Biostar TZ68K+ LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard $65 After $15 rebate + Free shipping (expired)

Newegg has Biostar's TZ68K+ for $65 after $10.00 MIR + Free shipping. Lowest I've seen so far for this model.

Supports upcomming Ivy Bridge processors and PCI-Gen 3.0 too, as long as get CPU support PCI-E Gen 3.0 . Plus support Intel RST if need some speed boosting for SSD caching with the mechanical HDD's.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...k=tz68k%2b

Tigerdirect = $130+shipping
Amazon = $99+shipping
Pricegrabber = $124 + shipping

http://slickdeals.net/f/4123807-B...d-65-AR-FS

Incredible price for a well rated Z68.

Kinda sucks when manufacturers cripple a product just to fill a price segment. The Z68 clearly has the capability to do x8,x8 for crossfire, yet they chose to set it as x16,x4 in the name of capitalism. Besides this, would have been an awesome price for this board.

Quote from ti97 : Kinda sucks when manufacturers cripple a product just to fill a price segment. The Z68 clearly has the capability to do x8,x8 for crossfire, yet they chose to set it as x16,x4 in the name of capitalism. Besides this, would have been an awesome price for this board.

Doesnt have anything to do with the z68 or any crippling. The 1155 has 20 full speed pcie lanes so you can have 2 x8's or a 16 and a 4. Some motherboard manufacturers add silicon to split the lanes for better performance, but not at these price points I'm afraid.

I have this board and have had two issues with it. The first is that its not a full sized atx board, its about 1/3 of an inch short, so you may have trouble mounting it. I had to stuff some silicone balls under the edge because the very good antec case I had didnt have mounting points there. Without support, you will have to be careful changing memory or sata connections without flexing the board.

And the usb 2 is weird. Works great most of the time and then periodically I'll have a problem where the usb device appears to fall asleep for a few seconds. I've checked all the settings and it seems to be worse with some devices than others. Havent had that sort of oddity with the other boards I've used.

The only other thing I can say is that biostar hasnt put new drivers for anything on their site in about a year, and the bios updates arent exactly frequent.

All things being equal, I'd prefer the gigabyte z68 board that microcenter has been selling for $69AR but that deal is dead.

I bought a Biostar T-Force 550 years ago paired with a 3800 x2 cpu and it runs perfect to this day - no issues.

The support aspect of Biostar and their updates makes me a little worried though. I tried to download the manual off their website to check some compatibilities but the manual link is dead (http://www.biostar-usa.com/app/en...hp?S_ID=24).

EDIT: Nevermind, found it: http://www.biostar-usa.com/app/en...p?S_ID=556

FYI. you won't get your rebate until 12-14 weeks after the promotion ends which is 3/31/12. twice as long as most rebates.

still on the fence about this. want to get it to pair with a 2500k. any thoughts?

I'm still on the fence, is it worth waiting for a gigabyte deal?

bit. Pairing it with i5 2500k for a budget gaming build. Better than the recent microcenter combo deal's mobo which makes me happy.

Im on the fence, too.. Thinking I will probably wait for something a bit bigger and more full-featured for my full tower gaming build.. As nice as it would be to have some extra money left over for a better video card, this is a good deal, its just already a budget board and the last thing I need is less space/connection points to work with...
It might be a good buy for the video editing workstation Im building for a friend, if they could pull their act together and give me the green light to start shopping... :shakefist: Im sure it would be fine for that, but yeah, its not going into my gaming system.

BTW, link appears to be broken

good for an i3 non-gaming set up?

Why does the picture on newegg show f_usb3 header but the description does not list it?

Picked one up. Thanks!