Question What kind of motherboards do you like?

[BoomerD]

Once upon a time...say 20 years ago, I'd only build with ASUS mid-level or better boards. In more recent years, their build quality and customer service seem to have fallen into the toilet, so with my recent build, I went with an MSI Z690 Tomahawk Wifi DDR4 for an i5-13600K CPU. for the most part, I'm happy with the board. The Realtek audio chipset is kind of a PITA...until I finally found a stable driver set. Same with the intel 225 LAN chipset.

 

[thigobr]

Over my life time building PCs the boards I liked most and miss.

• Gigabyte GA-5AX - Super Socket7 Alladin V chipset. Super stable board and fun to play with. My first MB with an AGP slot
• Shuttle MN31/N - Socket A nForce2 IGP. I overclocked and modded everything possible here. Had an Applebred Duron bridge-modded into a XP2200+ enabling full 256KB of L2. Pin modded vcore and multipliers to increse the FSB up to 200MHz DDR
• DFI nF4-Ultra-D - With an A64 3000+ Venice and Geil Ultra-X Winbond BH5. Super stable and fun to play with. You just had to find the right BIOS compatible with your memory sticks
• MSI X570 Unify - Has everything needed for AM4. Used a Ryzen 1700, 5750G and still using a 5950X. No problems at all!

 

[igor_kavinski]

• MSI X570 Unify - Has everything needed for AM4. Used a Ryzen 1700, 5750G and still using a 5950X. No problems at all!

I see in your sig that your RAM is at 3800 MT/s. You may get slightly better performance at 3733 MT/s especially for multicore workloads.

 

[thigobr]

That's interesting. I haven't tried extensively with this current combo. Using my older TeamGroup 2x16GB Samsung b-die CL14 kit I remember couple games I tested and y-cruncher were slightly faster at 3800MHz CL14 than 3733MHz. Maybe I didn't tight timings enough? Anyways, this 2x32GB kit won't do CL15 so I don't think I can see big gains. Any special trick to get more performance out of 3733MHz?

 

[igor_kavinski]

Any special trick to get more performance out of 3733MHz?

Depends on FCLK:UCLK ratio. I think you may get a better ratio with 3733. At least, that's what I've read. Haven't messed around with AM4.

 

[mindless1]

I like flat motherboards. The bent ones are always a problem.

 

[mindless1]

• Shuttle MN31/N - Socket A nForce2 IGP. I overclocked and modded everything possible here. Had an Applebred Duron bridge-modded into a XP2200+ enabling full 256KB of L2. Pin modded vcore and multipliers to increse the FSB up to 200MHz DDR

I had one of those... Epoxied a voltmod pot right onto the joystick/audio assembly, VRM sinks, northbridge sink swap, fan added, etc.



I'm not doing that level of o'c these days, so don't care that much anymore about extra VRM cooling, or even heatsinks, just get boards with max VRM CPU TDP support that's higher than actual CPU TDP. Besides I was blowing up capacitors from heat in the longer term, more often than 'fets in the shorter term.

 

[thigobr]

Yes! This image brings me good memories! The nForce2 IGP ran hot as well! I was unable to run it at 400MHz DDR when using the integrated GF2, only with a video card on the AGP slot. Another thing was that this mobo had no VDIMM adjustment, only way was to volt mod.
Because of that I was always eying a Shuttle AN35N Ultra but that board didn't have the MCP-T south bridge with SoundStorm audio