Z97 is useful because if you decide to upgrade to one of the higher end overclockable CPUs in the future you can. I found the difference in price can be really small or the same. I went with a Gigabyte Black board which is around ~$135 on Amazon and supports SLI. http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-GA-Z97X-UD3H-BK-Motherboard-I...