System Builder Newb Question
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Beyond individual feature support ( say a board only supporting PCIe 2 instead of 3, or Sata II instead of III ), does your motherboard choice directly affect performance in any way?
In other words, when choosing between 2 boards that are both the correct socket type for your CPU, does anything matter beyond whether it has the features you're looking for?
Doing a CPU and RAM transplant for a temporary workstation and have very few needs, just want one PCIe 16 slot and 32GB RAM support on my socket and I'm set, and wondering whether it's worth going w/ a slightly more expensive board than ones that have the features I need or if it's basically a boolean decision, has the features I need, check, then pick the lowest price without reviews indicating a strong likelihood of reliability woe.
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Given your requirements I'd go cheapest possible, especially if it's going to be a temp solution.
To answer your first question though, yes, it can make a difference.
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@MattSpeller said:
To answer your first question though, yes, it can make a difference.
Interesting. So how do you weigh/compare performance differences across two motherboards that both support your minimum feature requirements? Is there some benchmarking comparison tool like CPUBoss but for mobos?
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Motherboards do influence speed and reliability, but are rarely a significant contributor if all the chipsets are the same.
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@creayt said:
Is there some benchmarking comparison tool like CPUBoss but for mobos?
Nope! Sadly you need to put some trust in a review site who will get a bunch of them and plug the same CPU and RAM in & test. I've never seen it make a huge (+10%) difference. I have however seen some with REALLY shoddy feature support, buggy ass drivers and all sorts of other crap I wouldn't want to deal with long term.
I stick with ASUS and Gigabyte in spite of their flaws. They are large enough (and have a track record) to fix issues long term.
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http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/enthusiast-z97-motherboard-overclock,3893-27.html
TL;DR - less than 3% speed difference, winner is decided by $$$ and features.
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Chipsets and driver support are bigger deals to me. It's a toss up if I've had more issues with subpar capacitors or buggy drivers.
I'm with Matt, I'd probably stick with Gigabyte and Asus too.
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My last system build I started with the cheapest board I could find, It ran OK for about a year, then the board died with a blown cap. I decided to splurge and go to a top shelf gigabyte board to swap everything over too. Same stats, just a better board. The system was noticeably more stable and a little quicker. Personally, I will never go with a cheap board again.
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I've always found more expensive boards from big names to be far more reliable. I suppose because they have reputations to protect they want people to be happy with their boards and remember them.
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Wasn't PCChip like one of the worst you could get?
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You get what you pay for and mobo's are no exception heheh
Again, for short term (few months?) I wouldn't hesitate to cheap out on a mATX board from super sketchy brand X
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@thecreativeone91 said:
Wasn't PCChip like one of the worst you could get?
IIRC Yes
There was a day when that was also Asrock, MSI and some other much more common brands. They've improved a lot over the years but it'll be 5-10 more before I'd trust them with my hard earned money.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
Wasn't PCChip like one of the worst you could get?
They were super cheap.
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@MattSpeller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
Wasn't PCChip like one of the worst you could get?
IIRC Yes
There was a day when that was also Asrock, MSI and some other much more common brands. They've improved a lot over the years but it'll be 5-10 more before I'd trust them with my hard earned money.
Kind of looking at a ASRock right now. Are they considered pretty shoddy? Someone in one of the NewEgg reviews implied that you can use the ASRock bios to OC even non-K processors. If that's true that'd be awesome, I'd love to zip up this Xeon even if it made the proc die in less than a year. I also keep my apartment at about 67 degrees, and am thinking of running the case half open w/ a tower fan that I run blowing into it, so I'm feeling pretty confident on cooling. But yeah, if I could get my 1240 v2 up above 4 Ghz for 4-5 months I'd be a happy camper.
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@creayt If it's got decent reviews then it's probably ok. I wouldn't buy one long term but I confessed that bias below heh.
As to the over clocking I'm not sure but my $0.02 is to avoid OC's like the PLAGUE on cheap mobo's.
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Overclocking a Xeon is generally a bad idea, not much you can do with them.
Personally I would avoid OC all together it just shortens the life of the components, especially when caps and power regs are so close to their rated specs already.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
Overclocking a Xeon is generally a bad idea, not much you can do with them.
Personally I would avoid OC all together it just shortens the life of the components, especially when caps and power regs are so close to their rated specs already.
But what about FUN?
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@creayt it's your chip bro have at it haha
all I ask is you post your results!
