Best Motherboard with Excellent AHCI Support

I am considering upgrading the motherboard, CPU & RAM of one of my PC's. Please recommend some motherboards. My two biggest requirements are:

1. Excellent AHCI Support (To give Excellent SSD Performance)

2. Excellent Motherboard Quality.

Thanks in Advance.

 

1. Asus
2. GigaByte

Best regards,

KOR!

 

Any recommended Asus or GigaByte motherboard models?

 

Specify your socket/intended CPU, RAM type and intended features. If you are on a tight budget you can also try ASRock.

 

Intel Core i5, Socket 1155, 2 X 4 GB DDR3 1600, Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit.

I don't need much CPU power. I do mostly web surfing, office applications and a small amount of audio encoding/editing.

 

As far as price-to-performance ratio goes, nothing beats this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157279

The downside: Only 1-year warranty.

The alternatives are MSI and Asus:

Asus P8Z68-V LE:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131773

MSI Z68A-G43 G3:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130621

Another board I will recommend is the Biostar TZ68A+. Excellent board, let down by only 4 USB ports at the back of the chassis. If you don't mind that, by all means, go for it (A better model, the TZ68K+ is also available at roughly the same price).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138319

 

Thanks.

 

I'd personally recommend you to go for the MSI board since it is relatively cheap, MSI has decent support and BIOS updates are quick and frequent. ASRock is also good but the 1-year warranty is not a good deal in my opinion.

Asus and Biostar are slower at releasing updates. Their support is also slower in my experience. The quality is great for all of these boards, however, I'd advise you not to do heavy overclocking on MSI boards since there have been reports of exploding components due to heavy heating as a result of overclocking, whereas Biostar and ASRock can withstand tremendous amounts of stress despite their relatively modest electrical specifications (speaking from an engineering point of view here).