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only one motherboard because your system

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needs only one CPU but with so many options all with different

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configurations of power phases PCI Express Lanes and m.2 Slots how do you

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choose which one is truly the best is it actually worth it to spend more money on

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a higher end motherboard well Micro Center sponsored this video and sent us

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10 motherboards from various manufacturers to test and um let me put

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it this way if the results surprised us then they're almost definitely going to

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surprise you like this was not the Biggest Loser not by a long

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shot and neither is Micro Center get the best

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prices and best selection on PC hardware and other technology at any of

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microcenter's 25 locations across the United States new customers can get a

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free 240 Gigabyte SSD at Micro Center offer valid in-store only no purchase

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necessary

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for every motherboard we tore down and rebuilt the exact same test bench we're

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using the same memory CPU Cooler power supply SSD and graphics card we even

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made sure to grab the exact same type of thermal paste for the last few boards

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when our first tube ran out this is to control our variables as tightly as

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possible we even tested every system in the same climate controlled environment

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after building each bench we'll have affiliate links down below for

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everything we use by the way we immediately found an important reason to

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choose one board over the other not every UEFI BIOS is created equally some

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of these didn't even allow us to change the pl1 and pl2 power limits that much

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if at all and while most of them did we

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had to dig through advanced CPU settings to find them in some cases after

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powering on we updated the BIOS enabled XMP and maxed out our long duration

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power limits whenever possible we could have gone for a more you know

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vanilla configuration here but given this is a more Enthusiast oriented

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exploration and that we are looking for benefits of more premium motherboards we

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felt this was the right approach the reality is modern CPUs have gotten

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really good at knowing exactly when it is okay to boost and when it is not

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these days it's actually pretty hard to break a CPU and on most boards you'll

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get some kind of warning when you toy with the settings that can do so

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Enthusiast cooling has also gotten really good with most performance tier

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gaming systems being equipped with a 240 millimeter AIO water cooler or a large

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Tower heatsink we used a Noctua nhd15 which will run you about 115 bucks at

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Microcenter and should give our processor plenty of room to stretch its

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legs while providing some incidental cooling to the vrms which could help

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performance something to note is that even with a great cooler our cinebench

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and blender tests never saw our CPU push past the 250 watt Mark and this is in

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spite of setting the power limits to the maximum like 4 thousand watts in some

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cases so what gives with that well the

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thing is even if we do find some performance differences from board to

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board changing the power limits is kind of like removing the governor on a car

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yes theoretically the speedometer goes up to 300 miles an hour but your engine

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is still going to max out on its own and like occur you can open up some more

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Headroom by increasing voltage adjusting load line calibration and manually

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changing the frequency of your chip but that's topic for another video like this

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one or for you to explore by subbing to an extreme or clocker like your Bauer

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this video is all about out of the factory performance and right out of the

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gate I'm really surprised our big winner was

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MSI's gone like z590 which ended up with the highest cinebench score and the

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fastest blender render times to be clear this is a 900 motherboard competing

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against boards in the 100 to 200 category but I mean even in the days

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when motherboard's affected system performance by a lot it was common to

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see expensive boards that were like loaded up with features in this case

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Thunderbolt 4 Wi-Fi 6E obviously super Premium Power delivery but it didn't

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actually offer a clear performance Advantage unless you were trying to

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break Sub-Zero overclocking records of course that performance Advantage was

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still pretty small so let's take a look at the board that came in second place

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at least in terms of cinebench our ASRock z590 Pro 4 was behind by just 19

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points in cinebench and ran only a couple of seconds slower in the renders

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yet managed a whopping one percent more FPS in CS go okay that that last bit

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doesn't sound that impressive but it costs a fraction as much at 185 US

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Dollars and while it only has 14 power

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phases with 50 amp chokes 2.5 gigabit Lan and no onboard Wi-Fi the choice is

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pretty clear if you care about value buy one of these instead and maybe use the

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money you saved at ltstore.com the beanie and the water bottle are a great

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combo as for the rest of our results they're mostly what we were expecting

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this CPUs are more integrated than ever these days so motherboards don't

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contribute like they used to but there are some outliers for instance MSI wins

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the crown for the best microatx b560 board as well beating out three other

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z590 boards at least in cinebench the b560m mag mortar was slower to render by

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eight or seven percent in BMW and classroom respectively but it had the

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third highest cinebench score the second highest FPS in CS go and the second

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fastest turn time in Civ 6. b550s aren't

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supposed to overclock so picking up a supposedly lower tier board for its

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performance is a little unintuitive meanwhile MSI z590a Pro lost instead of

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inch by just 17 points but how well you

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could explain this with some simple run-to-run variants that's such a narrow

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Victory that's barely one at all you'd think that but we actually re-ran our

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benches on every board and these margins between them while narrow were

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surprisingly consistent one of the major benefits we saw with MSI boards was when

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you set them up it asks you what kind of cooling solution you have the more

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robust solution you pick the higher they push both the long and short duration

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power limits since an nhd-15 is basically as good as a solid water

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cooling setup we chose water cooled instead of tower cooler and it maxed out

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the limits for us at 4 000 Watts you could easily achieve the same on a

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different brand but this kind of user friendliness is something the others

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could learn from of course performance isn't the entire story MSI's z590 board

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managed to stay about 10 degrees cooler on the vrms so while the 90 plus degrees

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of our b560m mag mortar isn't out of spec for these kinds of components a hot

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day could easily push that to 100 or 110

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and remember we have some airflow around the socket if you're using an AIO or

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you're in a tight case you might not as for our losers

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well as you could have guessed it's mostly the b560s and our solitary h510

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board the Gigabyte z590 UD was 20 points behind at cinebench and so it

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unfortunately gets to hang out down here despite performing significantly better

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in the render times and perform the best when it comes to CS go at nearly 560 FPS

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average so if you're purely after gaming performance this one might call to you

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from Micro Center shelf or in one of their custom prebills despite being down

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here in the losers bracket as for the one that was bad across the

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board there are a few reasons for this first off is their inability to set

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higher power limits most of them capped out at 125 150 or 200 watts and

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increasing the duration limit didn't help all that much either most of them

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aren't running too hot and if you chose a matching mid-tier CPU they would most

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likely be fine but they're just not able to live up to the 11 900k's full 250

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watt potential they typically have fewer power phases and a less robust power

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delivery system with just one eight pin EPS connector speaking of phases we're

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building out a DIY phase change CPU Cooler with some help from Brian the

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electrician so make sure you get subscribed so you don't miss it back to

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our b560 boards though these power draw limits aren't surprising but what is

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surprising are the bottom two boards you might be shocked to learn the ASRock

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h510m wasn't in last place it has no XMP

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option and memory can only go as high as 3200 megahertz so it did see the worst

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CS go score at 407 22 FPS average however it absolutely crushed our loser

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board in cinebench by roughly 4

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000 points render times were also won by nearly an extra minute in the BMW render

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and two minutes in the classroom as impressive as this is these results are

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still significantly lower than the b560m board above it but what the heck is

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going on with our Gigabyte b560m ds3h well power phases don't seem to matter

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all that much until they do this thing starts out

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strong and the initial render in cinebench R23 finishes quickly giving

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you hope but with each subsequent render the score goes down and down and down

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all the way to about 7688 points

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ouch if we check our clock speeds in power

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they're all over the place while CPU temperatures are mediocre at 80 to 84

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degrees what gives well our vrm temperatures are terrible

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quickly hitting 112 degrees Celsius this

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board is trying to squeeze all the power it can out for our CPU but the load is

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simply too much for the system to bear and it buckles onto the pressure

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dropping wattage and clock speeds in an effort to lower the temperatures

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bringing them back up to see if it's okay yet and then quickly settling back

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down again it's like a person trying to take a bath in boiling water the toe

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dips in they recoil and wait a moment and then they they try again and it just

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keeps going like that our other CPU heavy tasks saw similarly poor

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performance with this board seen the worst turn times in Civ 6 and the second

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worst FPS in CS go I have a hunch that

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if the memory had been set to 3200 megahertz it would have lost the battle

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to the ASRock h510m as well so our winner is obvious but it's not the

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Godlike as it stands the best board of the bunch with prices we can actually

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recommend is the ASRock z590 Pro 4. it

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didn't come out on top in any category but it was always near the head of the

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pack at 185 dollars the BIOS was relatively easy to use it

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has a lot of options for expansion and storage and it comes with asrock's base

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frequency boost technology that supposedly pushes non-k CPUs past their

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limit through base clock overclocking so theoretically you should be able to buy

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this board put a lower end chip in it and still get pretty good performance so

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you can afford something better our honorable mention is MSI's b560m mag

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mortar for a smaller machine on a budget it's a great choice just like Micro

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Center today's sponsor get the best prices and the best selection on PC

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hardware and Technology at any of Micro Center's 25 locations across the United

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States new customers can get a free 240 Gigabyte SSD at Micro Center offer valid

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in-store only no purchase necessary thanks for watching guys if you enjoyed

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this video make sure to check out our how motherboards work turbo nude Edition

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for a better explanation of how some of this works I'll have the link down below