Motherboard Options for new tower

[andmil72]

I'm trying to decide on the best motherboard for my next desktop PC. The PC usage is a mix of medium/high end gaming, normal music/video and general home office.

Requirements:

• potential for 2 card nVidia SLI (1 or 2 x double height GTX770)
• Space for an audio card such as Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme or Asus equivalent
• Reasonable On board graphics to allow the nVidia card(s) to be switched off except when required for gaming
• Ability to use 2400 Mhz DDR 3 memory
• Adequate level of tools to support power management and fan control (I dont want a separate fan controller taking disk slot space)
• Supports 6GB/S Sata for the SSD disks
• Fits in a compact case such as the Corsair Carbide 300R

So looking at the options on the PCS configurator - 2 possible options are either the Asus Z87-A or the Asus Maximus VI Gene...... but I can't quite seem to answer all the questions from the specs....

• does the Asus Z87-A support the 6 GB/S SATA SSDs?
• The Maximus VI Gene has far fewer PCI slots - and would be filled up - which is a concern for any expansion - so is there another board which ticks all the boxes and leaves a spare PCI slot or two?
• and is the onboard audio on the Maximus Gene as good as a separate sound card? (...reducing the concern about PCI slot space)

or any other ideas and suggestions?

 

[keynes]

The z87-A will be perfectly adequate and cheaper, why do you want to switch to an integrated gpu, I am not even sure you can disable the gpu since you are connecting the monitors to the gpu and not the motherboard. If you are planning to SLI I wouldn't recommend a compact case and some of the chassis fans may be connected to the PSU.