Already we've looked at a couple of PCIe 3.0 boards; the first was the ASRock Z68 Extreme7 Gen3 and that's the big brother to the board we're looking at today. The other was the MSI Z68A-GD80-G3. While both are great boards in their own right, the problem at the moment is that nothing can really make use of the PCIe 3.0 capabilities on offer from these boards. Saying that, though, one would argue that if you're interesting in making use of the next generation LGA 1155 chips from Intel and a PCIe 3.0 video card in the future, it's almost silly to buy a non "Gen3" motherboard.

If you want to get in on the "Gen3" action at a good price, though, the MSI and Extreme7 offering might be a little too expensive for you. The Extreme4 on the other hand could be just the board for you. Coming in at a strong price point, it might be the perfect board to get you on the PCIe 3.0 bandwagon and be ready for when PCIe 3.0 capable devices come to the market.