What do you look for in a motherboard?

[Not So Mild]

I plan on building a new computer in the coming few months. In the past, for a motherboard, I pick one with a compatible socket type, the appropriate i/o and pci-e slots, and find one for a decent price. I don't really judge them very much, although I know there are a wide variety in prices and I'm not too sure why. For my next build I do plan on overclocking so I know I need a Z370, but I'm not too sure what to look for after that. I know that motherboards haven't been released for this platform yet, so I'm not looking for model numbers, just general guidelines on what to look out for.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Interesting -- how we initially decide on criteria for purchasing something, with perfectly rational, pertinent rules-of-thumb, but technology advances to a point that diminishes the significance of those criteria.

I always made sure there were plenty of fan ports, and enough PWM fan ports on the board. I wanted a board that had a high number of "phase-power-design." Low-end boards -- and I haven't looked at 'em recently but within the last 18 months -- usually have a phase-power-design of about 6 or 8. Three or more years ago, you would expect to see high-end boards sporting 12.

And for the last few years, I'd been looking at each generation's ASUS Sabertooth boards. I could see the potential of the duct-plate with active cooling by 40mm fans. The boards had a 5-year warranty when most others are warrantied for 3 years. Fan control and the number of fan ports is more than excellent.

Last year -- exactly one year ago -- I pulled the checkout string for the parts of my Skylake (sig) build. I was going to build my own duct plate, so I chose the cheaper Sabertooth Z170 S over the Saber Z170 Mach 1. The S board is essentially the same, but you pay more for the duct plate.

And I noticed that phase-power-design was 12. I thought this was good. Further, the board had been benchmarked and reviewed in a test with three other high-end ASUS boards of Maximus and Deluxe flavors. It performed pretty well, scoring 2nd or 3rd in some bench tests, 4th in some others. The comparison also included boards from other manufacturers, and they fell significantly behind the four ASUS boards. The Sabertooth performance stats overall would show just slivers of differences short of the other three.

Then I saw the specs on the other ASUS boards, which sported phase-power-designs of 16. Keep in mind that some part of that number is exclusively allocated to the graphics part of the processor, so with an dGPU in the system, they wouldn't be used.

ASUS had actually commented on this phase-power rule-of-thumb some two or three years ago, either for Ivy Bridge or Haswell generations. They asserted that the quality of components was just as important as phase power-design.

My Sabertooth is currently running with the CPU clocked to 4.7 Ghz, and the CPU was binned to run at 4.8. And it will run at 4.8 at the voltage suggested by Silicon Lottery, who binned and re-lidded the chip for me. The VRMs on the motherboard show temperatures under stress at between 45C and 50C, depending on how much RAM is configured (16 GB with two sticks and 32 GB with four sticks).

For temperature monitoring, the Sabertooth is a marvelous wonder. You can control fans (or strings of PWM fans) from two CPU ports and six chassis-fan ports; there is a separate port labeled "Pump." There are some additional four or more "Auxiliary" fan ports -- one of which I use for a 40mm I/O-plate intake fan blowing across the VRMs. Especially, you can assign any one of some ten temperature sensors to any particular fan port.

It may be that the high-end ASUS boards have these features -- I cannot say. But for the $170 I spent in September 2016, the Sabertooth makes me happier than a pig in s***.

Obviously, there is a Sabertooth Z370, or there should be. And there are many good boards out there. Depends on what you want and what you care to spend.

PS (means "post script") -- Yes, I see that the Z370 boards are only soon to be released this year. So the only most recent model available now is a Z270. But, again, it all depends on what you want, what you need, and what you want to pay. There WILL be a Sabertooth Z370. Nobody "told" me, but ASUS won't discontinue a successful model line -- so count on it.

There are other good boards, as I said . . . .

 

[DaveSimmons]

My last couple of motherboards were for a Core 2 Duo E8400 and then an i5-2500. I only wanted a single graphics card and no overclocking so went with more basic Gigabyte and ASRock motherboards for just a little over $100.

Even $100-150 boards come with piles of ports and connectors now, and at $150 you'll get a reinforced GPU slot for heavier video cards like my 3-fan MSI Lightning LE 980ti. So for me: decent brand, reinforced GPU slot. I'll probably get a 370 (or Ryzen equivalent) just for the better build quality over a $60 motherboard.

 

[UsandThem]

4-pin fan connectors for PWM, upgraded audio (latest Realtek codec and implemented properly), and good hands-on user reviews (which requires you to wait a bit after a new chipset/CPU launches). I personally don't like dealing with the "early-adapter troubleshooter tax".

 

[EXCellR8]

Before I became a mobo snob I'd look for strictly OC support and max mem speed/capacity. Now forget it if isn't pretty I'm not buying it haha. I still have my Abit NF7 on my display wall with a MOBILE athlon xp that I could OC to around 2.6Ghz. I used to think I was pretty hardcore back then lol

Then I bought my first LGA 775 board to OC a Q6600 and shet got real... and yes, that's on the wall too! ...along with a circa 2008 reference RV770 card

I typically avoid onboard audio even though I own a few boards with great chipsets but fans were never really an issue since I didn't care to monitor all of them.

 

[Smoblikat]

First and foremost I look for an ASUS or ASRock sticker, nothing else will do. From there its just a matter of getting the correct number of SATA ports, M.2 connectors, PCIe lanes and finding one with a good VRM setup so I can OC.

 

[Lil'John]

I look at socket, chipset, and sata ports... along with 'known' quality. For me, it has been ASUS almost exclusively for my 'normal' machines and Super Micro for my work stations.

After that, it is network port(s) with focus on Intel chip. Depending upon machine, 10 gb may be required(home network 'backbone')

Depending upon use, I look as PCI-E lanes. M.2 ports for me the in past have tied those up.

USB ports aren't something I overly care about for quantity/version. If it has three or more, I'm good(keyboard, mouse, usb stick) I'm not a USB device junky

Then, all things being equal, must be black and red

 

[VirtualLarry]

USB ports aren't something I overly care about for quantity/version. If it has three or more, I'm good(keyboard, mouse, usb stick) I'm not a USB device junky

I agree with this one. I do care about having "front USB 2.0/3.0 header" (some more recent Intel boards have two 3.0 headers!), but I don't care all that much about the rear headers. On a modern board, I would expect 2x USB 2.0, and 4x USB3.0 or 2x USB3.0 and 2x USB3.1 (on some Ryzen AM4 boards).

Generally, aside from plugging in a Thumb drive or USB3.0 external HDD into the front port, I plug everything into a rear USB3.0 port, using an extension USB3.0 cable, which, plugs into a USB3.0 powered hub, which has even a secondary USB3.0 hub chained off of it.

All of my stuff is plugged into the USB 3.0 hub, pretty much. It also makes it a lot easier to swap machines, just unplug the hub from the extension cable, and plug it into my deskmini's rear USB3.0 port. Or unplug the USB3.0, ethernet, HDMI, and power from my desktop, and slide it out, and slide in another one, and connect it back up.

 

[EXCellR8]

I remember back when full solid state caps were a really big deal... now, do they even produce boards without them?

I tend to buy boards based on what chip/memory I want to run and what size computer it is. 95% of my builds are ATX or EATX but I was on an ITX kick for awhile back a couple of years ago. Right now, I make daily use of 6 or 7 ITX boards for all different purposes, but my main rigs are all ATX; I don't think I own any mATX at the moment except for what's in my Dell T1700 at work, which is proprietary garbage anyway.

I like boards with good OC capabilities and my collection reflects that. I pick a CPU and target mem speed and then go shopping for stable boards with a good array of features and support. I'll shoot for high end but I will do the research and weight out the differences. OR, in the case of Ryzen at the beginning of the year, I will trade up to a better board if I'm not totally satisfied with an initial purchase.

debug LED is also very helpful

 

[MadOver]

Stability, for 24/7 and easy of overclock.

 

[StrangerGuy]

My bare requirements are only MATX/ITX with at least 2x/4x USB3/2 back ports and USB3 front header. I could care less for multi-GPU, multiple PCIE slots, beefy VRMs, CPU OCing since 2014, excessive # of fan headers/SATA/USB/Ethernet, Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, onboard audio quality, RGB leds, or even M2 slots. That's why I'm happily running a $330 CPU on a $70 ITX board for 3+ years.

I'm only looking at Z370 now not because I want to OC my 8700K but rather only for the DDR4-2666+ support. If the H-chipsets can run DDR4-3200 for cheaper I wouldn't bother with the Z370.