Why an expensive MoBo?

O

okashira

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 7, 2005
Messages
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I DON'T mean for this thread to be flamebait. I have been building PC's for 15 years and just want to share my recent experiences and thoughts... and get yours

Summer 2008
Built a PC with ASUS Rampage Formula. First of the ROG motherboards. Q9450 did 3.6-3.8 GHz in it. It was super shiny and super expensive. I was happy. Ran a 280 GTX.


Winter 2010
Built a PC with Gigabyte P55A-UD3. Around $140 for the mobo. i5-760 did 4.0GHz, RAM 1600 @ CAS 7-7-7-XX. Fairly stable but wouldnt come out of standby when overclocked (I hated this quite alot) Also didnt run any of the CPU power saving features so it sucked down much more power then nessisary. Ran AMD 6950.

Recent (~2 week ago)
Built a PC with i5-2500K and ASUS P8Z68-V LX. Cheapest of ASUS Z68 boards (was $55 at MC) Patriot memory 8GB @ 1866MHz CAS 9-10-9-XX
Runs super stable (P95 1344 and 1744 FFT 24 hour and LinX AVX 24 hr) at 4.6 GHz 1.26V under load CPUz on a cheap Xigmatech S-1283 DN (great cooler). Speedstep and all CPU features enabled and work perfect (except disabled Turbo boost 'cause it seems pointless to add on something when speedstep does what I need it to.) Standby works. Runs a AMD 6970.

So I spent 1/6 what I did on my ASUS ROG motherboard in 2008 and I am just as happy with it, if not more so. Relativly, the OC on this setup may be even better.

The only things I feel like are lost are:
1. a couple less SATA ports
2. a couple less speed controllable fan headers. (but I can just plug fans into molex connectors and wire in my own resistor.) I run 6x 120mm fans.
3. CF/SLI support? Don't care about this. I will always just sell and upgrade to a faster single chip video card.
4. ???
5. Profit! (could't resist)

Thoughts...
 
Cheaper motherboards tend to have:
1. a couple less SATA ports
2. a couple less speed controllable fan headers
3. poor CF/SLI support
 
The thing is, newer cpus just overclock easier. I would say any decent brand name socket 1155 board will get you into 4.5ghz pretty easily. The rest is features (USB3 SATA ports SLI/Xfire etc), power circuitry and cooling. If you are going for extreme overclocks a board with better power circuitry and cooling will better handle the increased loads.
 
cheap motherboards also tend to use cheaper/lower quality capacitors and other parts.

the sweet spot seem to be ~$80-150 IMO
 
Prices will vary depending on the complexity of the board as well. More memory channels and more PCB layers will drive up the costs. Hence the pricing of the X58 boards. Expect the X79 boards to be costly as well.
 
I've dropped crazy money on mobos and lo-moneys on mobos. Depreciation is always a bitch. I think I'm going to try my hardest to avoid $300+ mobos in the future. IMO just get a "decent" cheaper board I think anything under $150ish and you should be golden.
 
With my current board (sig), I find it much easier to reach stable OC's. I had a 920 in it before selling the chip to a buddy with a ud3r. I could get the 920 to 4ghz quite easily while my buddy struggled to get 3.6 with it on the ud3r. I paid 350 for this mofo! I was worried i'd wasted my money at the time, but the ease of use and OC capabilities coupled with sick power management make it a wise investment, in my eyes.
 
maybe It's all in my head but I feel better about mobos which integrate high quality things I want and don't have a bunch of extra things to "clutter up" the board.

Like, in an IB board I want 8 DIMMs with an integrated intel nic and just the integrated intel SATA
All of that in a durable package and I'll be sold.

Usually on a "fancy" motherboard the first thing I do is disable a bunch of shit in the bios.
 
Zangmonkey said:
Cheaper motherboards tend to have:
1. a couple less SATA ports
2. a couple less speed controllable fan headers
3. poor CF/SLI support
Click to expand...

^ that plus other stuff (like "better" design that you might appreciate, eg sideways SATA ports that doesn't hit a long GPU, placement of heatsinks relative to each other)
 
ViN86 said:
Prices will vary depending on the complexity of the board as well. More memory channels and more PCB layers will drive up the costs. Hence the pricing of the X58 boards. Expect the X79 boards to be costly as well.
Click to expand...

Yes, but I believe what he is complaining about is overpriced mainstream motherboards. If you see here, 7/18 motherboards on Newegg in the $300+ price range are Socket 1155! That's an incredibly hard price to swallow, especially when you have affordable motherboards like this with all the right features:

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3855#ov

I agree with what he said: unless you want to SLI/CFX more than 2 cards, there's no reason to spend more than $150 on a motherboard.
 
I would gladly spend an extra 200.00 on a motherboard if it saved me one weekend of troubleshooting. The last few builds I have migrated to the higher end MBs partly because I hope their fancy capacitors and thick copper will save me trouble later and partly because of their feature set. Sadly I haven't noticed any significant improvement in reliability with the fancy boards. Their better build quality is probably only enough to offset the increased number of parts that can fail. Just get the board that has your minimum feature set.
 
I wouldnt say it's the expensive motherboard as much as it's the one your willing to pay for that has all the features you want.

For example I have a requirement of 8-10 Sata ports, which is usually only going to come on a decent boards. Also, as another uses suggested, having them not facing the video card is another good thing about premium boards.

Another thing about premium boards is they tend to have better cooling on the chipsets. Depending on where/how you live this might not be much of a factor but in an aircooling case in a house with no ac, it's definately a factor for me.
 
I think I only paid $109 for the GA-EP45-UD3P I am running now. I think I've had it almost 3 years, overclocked for all of it. This thing has been amazing and the best board I have ever owned. Sometimes the cheap ones are fine. But I would still be willing to pay 2 or 3 times that IF it had the features I wanted and if the quality were good enough. I still remember my old Abit KT7A-RAID and the AMD Thunderbird 1200 I had on it. I wouldn't give $5 to do that over.
 
defaultluser said:
Yes, but I believe what he is complaining about is overpriced mainstream motherboards. If you see here, 7/18 motherboards on Newegg in the $300+ price range are Socket 1155! That's an incredibly hard price to swallow, especially when you have affordable motherboards like this with all the right features:

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3855#ov

I agree with what he said: unless you want to SLI/CFX more than 2 cards, there's no reason to spend more than $150 on a motherboard.
Click to expand...

I can agree with that. But with these things you do get what you pay for, so you need to find the best balance between what you want/need and how much you're willing to spend. :)

Back in the day I always had $100 motherboards until the S939 boards, then my SLI board cost about $200. Since then, every motherboard I've owned has been at least $200. I like the additional features.
 
I had mobos from very diffrent price points over time - from ultra cheap Shuttle nforce2 AN-35 mobo or Gigabyte 965-S3 to Asus P5KE-wifi and DFI ICFX Lanparty.

I never noticed any serious difference beetween them apart from some bells and whistles like power buttons on mobo.

So IMHO as long as you stay away from $50 crap anything from $100-150$ range will be plenty good. Maybe add $50 more for CF/SLI.

Stuff like all those GB UD5/UD7 or Asus ROG boards just make me laughtning.
 
got a rampage III formula. Upgraded over the p6x58d-e.

list of improvements:
MOST IMPORTANT: Better BIOS: tells you stock voltages, also tells you current voltages on various things. the d-e did not. in general comes with more information, and has more features. All around better bios experience, much easier to find out the information you need to get to a stable clock.
Intel ethernet controller - the drivers actually have features compared to the realtek controller on the p6x58d-e. Also reduces the chance of known non-compatibility problems known between realtek and other crap.
More fan headers (7 on rampage, 3 on d-e), mostly controllable by Fan Xpert. Removed my need to buy a fan controller to power extra fans.
onboard reset button - i use this more often than i thought
X-fi sound card built in - sounds marginally better than the realtek, Also reduces the chance of known non-compatibility problems known between realtek and other crap.


Honestly, whever i can remove realtek and replace it with something better, i appreciate <-- lol grammar. I also appreciate the better bios layout, theres just more features for overclocking. And the AI suite fan control is very convenient, doesnt work with the power or CPU fans, but thats perfect for me anyway. The power and cpu fan speeds should be independant from the rest of the case fans.
Overall, i have no regrets paying for a more expensive motherboard, i like all the extra features it comes with and i definitely put them to use.
 
Last edited:
thesecond said:
X-fi sound card built in - sounds marginally better than the realtek, Also reduces the chance of known non-compatibility problems known between realtek and other crap.
Click to expand...

My Xonar survived 3 or 4 mobo changes already and will be with me for a few more :D
 
Reset button, a bunch of cheap adapters, extra sata/usb 3 ports, extra sata cables, SLI/crossfire accessories, ugly looking box and more importantly a gay name. WTF with a sniper and assassin?

I don't need that shit. I pick up a $100 MB, install, OC, and run it for 24/7. I don't even need a bluetooth, so they can go ahead a dump that.
 
thesecond said:
got a rampage III formula. Upgraded over the p6x58d-e.

list of improvements:
MOST IMPORTANT: Better BIOS: tells you stock voltages, also tells you current voltages on various things. the d-e did not. in general comes with more information, and has more features. All around better bios experience, much easier to find out the information you need to get to a stable clock.
Intel ethernet controller - the drivers actually have features compared to the realtek controller on the p6x58d-e. Also reduces the chance of known non-compatibility problems known between realtek and other crap.
More fan headers (7 on rampage, 3 on d-e), mostly controllable by Fan Xpert. Removed my need to buy a fan controller to power extra fans.
onboard reset button - i use this more often than i thought
X-fi sound card built in - sounds marginally better than the realtek, Also reduces the chance of known non-compatibility problems known between realtek and other crap.


Honestly, whever i can remove realtek and replace it with something better, i appreciate <-- lol grammar. I also appreciate the better bios layout, theres just more features for overclocking. And the AI suite fan control is very convenient, doesnt work with the power or CPU fans, but thats perfect for me anyway. The power and cpu fan speeds should be independant from the rest of the case fans.
Overall, i have no regrets paying for a more expensive motherboard, i like all the extra features it comes with and i definitely put them to use.
Click to expand...

Actually, the P6X58D-E came with a Marvell Ethernet controller, not a Realtek one. The P6X58D-E has since been superceded by a P6X58D PRO, which has an Intel ethernet controller instead of a Marvell one.
 
Because it lets you overclock dual Xeons... ;)

But seriously, don't cheap out on capacitors. I agree with the 75-150 dollar range being the sweetspot, but that doesn't mean boards typically retailing there can't go on sale and be a steal.
 
Hey atleast you didnt just Dump $599.99 on a I7-3930K 6 core and another 469 on a Rampage IV haha.

But Im sure my 6 core will be at 4.8ghz all day long and smoking the piss out of anything I ever owned to this day.

I put my parts underwater so cooling will not be an issue.
 
My $55 P8Z68-V LX is still running great with i5-2500K @ 4.6GHz. Rock solid so far in BF3 after stress testing in LinX and P95 (overclocked 6970). Standby and speedstep too, yay. Much better then my old i5-760
 
okashira said:
So I spent 1/6 what I did on my ASUS ROG motherboard in 2008 and I am just as happy with it, if not more so. Relativly, the OC on this setup may be even better.

The only things I feel like are lost are:
1. a couple less SATA ports
2. a couple less speed controllable fan headers. (but I can just plug fans into molex connectors and wire in my own resistor.) I run 6x 120mm fans.
3. CF/SLI support? Don't care about this. I will always just sell and upgrade to a faster single chip video card.
4. ???
5. Profit! (could't resist)

Thoughts...
Click to expand...

I have gone back and forth with expensive and cheap motherboards and usually it comes down to the features on the board and what I plan to do with it. As far as overclocking, that is kind of hit and miss no matter what board you get. The reason for the more expensive boards is hopefully for better capacitors and heatsinks built into the board. Other factors I have had are options on the motherboard like ESA features, or overclocking software that makes things easier. Also some more expensive boards have more BIOS options for overclocking.

And then there is always the CFX/SLI, that makes a difference to a lot of ppl.

So for you personally if you don't care about a lot of the extra features and just want solid OC potential, really you just need the correct chipset and buy the cheapest board that still has decent components but not all the extra flair.
 
Another factor with cheap vs expensive boards is support. This doesn't seem to be a universal rule, but I do notice some manufacturers releasing bios updates much sooner for their flagship boards.
 
another one of these.

Check over the years

1 year - mobo cheap
1 year - ram expensive
1 year - cpu middle

2nd year mobo expensive
2nd year ram cheap
2nd year cpu expensive

3rd year - mobo so so
3rd year - cpu expensive
3rd year - ram good price


see my method?

15 years ago a CPU was $300 and a mobo $100.. ram was $300 for PC133...

every year items change price............cpu gets more expensive while the mobo get cheap along with ram and video cards go through the roof.. the next year cpu'\s are dirty cheap, ram is cheap, mobo's are costly...

it all depends what your using it for........
in the end,.. this year for $1500 you build an awsome rig... 5 years ago fr $1500 you could build an awesome rig... 10 years ago for $1500 you could build a.......... again.. get the idea..


Prices for individual parts changes over the years,... but in the end for the same price you can get an awesome rig...
 
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kirbster said:
The thing is, newer cpus just overclock easier. I would say any decent brand name socket 1155 board will get you into 4.5ghz pretty easily. The rest is features (USB3 SATA ports SLI/Xfire etc), power circuitry and cooling. If you are going for extreme overclocks a board with better power circuitry and cooling will better handle the increased loads.
Click to expand...

Any decent board should be able to do 4.8GHz. Now granted with air cooling you may not be able to reach those speeds with low enough voltages to keep the thermals in line, but any decent board I've reviewed or worked with personally can do 4.8GHz. Most can do 5.0GHz or more with the right CPU and cooling. Even some of the cheaper boards can do this.
 
MrGuvernment said:
every year items change price............cpu gets more expensive while the mobo get cheap along with ram and video cards go through the roof.. the next year cpu'\s are dirty cheap, ram is cheap, mobo's are costly...
Click to expand...

Motherboards for *mainstream* platforms have not gone up in price in 15 years. If anything, the price has gone DOWN slightly (and the features and stability have gone way up)

I paid:

$120 for my Abit BH6

$140 for my Abit K7G RAID

Decided to go upmarket. Paid nearly $200 for GIGABYTE GA-K8NSNXP-939. It had problems booting. Exchanged it for:

$110 for my Asus A8V. No issues.

$95 for my Asus A8N5X

$130 for my Asus P5K

I've been pretty happy with this price range and have not missed out on anything (except SLI/CFX). And now that Nvidia can't command a premium for their chipsets, that feature too is now inexpensive and practically guaranteed if you spend $150. And compared to my BH6, the motherboards you can buy today for the same price have more features, greater stability and MUCH improved compatibility...plus, they have the advanced power circuits to handle 95w to 125w processors (3x what the BH6 was built for). Who could ask for anything more?

And please, don't rope in professional platforms like Socket 940 and LGA 1366; workstation boards always have been pricier. Just because gamers hungry for the new generation got duped into buying a professional platform does not make it mainstream.
 
defaultluser said:
Motherboards for *mainstream* platforms have not gone up in price in 15 years. If anything, the price has gone DOWN slightly (and the features and stability have gone way up)

I paid:

$120 for my Abit BH6

$140 for my Abit K7G RAID

Decided to go upmarket. Paid nearly $200 for GIGABYTE GA-K8NSNXP-939. It had problems booting. Exchanged it for:

$110 for my Asus A8V. No issues.

$95 for my Asus A8N5X

$130 for my Asus P5K

I've been pretty happy with this price range and have not missed out on anything (except SLI/CFX). And now that Nvidia can't command a premium for their chipsets, that feature too is now inexpensive and practically guaranteed if you spend $150. And compared to my BH6, the motherboards you can buy today for the same price have more features, greater stability and MUCH improved compatibility...plus, they have the advanced power circuits to handle 95w to 125w processors (3x what the BH6 was built for). Who could ask for anything more?

And please, don't rope in professional platforms like Socket 940 and LGA 1366; workstation boards always have been pricier. Just because gamers hungry for the new generation got duped into buying a professional platform does not make it mainstream.
Click to expand...

Hmm I miss my old Abit mobos
 
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