Two motherboards! Help decide, pls.

[Cookiemonstahr]

hi

motherboard1:

Gigabyte GA-Z97X Gaming 7 (LGA1150)

motherboard2:

Asus Maximus VII Ranger (LGA1150)

#note that I do not plan to overclock anything, all I need is quality, stability, reliability and longevity.

Q1:Are these boards considered very good Z97 boards?

Q2: These boards are similar to each other, yet there are some differences so which one would you pick?

Q3:How old is motherboard1? How old is motherboard2? (By how old I mean when were they released to stores?)

Thx

[OSBK]

i do have the VII ranger it's quite good. The Maximus has a lot better audio chip, excellent OCing record and more SATA ports. If money is not an issue then Maximus is the preferred choice. Worth the money for the features it offer to a power user.

[Cookiemonstahr]

i do have the VII ranger it's quite good. The Maximus has a lot better audio chip, excellent OCing record and more SATA ports. If money is not an issue then Maximus is the preferred choice. Worth the money for the features it offer to a power user.

I did read that comment on tomshardware . I'd like to hear your opinion, though.

[OSBK]

I did read that comment on tomshardware . I'd like to hear your opinion, though.

as i sais i did use to have the VII Ranger, i didn't test the gigabyte gaming 7 but what i found, the ranger is just more stable when overclocking the cpu. for the sound quality, i've being useing the mobo's sound card, for gaming/ watching videos/blablaba and it's realy good. when we talk about cooling, the ranger has more heatsinks (armor) which is good. in some benchmarks with diffrent games there is a balance between the two boards.