Best Intel Motherboards 2012 - 1155, 1366, 1156

There are lots of different motherboards out there - but which one should you choose? There are 6 main chipsets for Intel's Socket 1155 CPU; Z68, P67, H67 (Sandy Bridge), and Z77, Z75, and H77 for Ivy Bridge. The less expensive H67 and H77 motherboards were built for consumers who want to use integrated graphics, while the P67 and Z75 - were built more for dedicated graphics and support CPU overclocking.

The Z68 and Z77 chipsets give consumers the best of both worlds with some additional technology. Intel Smart Response technology introduces SSD caching - allowing you to dedicate up to a 64GB SSD to caching and turning your hard drive's performance into what Intel calls SSD-like performance. New Z77 chipset motherboards were built for Ivy Bridge processors and natively support USB 3.0 and PCIe 3.0.

Gen3:

The most popular LGA 1155 motherboards available right now are all GEN3 Z68 Motherboards. GEN3 motherboards are forwards compatible with Ivy Bridge and support PCI-e 3.0. While consumer accessibility to PCI express 3.0 GPU is limited at this time, it's still worth the price to purchase a board that will last for quite some time.

Sandy Bridge - A Worthwhile Upgrade:

Intel's CEO Paul Otellini said that "The Sandy Bridge is a 486 to Pentium kind of jump. What the Pentium did was enable the beginning of the multimedia era by virtues of capabilities built into it. It was the right product at the right time. We are now about to move to the era of visualization - we may be in the middle of that movement today- where everything is about video whether it is consumer or corporate. It is going to be about not just watching video, but sharing video and video conferencing. [...] What this product was engineered for was the optimized video visual experience,"

Whether you plan on using a dedicated graphics card or an integrated graphics card, you'll see noticeable difference in both multi-tasking and video performance.

The P8Z68-V PRO GEN3 started and has remained one of the bestselling 1155 motherboards of 2012. The overall value of the specifications you get for the price have made it extremely popular. While it's not as highly rated as Asus Deluxe or Sabertooth P67 version motherboards, it costs about 25% less for much of the same features.

Z68 and GEN3

The P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 is a Z68 chipset motherboard and is GEN3 - which means that it's forwards compatible with Ivy Bridge standard edition processors and can support PCI express 3.0.

Specifications:

Intel P67 Northbridge Chipset for Core i7, i5, i3 LGA 1155 Processors. Supports up to 32GB Ram (Dual Channel 240x4 DDR3) at up to 2200 speed overclocked. Support for USB 3.0, Sata 6Gb/s, Sata 3Gb/s, Crossfire, and SLI ports and storage.


ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 Z68 Motherboard LGA 1155
Amazon Price: As Low As $194.99 

Budget Alternative to the P8Z68-V Pro GEN 3:

A budget alternative to this motherboard would be the ASRock Z68 PRO3 GEN3, which is nearly half the price. ASRock has made a name for itself in the last few years by providing budget motherboards with similar specifications for just a fraction of the cost.

The X79 chipset, which uses the LGA 2011 socket, is designed for use with Intel's latest Sandy Bridge-e series of processors which released in late 2011. This chipset is also completely forwards compatible with Ivy Bridge-e processors which are slated for release at the end of 2012. Because enthusiasts tend to be power-users that do a lot of gaming, photo editing, or graphic design, these motherboards tend to have more features for overclocking and control in general.