Bang for the Buck Z97 Motherboard Showdown Part 4 - The Epic Conclusion
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,298 words · ~6 min read
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welcome to the fourth and final installment of the $1 100ish z97
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motherboard Showdown as you probably know by now we've been adventuring into
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the world of affordable motherboards instead of top tier motherboards which
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are expensive and don't really impact performance anyways we're doing this
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because we want to explore the pros cons and trade-offs of boards that people are
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actually buying in this video we'll be covering the finished system experience
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of each board things like OneTouch overclocking uh utilities and the final
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conclusion will be covered in this video don't forget to stay subscribed for Less
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videos on affordable motherboards in the future since apparently you guys aren't
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that into them
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anyways experience silent performance with the new Cooler Master silencio 652
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s minimalist design maximum compatibility click now to learn more
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we'll start off with the fun stuff generally all of the board's various
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overclocking utilities resulted in a 4.4 GHz overclock for the Intel g3258 CPU
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and XMP settings for the gskill rip Jaws 2400s except for the azrock board which
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simply had a selectable profile on the azrock board the 4.7 GHz profile failed
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and 4.6 GHz seemed stable enough but it wasn't really fair as I had to manually
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verify the stability anyways which kind of defeats the purpose of One Touch
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overclocking next up we have the driver downloading experience something that
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might not seem that important in the grand scheme of things but we measured
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it so MSI comes in first at 7.7
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megabytes per second on average with a Seuss as a close runner up at around 6.6
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mbytes per second Gigabyte Trails behind at 2.1 megabytes per second Landing it
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in third place and last and in this case least is azck at 1.3 megabytes per
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second please keep in mind that while we tested all of these one right after the
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other we were unsure of how loaded these companies networks were at the time of
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testing and we downloaded all of these files to our office in western Canada so
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your results will vary so with all those megabytes per second what did I download
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well naturally all the drivers some would expect and some utility software
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as well something you may know if you've perused the software utility section of
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your motherboard's downloads before is that there are tons of them and honestly
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you shouldn't download most of them but whatever you do no matter how many you
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download avoid Network utilities like the plague Windows is actually totally
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fine at handling this on its own and doesn't need additional bloatware to do
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it instead unless you really need
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prioritization for some reason and don't have that feature on your router where
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it belongs if you do want to download any utilities you could go for their
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overclocking fan speed or monitoring software I suggest you use these largely
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just for monitoring however and use your UEFI for actually setting things up if
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you're looking for information on UEFI check out our last video here and also
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please note that that if you do want to overclock in your operating system that
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you'll need the Intel management engine driver installed so it's time for the
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final conclusion obviously if you're looking into buying a motherboard I
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would suggest watching all of the other videos in this series but as a quick
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overview let's look into what really matters first and foremost IO matters
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make sure that you're going to be able to plug in all the peripherals and drives into the board that you will need
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most of these boards will have you covered but it is still an important question to ask yourself then we have
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PCI layout same type of question make sure you can hook up everything that you
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need to and not have any conflicts in terms of positioning another thing to
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note is the comparison of fan headers on your board and fan slots that you'll be
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filling in your case make sure there's enough and make sure that they are in
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the right spot in general case compatibility is important as well if
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your 24 pin connector cable management holes don't line up with the location on
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the board you're going to have a bad time now thanks to Intel moving so many
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things onto their CPUs there is very little difference between boards when it
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comes to Performance and overclocking so this shouldn't be that huge of a factor
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when looking into boards especially in this price range but looking into things
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like if it's running a dual BIOS and or a socketed BIOS setup might not be a bad
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idea and choosing a board with a good software layout for all these biosi
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dials and switches will help a lot
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overall the motherboard landscape especially in this bracket is pretty
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level there is much less of of a difference between boards now than there
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has been in previous years which is great news for folks looking to save a
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few extra bucks so then what's the best for you ASUS was a clear winner in ufi
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and overall usability experience but as rock has a ton of fan headers compared
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to everyone else and was rocking loads of other features like SLI MSI has great
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compatibility like ASUS but a few more physical features than ASUS while still
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having nice things like Rich fan control Gigabyte had a great aesthetic style and
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a great dual BIOS mentation to keep you going along with a variety of other
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features who do you think one let me know in the comments down below or
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better yet on the Forum speaking of winning if you love watching anime you
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should check out Crunchyroll with crunchy roll premium you can watch your
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soon as 1 hour after they Premiere in Japan with crunchy R premium you can
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watch as much anime as you want add free and in beautiful HD on a variety of
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devices for only $6.95 per month but if you use our link that's crunchyroll.com
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Linus you can get a 30-day trial of their service absolutely free so be sure
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to check them out in the link in the video description all right guys thanks
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for hanging with me through this series don't forget to comment down below or on the Forum of which board you think range
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Supreme of their socket Cuisine I don't
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know anyways uh while you're down below here commenting be sure to subscribe if
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you haven't already like the video dislike the video depending on which
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color of board you like more uh share it if you think it's helpful for someone
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who might be building a computer soon and over on the Forum you can become a
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contributor because there will be reason to do that fairly soon and in the video
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description below this video you can check out a shirt link and over on the
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Forum if you like bouncing back and forth repeatedly you can see a like help
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Linus Media Group link where you can change stuff like Amazon links to help
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us get kitback Kickbacks whenever you buy anything on Amazon thank you for
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watching and I'll see you next time