MSI Z68A-G45 ATX Motherboard

The latest one lacks PCI Express 3.0 and the DrMOS and Tantalum capacitors found on some of its peers, like the Z68A-GD55 yet be priced only 130 Euro, the rough equivalent of $223, at least according to European stores where it is up for pre-order.

  
The board comes with four memory slots and two PCI Express x16 slots (for graphics add-in-boards) that can work in dual x8 mode.

Additionally, MSI implemented two legacy PCI slots and three PCI Express x1 slots, plus Gigabit Ethernet, two USB 3.0 ports (plus another two as pin headers), a number of USB 2.0 connectors and the expected video outputs (HDMI, D-Sub, DVI and even optical and coaxial S/PDIF).

An extra difference between the MSI Z68A-G45 and its siblings, the phase count is 6 instead of 10. Power, reset and OC Genie buttons are absent, much like metering points for Voltage and angled SATA connectors.