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How much to spend on mobo?

prism

prism

Senior member
I'm planning on getting an i5-4570 or 4760k, along with a GTX 760 and 16g of RAM. I don't plan on overclocking. Do I really need a $150+ mobo to get the most out of my system, or would something <$100 be just fine, albeit without all of the bells and whistles of something pricier?
 
Yes there are good motherboards out there for less than $100. Remember you get what you pay for in terms of quality and materials it's made up of. There are really nice MOBO's out there in that price range. Go to newegg and see the amount you can get for <$100.
 
prism said:
I'm planning on getting an i5-4570 or 4760k, along with a GTX 760 and 16g of RAM. I don't plan on overclocking. Do I really need a $150+ mobo to get the most out of my system, or would something <$100 be just fine, albeit without all of the bells and whistles of something pricier?
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You don't need a $150 mobo. If not overclocking, you might not even need an $80 mobo.

Check features for what you want or need. Some $100-150 are packed with add-ons that can save you cards down the road, but also happen to be Z87 boards geared towards overclocking. ASRock's Fatality H87 boards fit in a unique niche of being feature-filled but having no OC tax.
 
prism said:
Would I be sacrificing much by going with this one instead?: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...=ATVPDKIKX0DER
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It leaves you, as a gamer, one PCI and one PCIe 16x slot free, has 2 fewer USB 3.0s than most more expensive boards, and 2 of the SATAs are 3Gbps. It does not support Intel's RAID, nor SRT.

Also, in general, I would only get a 2-RAM-slot board if very tight on budget. You never know when or how you might want to upgrade RAM.

A full size board might have more PCI and PCIe available, an H87 or Z87 might have more USBs, a higher-end board might have an added USB 3.0 controller for even more port, an added SATA controller for even more ports, better SLI/Crossfire support (Z87 allows flexible PCIe lane distribution), more rear IO panel ports, etc..

How much does any of that matter to you? I ended up with the ASRock B85M Pro4, because the one feature that might tempt me I could add a whole lot cheaper with a card than a high-end mobo, whenever I decide to use it (an extra USB 3.0 header). I went through all the feature differences from a number of boards, and mentally struck them all out: don't need this, don't need that, will never use that (plus, the board was cheaper then than it is now--today I'd have gotten the H87M Pro4, being so close in price). But, I'm not you, and you very well might find a feature useful now or in the future, that exists on some H87 or Z87 board, but not on a H81 or B85 one. SRT and RAID are probably the two most useful features for non-overclockers.
 
The solid caps on the ASRock board linked above would be my reason for purchasing it. If you don't think that's important, talk to anyone who owned a early 2000s era Dell.

I've owned $50 mobos, $100 mobos and currently rocking a ~$200 mobo. CPUs, overclocks and "features" aside....you really can't tell a difference between any of them while looking at the monitor. Pick whichever one has the connectors you need and think no more of it.
 
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