, the first batch of my order came in this afternoon: Now all I'm waiting for is my Intel Core i5 3570K, Arctic Silver 5 12g tube and my USB 3.0 backplate which is from another retailer. deltatux
It works great, I saw no need to change. It's cheaper than the Arctic Cooling MX-4. Plus, the MX-4 doesn't work so well. deltatux
