Looking for a Motherboard (And maybe more)

[Crawmak]

So a while back I made this thread, asking if my CPU is bottlenecking my GPU. Apparently it is, and now I've decided to finally make a move toward a large upgrade.

I've made threads on a couple other forums regarding upgrade paths with my budget, and I've settled on an Intel Core i5-6500 CPU, but I'm still searching for a motherboard to fit my preferences.

 

I'm hoping for something under $200, standard ATX, LGA 1151 socket, should probably have DDR4 memory slots, and less importantly, I'm hoping for something that supports SLI (but it's absolutely fine if that's not doable).

But absolutely, most importantly, it needs to... not suck. I have a really bad habit of looking through the 1-3 star reviews on hardware and it usually makes me paranoid to buy. So if at all possible, I'd love to have a recommendation from someone who uses, or has used the board they're recommending.

 

Also, it'd be great if you could recommend some RAM to go with it, but that should be something I can find myself too. If I remember right, it just has to be compatible with the motherboard chipset (and it goes without saying, the same slot) and match the CPU's supported voltage?

 

Thanks in advance to any help. I really don't wanna make any purchases until I know exactly what I need.

[repusDude]

Check out pcpartpicker website https://pcpartpicker.com/ it is good way to start building your gaming rig. They have options like Choosing PC hardware, brand, cost, and compatibility.

[Crawmak]

I know about that site, but I'm looking for a more personal recommendation.

I looked at pretty much every affordable board on there that meets my hardware specifications, but they all have excesses of bad reviews too, which kinda turn me off of them.

I'm hoping to find someone who knows a specific board is good, from experience.

[soupdragon1234]

I have an i5 4690k that I picked up cheap on a well known internet auction site as well as an Asus Z97-A motherboard to go along with it also from the same place. Less than half RRP price that one still boxed and sealed. Bargain. Been using it over a year no problems here.

 

I woudn't worry about DDR4 ram its overpriced and there isn't much to be gained over 1600mhz whether its ddr3 or 4.

 

edit: 4690k is Haswell though.

Edited June 10, 2016 by soupdragon1234

[FMod]

I'm rarely the one to say this, but you may be overthinking this, as the differentiation among motherboards has diminished over the years. PC motherboards have always been low quality, failure-prone, cheaply built parts, compared to more compact and narrow-purpose components like CPU, RAM and SSD. (Video cards and HDD are generally built well, it's the heat stress and the mechanical nature that make them so failure-prone. PSU are built cheaply by necessity.)

 

But today motherboard chipsets and power systems are so standardized that they're basically equally bad. Basically, rest safe in the knowledge that whatever you buy was built to a price point (specifically, the point where the savings from building it any cheaper wouldn't overcome the added RMA expenses), and more money only buys you more features.

 

From personal experience, I tend to avoid Gigabyte boards. Their Dual BIOS is or used to be somewhat buggy and less reliable than a normal single BIOS, which adds a little to the failure rate. I haven't heard complaints of such failures in a while though.

 

The two consistently glitch-free brands are Asus and Asrock (both used to be Pegasus, which eventually split off into Pegatron, one of the best OEMs, Asus, and their budget division Asrock). The latter offers the best value, and my understanding is that you're looking to limit your expenses.

That said, it's a simple price/performance comparison. There's nothing wrong with MSI or Asus either, some of their boards are great, they just aren't as competitive in the bang for the buck department as Asrock is, but may offer specific feature combinations that you need.

 

Feature-wise, most of it depends on the chipset, and Z170 is the only one with overclocking and SLI support.

Next, basic 4+1 phase power systems aren't suitable for overclocking, anything with 6+1 or more phases is. When not advertised, you can determine the number of power phases by counting the chokes, large black boxes sitting in a row or an L-shape around the socket. You want to see at least 7, usually 8+, but anything above 8+1 won't affect your results.

 

Between motherboards that have a Z170 chipset and 8+ power phases, simply run feature comparisons and decide which features you need, and which you don't. Don't pay attention to random claims that sound cool, they usually amount to "dominate the racetrack with our round wheels for superior rolling performance". Specific ports matter.

 

Now, all that said, unless you have some unusual needs, and assuming you live in the US, and assuming you're going to use the rebates and whatever to get it under $110, the board you want is this: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/K8Jkcf/asrock-motherboard-z170extreme3

 

You may need something else, of course, which will require a different board. I wouldn't mind more than a single M.2 slot, since there's a wide choice of M.2 SSD and some of them are a bit cheaper, but only Gigabyte offers that close to $100, and their record isn't as clean.

 

 

P.S. Oh, about the RAM.

DDR4 RAM is currently completely commoditized. Even the overclocking brands aren't sticking to at least using the same IC make in the same series anymore. The differences are minor, only appear at extreme voltages, and are completely meaningless, as they come to <0.1% performance.

 

So, just pick the lowest price/GB here: http://pcpartpicker.com/products/memory/#Z=8192001,16384002&s=402400,402666,402800,403000,403200&sort=a7&page=1&t=14

There's no real point going over 2400. You could get a 3000 kit just to be sure, but any 2400 kit will do the same, there's no guarantee it will do it at 1.35 rather than say 1.4V and that's it. The heatsinks are generally useless except for some protection from careless installation.

 

You should pay far more attention to other parts of your build like the CPU cooler.

Edited June 10, 2016 by FMod

[Crawmak]

Damn, that's a lot of info. So if I don't go with the board you have there, then I should stick to the Asus/ASRock range?

 

I'm not really planing on doing anything super crazy with my rig, just a basic high-end gaming setup.

 

You're right though, I probably am overthinking things. I'm just paranoid of getting something as expensive as a motherboard only to have it fail on me, or happen to be something I can't use or don't want. I can only afford so much on minimum wage, y'know?

Also, for what it's worth, I really don't plan to overclock anything. Going back to the paranoia, I'm just afraid something will explode because I clicked the wrong thing.

 

Thanks for all the help though! Even if I don't go with the exact board you suggested, I feel a lot more confident in any other choices I'll make.

 

So, just to finalize, to go with an i5-6500, I should probably just think hard about my budget and pick a board from PC Part Picker to suit my needs, and just pretty much any 2400 DDR4 RAM that isn't a wallet eater, of any size to fit my needs. Any other little tidbits of advice you wanna share? Along with being paranoid, I'm also very open to learning anything new about computer hardware that I didn't know.

[FMod]

You can look around the threads in this forum where people offer build advice, there's a lot of info and he end result tends to be consistently good.

 

Another new member recently made a decent low-cost build (considering my corrections, someone else might also throw in more) here: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/4506535-need-advice-on-this-build/

 

If you're on a budget, you'll probably never need SLI, and while there's a lot of reasons to pick the Z170 over the cheaper chipsets, there's a lot of good boards for less than $100. For $100-ish, the Z170 Extreme 3 has basically no competition.

 

edit: Use 2x8 GB RAM, it's optimal.

Edited June 10, 2016 by FMod

[Crawmak]

Well, I'm on a budget now, but I may not be in the future. I just kinda want SLI to cover my bases, y'know? That way, sometime in the future when I have a little more cash to blow, I can do SLI without having to worry about it not being possible.

Also, I remember reading an article about a type of bridge that works with DX12 to make multi-GPU setups possible across different models, and I have an old GTX 660 lying around from my upgrade to a 970 earlier this year. (I probably would have waited if I'd known what Nvidia had in store for this year, but I think a 970 should keep me happy for a while anyway.) But that's also why I don't hold it as a priority, because I've heard a lot of conflicting opinions about SLI, so maybe I'll just never use it and just keep myself to a single-GPU upgrade branch.

I'd say my budget is about a maximum of $200 for the board, so if I can get significantly higher quality for that I'd rather do that instead.

 

Out of curiosity, why is 2x8GB RAM optimal? I know anything more than 16GB would be sorta pointless for anything other than fullscale game development and other business applications, but what makes 2x8GB better than something like a 4x4GB setup?

There's always those two lonely, empty RAM slots on any setup.

[FMod]

In my experience, about 9 out of 10 people who ever use multi-GPU setups buy both their cards within a month of each other. So do probably 29 out of 30 who are actually happy with it. People doing "SLI on the cheap" by buying a second-hand card years later usually end up complaining about microstutter, greatly increased noise, reduced compatibility, and additionally get shorted on features and VRAM.

 

The DX12's feature requires explicit game support. The only game with such now is AotS. Also, the GTX970 is a DX11 card with only nominal DX12 support, the GTX660 isn't even nominally DX12 compatible.

 

In any case the Asrock Z170 Extreme3 does support SLI (but your case and PSU might not). Any budget should be on a per system, not per component basis. While you can get "better" boards for more, the main way they're better is more holes to plug more stuff into. If you have extra cash, spend it on a good CPU cooler and a SSD.

 

1 RAM module per channel is always optimal, and there's other reasons, you can find the details online.

[Crawmak]

Well I wasn't planning on getting a second-hand card, if I was gonna do SLI I'd buy a second of the exact same card I have, probably from the same online dealer.

 

Regardless, you've swayed me away from SLI for the time being. I could probably just get a 1080 if I want more than my 970 is giving me.

I'll look closely at the ports on the Extreme3, compare it to what I have now, and make my decision based on if I need more fan or SATA ports.

 

EDIT: After looking it over, it looks like the ASRock Z170 Extreme3 has half the SATA ports that my current board has (though my board only has SATA 6GB, while the ASRock board has SATA Express). I already use three ports on my current board (CD drive and two HDDs), but that means I won't be able to add more storage drives than I already have in the future. Don't suppose there's a version of the board with more storage? Or, with two drives already, should I focus more on just expanding the size of my drives instead of adding more?

Edited June 13, 2016 by Crawfishness