Educate me on motherboards

[Sonikku]

I'm looking at them now, but their prices are all over the place and I don't entirely understand all the features.

This X470 motherboard for instance can be had for $115 AR, and could potentially overlock a Ryzen to the point where the chip hits a wall before the motherboard does.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157836

And then you have motherboards like the Taichi and Hero that are in the $300 range.

I think I'm missing something here. What in blazes separates these things to the point where other boards cost nearly three times as much?

 

[whm1974]

Features like RAID, high end sound chips, larger number of PCI 16X slots, etc.

 

[Sonikku]

How much worse are the sound chips in cheaper motherboards?

 

[whm1974]

How much worse are the sound chips in cheaper motherboards?

They are good enough that the average computer user doesn't have or need a sound card.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

I think high end boards are a huge waste of money. Also if you're looking to build a gaming system on a budget I think overclocking the cpu is another waste of money. You pay more for the board, you pay more for the cpu, you pay more for the cooling, you pay more for the RAM, and then in almost every big AAA game you'll still be limited by the performance of your graphics card anyways. Overclocking the cpu really only make sense IMO if you're trying to push 144 fps gaming or if you plan to do a lot of emulation of the Wii U / PS3 / Switch (those are the only emulators that need a beefy cpu to run at their best).

It's not like the glory days of the 1990s where you could buy a $200 cpu and overclock it to the performance of the $500 model.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

How much worse are the sound chips in cheaper motherboards?

I had a $50 H81 board in my system which I then replaced with an $85 Z97 board and the sound was the same to me. The Z97 board has an audio line in so I could feed the sound from my XBox 360 into it (my H81 board didn't) so that was nice, but not a huge deal. H81 was ultra budget for the Intel 4000 series chips while Z97 was the premium chipset for the 4000 series, though I bought one of the lowest end Z97 boards. And honestly the performance difference didn't justify the upgrade at all from H81 to Z97 for me. I bought it back when I thought I'd buy a second gpu but never did. The Z97 did allow me to buy faster RAM which did improve performance a bit in GTA V and Fallout 4 (eg minimum framerates went up 10% to 15% from the faster RAM), but the smarter way to improve performance would be to turn a setting or two down one notch.

 

[whm1974]

I would just get a decent mid range board and done with it. A B450 will pretty meet the vast majority of your cases.

 

[RLGL]

I generally spend between $150. and $200. on a board. This gets me what I need.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

@Sonikku, what kind of system are you looking to build and what's your budget like?

 

[Sonikku]

@Sonikku, what kind of system are you looking to build and what's your budget like?

My questions in this thread were looking to better understand what I was missing in motherboards. Thanks for your insight. I just posted the overall build thread here.

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/black-friday-upgrade.2556628/

 

[arandomguy]

$150 is probably the highest end you'd need to go for a Ryzen gaming build and I'd still say you could do with less. Unless you have some specific requirements your looking for.

This is a decked out $150 board already and in an itx form factor - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FKTSWNG/?tag=pcpapi-20

It has things like beefed up audio and an Intel NIC on board. And given your already paying a premium for the form factor and "bling" probably no real reason to pay anymore than that.

In terms of overclocking your looking at something like 4.2ghz ("decent" mobo and aftermarket hsf) vs. a bit over 4ghz on a 2700x with it's included HSF on all core work loads as an example. Let's say you go to extreme on the motherboard and cooling even more and maybe (and I say maybe) get it to 4.3ghz, not exactly a life altering difference either way. Also keep in mind if you manually set multiplier sub all core clock speeds might actually be lower.

As for why a lot of people buy this stuff well the AiBs and the rest of the ecosystem knows how to market themselves as well.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

My questions in this thread were looking to better understand what I was missing in motherboards. Thanks for your insight. I just posted the overall build thread here.

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/black-friday-upgrade.2556628/

Oh ok, I thought you were getting ready to build a full system.

 

[Sonikku]

I think I've settled on this one.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157789

But will a z370 work with a 9 series intel out of the box or would it need a firmware update?

 

[VirtualLarry]

https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...fter-rebate-newegg-com.2557158/#post-39656220

 

[Sonikku]

Not enough in the budget. Would be my first choice if possible though.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Depending on which chip you're going to use, I'd be wary of using Z370 boards to host a 9-series chip. The 9900k definitely has problems with Z370. Something less power-hungry? Eh not as big of a problem, I don't think. Still, and 8c chip in Z370 is going to hit you with inefficiency problems due to the low voltage/high current you get from expanding core count. Those boards were simply not designed with 8c chips in mind.