Z97 vs Z97 - Help my exploding brain!

[latentjones]

tl;dr (So if you want the short question scroll to the bottom)

 

Pre-info: I'm in the Uk, my primary purpose is gaming, mainly AAA titles and a back catalogue of oldies. I want 60fps and my games to look tastier than your Christmas dinner.

 

Right... 

 

I'll try and make this simple because I'm confusing myself.

 

My current rig:

 

FX 6300

Gigabyte 78LMT-USB 3

MSI R9 280

16gb Crucial 2x 8gb

120gb Sandisk ssd

1tb Seagate ST...over9000

550 watt Bronze 80+ PSU 

 

Ok, cool. So I bought an i5 4590 a couple of months back and now I need a mobo. Simple right? Any H97. Or maybe a Z97 if I want to play with overclocking on another cpu later - which I want to do - so  that's narrowed it down to a Z97.

 

Then I thought 'hell I might as well get one with all the trimmings now so that I can just keep adding to it', so I narrowed it down to: this.

 

Sweet. Nice looking board, the future choice of either SLI or Xfire, M.2, etc...

 

I'm almost about to give Amazon my money then I see this.

 

Now herein lies my conundrum. Is the opportunity to have SLI in the future and M.2 worth the extra  £23?

 

Not only that, but by the time I get enough cash together to utilize either Xfire or SLI and an unlocked i7 and M.2, it will be late 2016 at the earliest. By then Skylake will be in full swing (using a different socket) and DX12 and Pascal will hopefully be ripping us all new assholes - in a good way.

 

So simple question now. 

Which one do I buy? this. or this.

 

Merry Bethlehem 

[The Official Czex]

They can both run XFire.

[mikat]

tl;dr (So if you want the short question scroll to the bottom)

 

Pre-info: I'm in the Uk, my primary purpose is gaming, mainly AAA titles and a back catalogue of oldies. I want 60fps and my games to look tastier than your Christmas dinner.

 

Right... 

 

I'll try and make this simple because I'm confusing myself.

 

My current rig:

 

FX 6300

Gigabyte 78LMT-USB 3

MSI R9 280

16gb Crucial 2x 8gb

120gb Sandisk ssd

1tb Seagate ST...over9000

550 watt Bronze 80+ PSU 

 

Ok, cool. So I bought an i5 4590 a couple of months back and now I need a mobo. Simple right? Any H97. Or maybe a Z97 if I want to play with overclocking on another cpu later - which I want to do - so  that's narrowed it down to a Z97.

 

Then I thought 'hell I might as well get one with all the trimmings now so that I can just keep adding to it', so I narrowed it down to: this.

 

Sweet. Nice looking board, the future choice of either SLI or Xfire, M.2, etc...

 

I'm almost about to give Amazon my money then I see this.

 

Now herein lies my conundrum. Is the opportunity to have SLI in the future and M.2 worth the extra  £23?

 

Not only that, but by the time I get enough cash together to utilize either Xfire or SLI and an unlocked i7 and M.2, it will be late 2016 at the earliest. By then Skylake will be in full swing (using a different socket) and DX12 and Pascal will hopefully be ripping us all new assholes - in a good way.

 

So simple question now. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Which one do I buy? this. or this.

 

Merry Bethlehem 

get the 380 btw, the 280 is old

get the PC Mate because it also supports crossfire

[Patrick Bateman]

Z97 vs Z97

both the same

[mikat]

They can both run SLI or XFire.

nope, the pc mate one can't do SLI, but he doesn't have an nvidia card.

[harrynowl]

Well. That PC Mate board isn't too great for overclocking if you're looking to do that in the future as the main reason for not going H97.

 

Although as pointed out they do have XFire and you currently use an AMD graphics card.

 

I think you should just buy a slightly nicer board anyway, that way it can't come back to bite you.

 

Although I would instead go for the Z97-AR over the Z97 Krait SLI

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/ASUS-Z97-AR/dp/B00KDKUFAM/ref=sr_1_8?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1451085431&sr=1-8&keywords=z97+sli

 

But either are fine, I just think the ASUS is better value for money.

[The Official Czex]

nope, the pc mate one can't do SLI, but he doesn't have an nvidia card.

 

I changed it before you finished your post.

[latentjones]

They can both run SLI or XFire.

I think the PC mate can only run Xfire...

 

 

get the 380 btw, the 280 is old

get the PC Mate because it also supports crossfire

 

The 280 is in the rig that I'm writing to you from now. This is just a mobo/cpu upgrade - and I already have the cpu.

[latentjones]

I changed it before you finished your post.

Too fast for me

[mikat]

I changed it before you finished your post.

well...

[MarcelKapono]

SLI in the future is a huge plus for upgradeability on a budget rather than spending a lot on a brand new GPU in the future. M.2 is also a huge plus if you want super fast PCIe storage compared to Sata 3.

I have the MSI Z97S SLI Krait Edition mobo. It looks good, performs well. Does not have a lot of features compared to MSI's other boards like their gaming series, but for me it gets he job done.