So should I be more future proof or is the one above more than adequate for my needs?
(assuming you mean the Z77 based motherboard in your post from a few days ago).
There are a variety of different ways of looking at this. The more expensive boards tend to have more peripheral "stuff" on them (bluetooth, 1394, extra SATA ports, extra USB3 ports) provided by other chips other than the chipset. You may also have better power supply management and thermal management as you go up the boards. They will also tend to look "cooler"....
The question is, do you ever envisage using those extra features? For upgradeability, you are as set as you can be at the moment, the Z77 is one of the top chipsets so the only thing you could do in the future is perhaps replace the CPU with a faster one (assuming Gigabyte release support for newer chips in the BIOS of the board.
Personally, I've always found more SATA ports useful (they fill up eventually if you have a couple of extra disks) plus bluetooth for phone connectivity. I'd only use USB3 for a single external drive, so more than a couple of USB3 ports aren't that useful to me TBH. You may have completely different needs though.
So, ask yourself, are 6 USB ports enough (given at least 1 will be used for the mouse or keyboard). The board you are thinking of doesn't have an eSATA port so are you ever likely to want to add an
external SATA drive into the system (although I have one internal port connected to an external SATA connector on the case here) - it is much quicker than USB2, although you will have to power the drive separately. Do you want any additional features like bluetooth? firewire/1394? SPDIF out to hook up to an external DAC? extra cards into the system (probably not, but you have to ask)? You need to answer those questions before knowing whether it is worth upgrading the motherboard for something else in the line.
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