WEBVTT 00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:08.000 welcome to the first installment of the 100-ish dollar z97 motherboard showdown 00:00:05.759 --> 00:00:12.480 now we normally focus on really expensive top-tier motherboards which 00:00:10.160 --> 00:00:16.800 are essentially made out of unobtainium and as we've actually demonstrated 00:00:14.320 --> 00:00:22.080 before on this very channel they don't really have a huge impact in performance 00:00:18.960 --> 00:00:24.240 in a negative or positive way 00:00:22.080 --> 00:00:27.760 it's the 100-ish dollar motherboard that the majority of people are actually 00:00:25.760 --> 00:00:33.360 going to buy and that's why we decided to make this series to help people 00:00:29.679 --> 00:00:34.719 understand the pros cons and trade-offs 00:00:33.360 --> 00:00:38.800 that they're going to be making when shopping for a value motherboard and in 00:00:36.960 --> 00:00:43.360 this episode we'll be focusing on the physical features of the boards 00:00:40.879 --> 00:00:46.800 themselves the beginning and the end of what many people are shopping for on 00:00:45.360 --> 00:00:54.210 motherboards but as you'll see in the rest of the videos in this series there's a lot more 00:00:50.239 --> 00:00:59.520 to it than that so stay tuned 00:00:59.520 --> 00:01:05.360 ensure swift victory with Corsair's highly responsive lightweight gaming 00:01:02.960 --> 00:01:08.880 mouse the saber RGB click now to learn more 00:01:07.200 --> 00:01:13.840 one of the big sales pitches for motherboards is the f phrase or future 00:01:12.080 --> 00:01:18.479 proof and that's how a lot of people end up paying 300 plus dollars for the 00:01:16.320 --> 00:01:23.680 motherboard so they have room to upgrade and i guess there's something to be said 00:01:20.880 --> 00:01:29.040 for having a bazillion SATA ports usb ports and headers and pci express slots 00:01:26.640 --> 00:01:32.159 but if you give your future plans some real thought you might realize that 00:01:30.960 --> 00:01:37.920 you're more likely than not to add a standalone 00:01:34.960 --> 00:01:41.920 nas than 18 freaking internal hard drives and if you really need that 00:01:39.680 --> 00:01:47.360 storage space i mean where are you going to find a case for all that anyways 00:01:44.240 --> 00:01:49.600 and you're unlikely to need 10 usb 3.0 00:01:47.360 --> 00:01:53.759 ports as well because by the time you do it might be timed for a new motherboard 00:01:51.840 --> 00:01:59.040 with usb 3.1 anyways so the only real problem future 00:01:56.560 --> 00:02:03.040 proof wise for a value board is that you need to look a bit more closely before 00:02:01.200 --> 00:02:07.920 you pull the trigger something that could save you so much money that you 00:02:04.960 --> 00:02:12.879 could literally buy two motherboards one now and one later when you want to 00:02:09.840 --> 00:02:15.120 upgrade for the same price some stuff is 00:02:12.879 --> 00:02:18.879 less obvious than hard drives or usb ports though and while people that end 00:02:16.879 --> 00:02:23.040 up buying high-end motherboards will often have room in the budget for a 00:02:20.480 --> 00:02:26.560 fancy fan controller the value builder will want to make sure that their 00:02:24.319 --> 00:02:30.239 motherboard can actually support all the fans that they want to put in their case 00:02:28.480 --> 00:02:34.720 otherwise they'll be stuck running fans at full speed connected to the power 00:02:31.920 --> 00:02:39.200 supply or leaving fan slots on their case empty to save some money speaking 00:02:37.200 --> 00:02:44.000 of fans and cooling our physical overview included a look at the cooling 00:02:41.360 --> 00:02:47.920 capabilities of the motherboard this was interesting because while we expected 00:02:46.400 --> 00:02:53.040 the dramatically different looking heatsink and vrm designs to yield 00:02:50.480 --> 00:02:57.200 significant differences in vrm and motherboard temperatures especially 00:02:54.800 --> 00:03:02.239 based on the fancy heat camera imagery we've seen in motherboard a versus 00:02:59.519 --> 00:03:06.640 competitor screenshots over the years and what we really got was a couple 00:03:04.560 --> 00:03:11.120 degrees here or there which is pretty much within the margin of error of our 00:03:08.319 --> 00:03:14.959 infrared thermometer the good news is that while all these value boards 00:03:13.360 --> 00:03:18.400 had slightly different temperatures they all stayed within the operating 00:03:16.560 --> 00:03:23.680 temperatures of the boards but please note our CPU is not overclocked so your 00:03:20.800 --> 00:03:27.120 mileage may vary if you decide to crank things up a bit now with super high-end 00:03:25.680 --> 00:03:32.239 boards you can assume that they'll support at least two-way crossfire and 00:03:29.760 --> 00:03:36.720 two-way sli but with value boards you might discover that the board has 00:03:34.239 --> 00:03:41.200 multiple pci express slots but lacks the certification or appropriate bandwidth 00:03:39.120 --> 00:03:47.120 allocation for some multi-GPU configurations so while these boards all 00:03:43.840 --> 00:03:48.640 supported AMD crossfire they did not all 00:03:47.120 --> 00:03:52.080 support sli of course a ton of you will not be 00:03:50.400 --> 00:03:56.480 running sli on 100ish dollar motherboards but it is a nice feature if 00:03:54.400 --> 00:04:00.480 you are a NVIDIA user and plan to be picking up a cheap used graphics card 00:03:58.560 --> 00:04:04.400 sometime in the future to breathe life back into your build maybe something to 00:04:02.319 --> 00:04:08.560 keep in mind for the long run some general build quality observations we 00:04:06.400 --> 00:04:12.959 made were things like the heat sinks on the board and if they were secured by 00:04:10.480 --> 00:04:17.919 screws or push pins i personally prefer screws as they're less likely to become 00:04:14.879 --> 00:04:19.840 dislodged in shipping or deteriorate as 00:04:17.919 --> 00:04:25.280 the board heats and cools over its lifespan we also checked how the locking 00:04:22.160 --> 00:04:26.800 mechanism worked for the PCIe 16x slots 00:04:25.280 --> 00:04:31.199 lions and i both prefer when the wing-based design has an included notch 00:04:29.520 --> 00:04:35.199 for the screwdriver so that if we need to push it down in that way we won't 00:04:33.280 --> 00:04:39.360 risk a slip which could result in us stabbing the motherboard the normal wing 00:04:37.280 --> 00:04:44.160 design is fine in the top slot because you can more easily get at it with a 00:04:41.360 --> 00:04:48.479 finger and neither of us are a fan of the pull tab design which has resulted 00:04:46.160 --> 00:04:52.400 in scraped knuckles for both of us at some point in time or another in the 00:04:50.400 --> 00:04:56.560 past and last but not least in our speeds and feeds rundown here is the 00:04:54.720 --> 00:05:00.479 warranty while this isn't a physical feature it will ensure that you have 00:04:58.720 --> 00:05:04.160 physical features to talk about for a specified amount of time warranties are 00:05:02.560 --> 00:05:09.440 important at all levels of purchasing decisions but especially when you're purchasing a value computer because you 00:05:07.680 --> 00:05:13.759 probably don't have the spare cash to just be swapping out dead boards all the 00:05:11.199 --> 00:05:17.680 time although warranty can probably be ignored entirely if you plan on doing 00:05:15.680 --> 00:05:22.479 something silly like dunking all your computer components in mineral oil one 00:05:20.639 --> 00:05:27.039 other point here is that checking with buddies especially ones who live in the 00:05:24.400 --> 00:05:31.280 same part of the world as you is a great idea and a good due diligence best 00:05:29.360 --> 00:05:36.479 practice kind of thing to do because the quality of warranty services for a given 00:05:33.759 --> 00:05:41.360 brand can vary dramatically from from one region to another so in summary 00:05:38.960 --> 00:05:46.240 again this video was essentially just a physical feature comparison with the 00:05:43.520 --> 00:05:50.880 main point being that at any given price point you won't actually find many huge 00:05:48.639 --> 00:05:55.680 differences that show up on a spec sheet and that by shopping by specifications 00:05:53.360 --> 00:05:59.199 alone you could lead to the conclusion that it doesn't really matter what you 00:05:57.520 --> 00:06:03.199 buy but that's not the case and in our future videos 00:06:01.360 --> 00:06:08.400 we'll cover things like how easy the board is to build with how finely tuned 00:06:05.520 --> 00:06:12.560 the UEFI BIOS is to navigate and the finished system experience of each 00:06:10.160 --> 00:06:16.560 motherboard now this might feel a bit counter-intuitive but because 00:06:14.319 --> 00:06:20.639 motherboards all perform an overclock basically the same these days thanks to 00:06:18.800 --> 00:06:24.960 Intel moving most of the features that affect those characteristics onto the 00:06:22.720 --> 00:06:30.080 CPU itself throughout this series we will continue to focus on features 00:06:27.360 --> 00:06:33.520 usability build quality and quality of life differences on these motherboards 00:06:32.240 --> 00:06:36.960 instead so with that in mind let us know if you 00:06:35.440 --> 00:06:40.800 have any suggestions for things you'd like us to touch on 00:06:38.639 --> 00:06:44.560 and put those in the comments below or on the forum if you love watching anime 00:06:43.039 --> 00:06:49.120 you should think about checking out crunchyroll not the delicious food the 00:06:47.360 --> 00:06:54.240 streaming service with crunchyroll premium you can watch as many episodes 00:06:51.759 --> 00:07:00.160 of your favorite anime shows as you want anywhere anytime they have shows like 00:06:57.120 --> 00:07:02.080 attack on titan or sword art online and 00:07:00.160 --> 00:07:06.080 they also have the most current episodes of shows like say 00:07:03.759 --> 00:07:10.160 fate stay night straight from japan and they will be live on their site with 00:07:07.840 --> 00:07:14.400 professional subtitles as early as one hour after they premiere in japan with 00:07:12.800 --> 00:07:20.000 crunchyroll premium you can watch as much anime as you want ad free in 00:07:17.199 --> 00:07:24.199 beautiful hd on a variety of devices for only 7.95 per month but if you lose our 00:07:23.039 --> 00:07:28.880 link that's crunchyroll.com Linus you can get a 30 00:07:27.120 --> 00:07:31.759 day free trial of their service absolutely free so check them out by 00:07:30.800 --> 00:07:37.039 clicking the link in the video description down below alright guys again let me know in the comments down 00:07:35.120 --> 00:07:41.280 below or on the forum what you guys think we should cover in those in those 00:07:39.199 --> 00:07:44.560 future videos that i was talking about while you're down there commenting be 00:07:42.800 --> 00:07:47.919 sure to like and dislike the video depending on if you liked or disliked 00:07:46.080 --> 00:07:52.319 the video if you haven't subscribed yet be sure to subscribe and share this 00:07:50.080 --> 00:07:55.919 video if you did like it also if you jump over to the forum because you like 00:07:53.680 --> 00:07:58.960 the forum more like me you can comment on the thread there if you don't like 00:07:57.360 --> 00:08:02.400 the ads on the form you can become a contributor to get rid of those if you 00:08:00.720 --> 00:08:06.000 click on the orange banner at the top you can see how our new office campaign 00:08:04.160 --> 00:08:09.840 is doing and if you click on the support us link on the kind of upper right hand 00:08:07.919 --> 00:08:13.840 side you can do stuff like changing your amazon affiliate links to hours so that 00:08:12.240 --> 00:08:18.160 we get a small kickback whenever you buy things and if you are in need of shirts 00:08:16.479 --> 00:08:21.440 because you didn't get any for christmas or you're not going to get any for 00:08:19.520 --> 00:08:24.160 christmas or something you can check the link in the video description down below 00:08:22.879 --> 00:08:38.840 this video to check out some of our shirts thank you guys for watching and i'll see you next time