Motherboards: how they work and how to choose one

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Motherboards: how they work and how to choose one

The Lord Bude: May 23, 2007; ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Thanks for making this thread Alereon, It's very educational.

# ¿ Sep 21, 2014 05:27

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 00:42

The Lord Bude: May 23, 2007; ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Alereon posted:

So I'm not sure why you've decided that I'm your Internet Enemy, but it's really not cool so please stop. I feel like I've been very polite to you considering your attitude, if you feel that's not the case, then I apologize. Just so we're 100% clear, I don't care at all about winning an Internet fight with you about whether the ASRock Z97 Extreme6 is a good board or a good value. I care that these forums are a good technical resource and get good advice, and as an extension of this, that people learn how to evaluate motherboard quality on a level beyond comparing the features on the back of the motherboard box or the overview on Newegg. As for why I care so much, Shanakin's post nailed an element of it: the conventional wisdom on these forums though for a long time was that Gigabyte motherboards were the pinnacle of value, and I was shouted down by people who made posts very much like yours. You can't separate value from considerations of quality, which is why it is so important that people understand how to evaluate quality to get a good perception of value.

For educational purposes, here's some pictures of the VRM areas of the ASRock Z97 Extreme4 (visually identical with Extreme6 in this area) with "12-phase" VRMs (left), and the Asus ROG MAXIMUS VII HERO with "8+2-phase" VRMS (right):

Here's a neat little article about how VRMs on motherboards work. Here's a detailed analysis of the VRM hardware on the ASUS Z97-Pro. Based on this, we know that it would be interesting to compare how many PWM controllers are present on the ASRock Z97 Extreme6 vs the ASUS ROG MAXIMUS VII HERO. I can't find any good pics to link, but you can go to Newegg and use their picture viewer and look at the back of the boards.

On the Extreme6 there appears to be three (3) PWM controllers, linked to twelve (12) MOSFETs and inductors, feeding seven (7) directly linked filtering caps between the VRMs and the CPU. On the Hero it is hard to count because the relevant components on the back of the board are hidden behind heatsink backplates and I can't find any pictures without them, but I count at least six (6) PWM controllers, eight (8) MOSFETs and inductors, feeding thirteen (13) directly linked filtering caps. I believe there are two more PWM controllers I can't see, giving the Extreme6 three genuine PWM VRM phases compared to the HERO's eight. The Extreme6 costs $50 less and looks noticeably sparse around the CPU socket compared to the Hero, so this difference should not be a surprise.

I believe I thoroughly covered the issue with supplemental power connectors for the PCI-Express slots in the OP, but to put it simply: they are present on very cheap and very expensive motherboards. The Extreme6 is not a very expensive motherboard. The idea that putting a power connector on there is more expensive than doing it correctly doesn't make sense, given that supplemental power connectors are a standard feature on low-end boards. They disappear on all but the lowest-end channel boards. I don't believe it's a controversial opinion that a cheap motherboard that requires a supplemental power connector is not good, if it's cheap enough it might still be a good value considering, but not good.

The isolation on the Extreme6 is not bad per se, it's very middle-of-the-pack. ASUS's ROG boards, including the hero, have some of the best isolation currently available. They cost more, they're better, nothing should be surprising here.

Finally, in case it wasn't clear, I never said the Extreme6 was a poo poo board, and I clearly don't believe that. When the OP talks about poo poo boards it isn't a veiled dig at the Extreme6, I never said anything negative about its DPC latency, and I even direct-linked to its excellent showing in the OP. This entire argument started because of the assertion that the HERO was not markedly, technically better than the Extreme6, and that the $50 price difference only went to branding and trim, which is simply wrong. I expect a spectrum of opinions on whether the difference in quality are worth the difference in price, I don't expect a spectrum of acceptance of the reality that a $50 more expensive board with higher build quality is actually better. This is why I am taking the time to explain what makes one motherboard better than another.

E: A final note since I forgot to address it: have you ever seen a motherboard get a bad review? Have you ever seen ANY hardware get a bad review? Reviewers who say hardware is bad don't get hardware to review, so good reviewers tell you everything you need to know to draw your own conclusions based on the factors that are most important to you. Here is Anandtech giving a good review to the ASRock FM2A88X Extreme6+ despite severe VRM overheating, and Anandtech is my favorite site.

First off, thanks Alereon for this post, this is exactly the sort of in depth technical discussion I've been trying to find since this debate started, and I'm now 100% sold. Do you think you could add this stuff to the OP of this thread? (edit: I've seen you've already done that, but those comparison pictures are very nice too)

I don't know if you regularly follow the PCPartpicking thread but I'm in the process of creating an OP for a new Partpicking thread, I'm going to link to this thread.

What do you suggest we do as far as motherboard recommendations go? Do you feel as though Asus boards should be recommended over their nearest equivalent Asrock boards at every price point wherever possible? For example, the Extreme4 vs the z97-A or various H97 boards?

The Lord Bude fucked around with this message at 07:07 on Sep 24, 2014

# ¿ Sep 24, 2014 05:50

The Lord Bude: May 23, 2007; ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Alereon posted:

Thanks, I did put the links up there but I might do a better comparison between a true low-end positioned board and a good one. As far as motherboard recommendations, I personally like Asus but each board needs to be evaluated on its own merits compared to the competition and for the intended use. I think Asus is really good at making higher-end boards so once you get to the ROG series it's hard to imagine other brands being too competitive, but it's the opposite on the lower-end where Asus shovels out a lot of bad, boring motherboards and the lower-tier brands are able to put their cost-cutting skills to use and deliver better products. ASRock was originally Asus's low-end/OEM brand.

My overall opinion, which is probably controversial, is that I feel like people should be prepared to spend a bit more on the motherboard than they may have initially planned. I feel like the optimal range has always been around $150-$200, below that and quality drops off pretty quickly, above that and you aren't getting much more for your money. I don't want to sound like I think everyone needs an Asus Z97-A, but I think most people should really consider another $20 or at least on a better quality motherboard.

I'll send you a PM with some general thoughts.

Thanks alot. The current thread just links to a list of all the z97 or h97 boards out there, I wanted to go a bit further and suggest specific boards for different price points/Use cases in the new thread.

I don't find your opinion controversial. 99% of the time you get what you pay for - thats a simple fact of life. I've long been a believer in the idea that if you're going to spend the time and money to do something, you might as well spend the time and money you need to do it properly, otherwise you've just wasted time and money.

The Lord Bude fucked around with this message at 07:42 on Sep 24, 2014

# ¿ Sep 24, 2014 07:38

The Lord Bude: May 23, 2007; ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Agreed posted:

Yeah, since this backed off from being some kind of weird motherboard beef and turned into a pretty good discussion I'm quite enjoying it as well. Bonus question: are boards still using that Texas Instruments integrated headphone chip? That thing is the poo poo, in terms of putting out a basic but highly functional and remarkably well isolated (considering) audio amplifier to interface with high impedance, low power speakers. I wonder what is powering boards if not that - I guess other licensed tech? I dunno, and y'all seem to be pretty informed

I see it on a few higher end boards. I'll keep using my carat-topaz though.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2014 16:09

The Lord Bude: May 23, 2007; ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

That being said, that particular MSI board is one we never would have recommended, because it has a killer gaming brand NIC. Unfortunately MSI is obsessed with shoving killer in everything, so all but the very cheapest MSI mobos are no go zones.

I've never heard of that happening to anyone though.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2015 03:28

The Lord Bude: May 23, 2007; ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Anonymous Robot posted:

I'm going to be changing over to a new CPU in a couple of months, and I'll need a new mobo to do so, so I'm thinking of getting a new case and getting kind of a fresh start- I'll still be bringing over some parts from my previous machine, where I already have a modular PSU (which is only about a year old) and a mini-ITX graphics card.

Because of that, I'm intrigued by the idea of building a mini-ITX PC that I can bring to friends' houses to run games on etc. But I don't really see a motherboard that'd suit my needs. Anyone have recommendations for a good mini-ITX 1150 socket motherboard with a PCI-e slot? I only need one. Ideally, I'd want to keep it under $200.

MSI and gigabyte ITX boards all put the cpu socket too close to the PCIe slot, and you're stuck with the stock intel cooler, or an AIO liquid cooler (not that you should be buying gigabyte boards anyway)

The Asrock z97E-ITX/AC is an excellent board with intel NIC and Intel wifi AC; The Asus Maximus Impact is a crazypants awesome board with ridiculously overbuild VRMs on a daughterboard, and actual soundcard on a daughterboard, and excellent broadcomm wifi and ethernet. It's expensive though.If you're buying the Asrock, make sure you're buying the z97E-ITX and not the cut down z97m-ITX, the latter has cheaper qualcomm networking.

If you aren't overclocking, you can get an asrock h97m-ITX AC, which is okish; but you might wish to get the z97E-ITX anyhow just for the intel wifi, since it doesn't cost that much.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2015 10:12

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 00:42

The Lord Bude: May 23, 2007; ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Arsenic Lupin posted:

My life is hard. I am a reasonably ept software person in a hardware world. My son has a homebuild gaming rig; he chose the motherboard three years ago, an ASUS Sabertooth 990FX . Now bits are failing, but we're pretty much locked into AMD by recent purchases. (Sunk cost fallacy?)

The Newegg forums on the Sabertooth 990FX are full of KHAAAAN-level screams of hate. Apparently that particular motherboard not only tends to die but tends to take a bodyguard of other hardware right along with it. In our case, the motherboard seems to have killed my son's graphics card, a 6-month-old "SAPPHIRE TRI-X OC 100361-2SR", which is out on RMA right now, before finally going spiraling into the ground. (We didn't realize that the graphics card failure might be linked to problems with the motherboard until after we'd sent the graphics card back.)

So, back to the sunk-cost fallacy. We upgraded the CPU to an AMD FX-8370 Vishera (note: not the low-energy FX-8370E) in December. The CPU is a weirdie at 125 watts, in between the two current lines at 220 and 95 watts. It's on the ancient (2011) AM3+ socket; Anandtech for Xmas 2014 is a great deal less than enthusiastic about AM3+ motherboards.

tl;dr: We sank $245 (CPU + Noctua cooler) into an AMD upgrade in December, then the motherboard went south. As far as expected gamable lifespan goes, does it make sense to pay another $150 (ish) for a motherboard compatible with that CPU, or to curse and go all-Intel now? My reading of Anandtech leads me to think that any AM3+ system is at the very end of its gamable lifespan, but I am not at all good at hardware shopping.

There's no scenario in which it makes sense to waste more money on an AMD product. It was a bad decision to buy an AMD cpu in the first place but now you're just throwing good money after bad. An Intel core i3 4150 can comfortably outperform any AMD processor on the market, plus $70 or zo for an H97 mobo.

I'd also be investigating the power supply - make sure your son bought s reputable one.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 05:25

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Motherboards: how they work and how to choose one