today's video is part of a series that I'm bringing back from the dead called
ultimate question and final answer where I take a question that I've been asked a
million times so examples of previous segments include Intel versus AMD or
air-cooling versus water-cooling and ARM you guys with the tools to answer it not
only today but well into the future so what is the best choice for a computer
motherboard let's answer it shall we
the gtx 980ti VR edition from EVGA
provides an industry-leading graphics experience as well as a five and a
quarter inch bay with easy access inputs for your VR device learn more at the
link in the video description there's a
fundamental problem with the way that many people tackle choosing the best
motherboard I mean we've all seen that forum post that's all like yo I just
want a million dollars check out this sick build yo I'm gonna buy it
ignoring that the poster is usually a teenager who just learned how to sort by
price and through all the most expensive components many of which aren't even
compatible half the time let alone optimal into a shopping cart the
underlying issue here is that people are assuming that if they pay more they will
end up with a better experience but that isn't always the case let's take these
two products both of which that I have used as examples each of these
motherboards sits in that top-of-the-line $600 price range but
while this one is suitable for a general
consumer and light workstation use you know we're talking gaming ripping
blu-rays listening to music video editing this one is better suited for
installation in a server that will do complex video or 3d rendering or run a
large number of virtual machines or a demanding database or I mean with the
horsepower that can be equipped with some combination of those things but
this is where it gets kind of tricky as we demonstrated in this video
aside from the hardware that can be
plugged into a motherboard the board itself doesn't meaningfully impact raw
performance anymore so unless you're looking at some kind of semi custom
super computer hardware or like RISC
architecture stuff any board that takes an Intel x86 processor can do all of
those things that I listed before the difference then is in the features that
the manufacturer has spent money developing and implementing and that
therefore you will pay for that only benefit certain use cases not to mention
that on top of ending up with if you don't need you're going to have
to live without or pay extra to enable
features that the manufacturer didn't bother to put on this server motherboard
would make for a real downer of the gaming rig it doesn't have SLI or
crossfire support from multiple graphics cards limiting your gaming performance
to the best single card available forever it doesn't have onboard Wi-Fi or
USB 3.1 or even onboard audio it lacks
the capability to add a Thunderbolt card for prosumer external storage it doesn't
have overclocking features and finally it has the kind of rear i/o that you'd
expect to find on a $50.00 motherboard
on a shelf at Best Buy six years ago four USB ports of which only two are USB
3 even but and this is the first main
point today get a product that's actually designed for your use case
because there's a reason that this is still expensive even with all that stuff
missing the server board has two CPU
sockets with quadruple the memory slot count giving it the capability of
supporting much more RAM and much more CPU horsepower something that consumers
will be hard-pressed to benefit from since very few workloads can actually
utilize up to 36 processing cores on their own the variant of this board that
costs the same as this consumer one has got dual ten gigabit network ports only
useful if you want to also drop hundreds or thousands of dollars on a 10 gigabit
switch and other clients it's got onboard VGA which is a must since you
won't necessarily be putting a graphics card in it and VGA is still very widely
used more than you'd think in server level gear it's got and this is tied in
to the VGA a dedicated network port for what's called IPMI remote management
this was a must for me for my off-site
backup server because it lets me monitor vital information like CPU temperatures
install software off of virtual media and see what that VGA port sees over the
network or even read or power the system on from a completely
off state from hundreds of kilometers away and it's got other stuff that you
might not even think would be useful like dedicated hardware jumper switches
for things that consumers would normally prefer to be handled in a software
switch within the UEFI BIOS so then for
contrast let's take a look at the strengths of the consumer motherboard
this is the Maximus 8 extreme assembly a very premium consumer board so
surprisingly it actually has a 10 gigabit network card bundled but aside
from that it's highlight features are very very different it's got a breakout
fan controller module for intelligent and quiet system operation something
that doesn't matter in a data center it's got thermal probes that you can
place yourself for system monitoring it's got this rocking onboard audio with
the front headphone jack something I can't imagine to many IT pros using in
their server room designed to drive high-end audiophile headphones it's got
an easy memory compatibility button support for multiple graphics cards full
overclocking support including a liquid-nitrogen mode I mean all of that
it's got our DB lighting for crying out loud all of that stuff is like yeah
that's pretty cool for consumers and enthusiasts but would be completely
meaningless in a server where they'd be like I'm sorry it supports only for
processing course which leads us to the second main point don't buy stuff that
you don't need once you're looking at the right category ask yourself do you
really need liquid nitrogen mode or whatever because both of these examples
are premium products and the reason for that is because it's easier to
demonstrate the feature differences when both products are fully loaded so to
speak but here are a couple of boards in
the $200 price range where the main difference is still that the consumer
gaming motherboard has more i/o and
better audio and is better looking and
the professional server motherboard has remote management and better networking
leading us to the final point and that is that there is no single
answer it's not that simple if you
wanted to hear you know buy the most expensive Gigabyte board or ASUS rog is
the best or Supermicro never-fail or whatever even that's not possible
because any one of those companies can make a winner or a total dud from my
experience so I always use consumer reviews usually from verified owners on
Newegg or Amazon whenever possible for
motherboards because it's my belief that it is simply impossible for a single
person with a single test bench to adequately test the motherboard for all
the different things that might be thrown at it in the real world
so in summary determine the features that are meaningful to you understand
that spending more doesn't necessarily yield any sort of benefit and make sure
to get specific feedback on the models that you're comparing and on that
subject mass drop mass drop is the online community where basically the
community says hey we want to deal on like this thing and they've got on
different stuff they take that to the manufacturer or an authorized
distributor to make sure they're getting genuine product they go hey we've got a
bunch of people who want to buy this what do you say the more people who
agree to buy the lower the price goes sounds good sounds good and that's
pretty much the way it works and right now they've got a mass drop exclusive
product thus entrance and DAC port slim
the slim builds on the success of the DAC port classic bringing the power of
the classic into a two and a half ounce package it features a max output power
of 450 milliwatts and output impedance of 1 ohm a 20 decibel gain switch
between the minimum and the maximum it
resolutions it features a dynamic range of 109 decibels and again it is mass
drop exclusive and available for a very limited time and quantity with only 350
units available at the time of filming this spot it's already reached its
lowest drop price of $99.99 and there are over 80 orders so to check it out
head over to draw dot slash LTT - centrist
to learn well - check it out but I already that and if that's complicated there's a
link in the video description just click it and go so thanks for watching guys if
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way is awesome you can get answers to your tech questions there it's linked in the video description now that you're
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