I've been trying to learn more about building rather than just taking a straight up build that people recommend to me that way I can have that sense of feeling at ease with whatever I end up getting, ya feel me? I see that there are some motherboards that require you to get DDR4 RAM, but is it worth spending the extra money over the DDR3 right now? Are there some manufacturer's that make the same motherboards better than others? Basically whatever you think is necessary to know when choosing one would be great.
DDR4 doesn't matter much for consumers
ASUS tends to be the go to for best motherboard manufacturer overall, though they still release some bad boards
Mostly you just look at reviews, and the Chipset, higher end chipsets usually means the board has some higher end components in it, but not always
I was looking at http://motherboards.specout.com/compare/5772-6211-6218/MSI-X99S-SLI-Krait-Edition-vs-MSI-Z170A-GAMING-M7-vs-MSI-Z170A-GAMING-M5 but I'm not exactly sure what dictates which motherboard is better. The M7 with it's SATA express and 3.1 USB sound nice, but I don't know what the "crucial" things I should be looking at are.
EDIT: I was also looking at the LAN chipsets, but I can't find any info to dictate which of those is actually better. Most say the intel one is, but there's no statistical proof from what I've seen thus far.
well DDR4 is the new standard since Haswell E and Skylake.
DDR3 is basicly EOL.
DDR4 is also not much more expensive then DDR3 is.
That said, all the motherboards you have listed are DDR4 only.
What makes a good motherboard depends on feutures,
quality of components used in the vrm and arround the board, and price ofc.
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But what kind of system are you looking at, what do you wanne do with it?
And what is your budget?
Other than cost, there are two questions that will help direct you towards picking the right motherboard for you:
1) Do you plan on overclocking, even down the line?
2) How much connectivity do you want/need?
Basic/Entry level chipsets either do not support overclocking, or allow for a limited amount of overclocking. Those that do offer overclocking capabilities usually lack proper cooling. Furthermore, they are limited in the amount of extra bells, whistles, and frills that are attached. You could sum this up to "connectivity," which is going to be the majority of it (if you are never going to use more than 4 USB ports, do you really need 10?), but often other features are thrown into the mix, like BIOS flashback buttons.
A good motherboard? Well I don't know much but here's what I look for.
1) Big passive heatsinks for the VRM + Northbridge or with 4+ power phase management
2) Equal standardize spacing on the PCI-E slots
3) Reading manual for NO PCI-E sharing. Like some good boards have like the m.2 shared with the PCI-E card or M.2 shared with the last 2 sata.. So big "NO NO" in my book.
3) Mandatory 4X PCI-E or greater on all slots, no 1x slots
4) Standardize ATX not these fake ATX Gigabyte 970 series and others done in the pass where they don't quite reach the last screws. Or you have to resort to plastic 3rd party risers (to stop electric shorting of motherboard)
5) CMOS reset button. Cuz it's 2015 not 2000! I don't wanna take my graphics card out to reset the bios.
6) Also look at reviews and check the forums for problems. Many of them just are just of low quality or RMA'ed frequently.
My list is similar to LordXenu's
Of course some of these are just personal preference and are not required.
1) Heatsinks on VRM
2) 4+ Power Phases
3) Heatsinks held in place by screws, none of those push pins
4) Standard Form Factor, none of those ATX boards that don't reach the last screws
5) 2+ PCIE x16 @ x8 capable of running SLI or Crossfire
6) 6+ Right Angled SATA Ports
7) 5+ Fan Headers
8) 6+ USB Ports at the back with at least 2 of which being 3.0/3.1 (5/10Gbps)
9) Onboard Buttons including CMOS Reset
10) Debug Display
11) Must look nice, can't be ugly.
the biggest thing I'd look for is bios functionality and how often updates are released to support new stuff. alot of companies release the board do 1 update then move to the next model. meaning even though your chipset may be capable of running skylake refresh cpus in the future the lack of upto date microcode will prevent them from working. then again a mobo that accepts custom bioses solves this problem more or less.
What I look for in a motherboard is:
1) Feature set: number of USB ports, M.2 slots, PCI express slots, SATA ports must fit my needs
2) Power delivery: 8+2 power phases if you want to overclock 4+1 if you're not (these values are meant for Intel CPUs)
3) Debug display: is really important because can make identify hardware problems a lot easier than a generic combination of beeps or just a blank screen when you power on the machine
4) UEFI interface: the UEFI must be well organized and packed with feature and settings I can tinker with and change to my own preference (this rule is valid especially if you want to overclock)
5) Reputable brand: last but not least you should be sure 100% to trust the brand you're choosing. I bought an Asus Maximus VII Hero and I regret it a bit because I had to send one back and I got a replacement with ugly SATA connectors with plastic a little melt in the corners and in the connector. They all work but look super ugly and I didn't expext it from Asus.
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Well I'm just your average gamer looking to keep my frames high and latency low. If I had a system that could handle recording I may end up fiddling with some video editing or streaming as well, but that's just something I'd play around with for fun; definitely not a necessity. I'd like to keep it in the price range of under $1500, but if the price/performance could validate spending more I may consider it. The idea of "future proofing" is something I'd like as well, but I'm not an enthusiast who has to upgrade to the newest thing every time it comes out. I'm still using my i7 Q740 and RADEON 5800 from 2010.
Personaly I don't look for many features in a board, I take bad reviews in consideration only when there's more than 1 with the same issue, if you don't consider bad reviews BS unless if there are duplicates youre going to have a bad time.
Anyways, what I do look for in a board is power phases for overclocking(if you don't plan to OC or only oc mildly 4 phases is fine) the more the better your temps and stability will be (except MSI is about 2/3 as good per phase because they're analog so 6 phases MSI about equals 4 phases on anything else) the vrms, or power phases, control power delivery to the chip and this is often the most overlooked part of a board because most people just don't understand it. Otherwise, its pretty straight forward just look at reviews and feature lists.
If you are looking for a system for gaming, streaming and also productivity workloads like video editing and rendering.
Then something like option1 would be a very good place to start.
Option 1: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Mxm7mG
If your main goal is gaming, and doing some light video editing so now and then,
then something like option2 might be a better choice.
Option 2: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/prsvpg
In terms of the gpu´s, i choosed for a R9-390 in both builds,
because its slightly faster then the GTX970 in allot of games,
and it comes with 8GB of vram.
Of course it depends a bit on the games you play which card would be better.
They are pretty close.
If you could slightly up your budget for a GTX980Ti or R9-Fury
Then i would definitely recommend to concider that.
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If you really want to get to some finer details, something not mentioned yet (because it's not usually a huge deal for most people, but I've had it come up before), especially if you plan to keep the board for a good long while and keep your components going fine: capacitors.
You can find some info out there about them, it's a bit of a rabbit whole and it comes up more for electrical engineers making pcb boards or repairing items, but there's a bunch on your motherboard (and power supply, and elsewhere) and they can blow and cause trouble for your system.
If you don't plan to push to extremes, and don't plan to run constantly, and don't care about having the board for a very long time, you probably don't need to pay too much attention to this. That said, I've had boards, and I think boards with Japanese capacitors back when solid was not very uncommon, that had caps blow. And I tell ya, it's a pain to deal with unless you can send it back to the manufacturer (it's not always obvious that such happened either). You also might consider that using better caps for a board may be an indication that more was put into the durability and overall quality of the board, but it's not really a guarantee.
Those both look great. What do you think about a crossfire 390 instead of a single TI? should be around the same price, no?
Yes that will be arroud the same price.
It highly depends on the resolution you are aiming to play at.
390 crossfire could definitely be a good choice.
But ofc you are going to need a higher wattage powersuply for that.
I´m personaly more a fan of single higherend gpu.
Of course crossfire or sli would work great if the games you play work well with it.
But it can also be a pain in the ass in the games that dont work well.
Next to that at lower resolutions like 1080p, the cpu will ofc also be a limmited factor.
However with sli GTX970 or crossfire 390´s i think you should still see a nice scaling, in the games that work well with sli / crossfire.
Especialy at 1440p
Here is a slightly older video from Logan GTX980 Sli benchmarks 1080p / 1440p.
1440P Logan gets a very nice scaling in some games.
1080P not so much, alltough some games still see pretty decent jump.