discussion mATX build with the BitFenix Pandora

[wilfordjason]

Heres my build guys: Intel Core i7-6700K, Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970, BitFenix Pandora - System Build - PCPartPicker
I've already future proofed the RAM and storage options, but cant seem to find a cheap mATX mobo with 2-way SLI support in case i want to get another GTX 970 in the future. Any thoughts?
TIA

 

[SKYMTL]

Cheap + mATX + SLI is pretty much mutually exclusive.

How about the Gigabyte G1 Gaming GA-Z170MX-Gaming 5? Seems like a really robust choice for the price.

 

[Vittra]

If I didn't buy the Maximus VIII Gene, I would have bought the GA-Z170MX-Gaming 5. If you want to save the additional cost, go with that as SKYMTL suggested.

All the other offerings in mATX for Z170 are incredibly mediocre thus far...

 

[ThE_MarD]

Heyyo,

I'd go with the Gigabyte Z170MX-Gaming 5. My current motherboard is a Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 and I'm plenty happy with it. ASRock is a decent board too but tbh their warranty is still a crappy one year where-as Gigabyte and Asus do three years... so for the tiny price difference between the ASRock and the Gigabyte boards? It's not even a competition to get the Gigabyte board. Only get the ASRock board if you really need to make this build as cost effective as possible. They're still a decent brand but... dat warranty for only what? $15 difference gets you two extra years?

The Asus Maximus VIII Genie mATX though? For $77 more so roughly so 43% price increase... would it net you an overclock that would be 43% better? Definitely not, but it would still probably get you a better overclock if your goal is to try and smash records on 3DMark... actual gameplay performance gains would be lesser than the score difference between 3DMark and actual games since 3DMark is a worst case synthetic benchmark that is heavily optimized where-as games most of the time aren't optimized to the best of their potential.

Looking at that case? You'd probably need to sandwitch your two cards together as well. I dunno what kind of height that G1 Gaming card is, but looking at pictures the backplate sticks out a bit so you might need to remove one of the backplates to be able to smush those two cards together. I'm a little inexperienced with having two cards that close in SLI so maybe someone else can comment if the G1 Gaming would work in this case or if you'd need a slimmer choice of GPUs like the reference blower cards.