OMG somebody bid for my Maximus VII Gene board on Rakuten

After writing this post, I headed to Rakuten Auctions website and listed my Asus ROG Maximus VII Gene motherboard. After a few days, I got a message from someone asking me if I had the original receipt with me and whether there was an agent in the country who would handle the warranty related stuff. I had to look up about the latter. There was a Techwind sticker on the box and that confirmed it. Techwind was the official agent for this board who would be handling the RMAs. (It was just like when returned the Corsair SP 2200 speakers due to crackling. You can check out that article here. )

The starting price I set for the board was quite high. JPY 20,000. I did not expect anyone to bid for that amount. I only paid JPY 3,000 more when I bought it. However the current selling price of the board is JPY 26,800 due to devaluation of Japanese Yen. And he eventually placed a bid. Since nobody competed against him for the board, the final bid was same as the starting bid.

The guy paid for the board and I have to send it before 6th of June. In the mean time, it was time for me to look for a replacement. I love searching for new stuff to buy.

The board comparable to the one I was replacing was the Asus ROG Maximus VII Impact. But it was quite expensive at around JPY 26,000. There were few more options too. The Asus Z97I-Plus, the Gigabyte Z97N Gaming 5 and the MSI Z97I Gaming ACK. Indeed, my options were limited.

• The Asus Z97I-Plus was the cheapest, priced at less than JPY 18,000 but it had one issue. The audio chip was the "old" Realtek ALC 892 chip. At least now there were better components such as audio grade caps to complement it, compared to the old Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 board I bought as soon as I arrived in Japan.

• The Gigabyte Z97N board was about JPY 2,000 more and it lacked a M.2 port. Although I don't current own a M.2 SSD, I might have to buy one in the future because if everything goes according to plan, I would not have enough space inside the case for lots of drives. 

• The issue with the MSI board was its price. It was same price as the Impact and in that case the Impact would be the better option for the sheer amount of features it offered.

After swaying back and forth between my options, I decided to go ahead with the Asus Z97I-Plus. I'm sure i wouldn't have a problem with the audio quality of it, for I am not someone who labels himself as an Audiophile. Apart from the price, the quality of its UEFI, SATA port layout with two of them located towards the outer edge of the board, low DPC latency as observed on this review, availability of M. 2 port (although it's underneath the board), frequent BIOS updates (it has received 13 updates since its launch up to now) and my familiarity with Asus boards made it come out on top of the list.

So I ordered it one Sunday night from Tsukumo, which was one of the shops selling it for the cheapest price. I could have bought it from Nojima using only points but they had a 5 day delivery time which was cutting it too close to the deadline for sending the current board to the bidder. So Tsukumo, it had to be. I should receive it on Tuesday.