$30 MOTHERBOARD?! – Can it game?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,431 words · ~7 min read
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okay so we know we haven't done any motherboard videos on this channel for a
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long freaking time and as for why well
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we've said it before there are parts of your computer that dramatically affect
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performance and there are parts that if you're willing to forgo a few Creature
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Comforts you can save a few bucks on but
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how low can you go today we are looking
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at the EC s a55
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f- M4 1.0 the cheapest motherboard on
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Amazon in a standard form factor it's
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only 30 bucks and isn't it
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beautiful browse privately and securely
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with tunnel bear the simple VPN app try
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tunnel bear for free at the link in the video
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description now first things first to properly appreciate the ghetto
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fabulousness of this motherboard I got a getting character meet L unit sort of a
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v anyway we're going to start by taking a look at this baby from the back I'm
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talking rear IO man
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yeah nobody there don't worry about it
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any anyway we can see it is absolutely packed with gaming features I'm talking
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two PS2 ports PS2 with support for n key
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rollover something that's still rare even on high-end USB keyboards on that
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subject we have four USB 2.0 ports that
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puts this on par with the ASUS Crosshair
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6 and is a huge Boon when you're installing Windows 7 via USB like I
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always do on Friday nights throw in a touch of gigabit Ethernet and audio
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jacks rated at Deb signal to noise ratio and we are
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ready to get our Counter Strike Source on oh and did I mention it supports both
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VGA and HDMI more on that later first
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let's check out the internal connectivity as I call it junk under the
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hood not only do we get four say to 3
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gbit per second connections right there in the bottom right that's 12 gabs per
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second total but we also have support for four more usb2 ports via the front
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panel I mean you got to be some kind of king or some to afford enough USBS to
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plug into all that high defin audio Yeah
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I know the definition of high know what I'm saying and spit if we got spit if
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damn whatever that means but let's get
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serious again what are those headers
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down there that my friends is a Serial
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interface like serial killer and a a
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parallel interface like a parallel
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Dimension highly desirable features that
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very few motherboards come equipped with nowadays possibly as a cost-saving
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measure but no such Corners were cut on
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the ECS a55 f- M4 1.0 this version 1.0
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cuz they get it right the first time know what I'm saying and thanks to these
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we can use virtually any peripheral or
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printer that we want okay lonus then so
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this board has more IO than we know what to do with for a number of reasons but
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what kind of balls to thewall Hardware can we put on here well feast your eyes
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on this baby it supports up to the A8
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3870 Apu which unlike ryzen needs
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DDR3 only to be fli and awesome and
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comes with integrated radon Graphics
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processing that's better than some of the dedicated cards we've tested and
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with four cores at three billion Hertz
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this 1.78 billion transistor Beast is
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unlocked primed and ready for the toughest gaming challenges we can throw
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at it plus it's compatible with uh socket am3 coolers so we'll be able to
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make use of our existing stock here now
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we got to match this Beast with nothing
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but the best so we've got
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ourselves after we get it installed here
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yeah there we go it's on there get the RAM in
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there okay there we go it's fast see
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it's fast like that so we're putting our GTX 1080 TI in what we got a fulllength
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PCI Express lot here we're
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talking 168 pins of power and data here
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that's right so combining this with our
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four Lono cores and 16 gigs of RAM baby
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there is nothing this thing can't run
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technically speaking that is we aren't promising that it'll run well compared
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to our kbl leg testbench limiting ourselves to this class of CPU is
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actually a lot to give up even when
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overclocked single-threaded performance on this thing okay we can lose the we
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can lose the character now is anywhere from about half to a fifth of the speed
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of KB Lake and multi-threaded performance is as low as a sixth but
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we've all heard that direct X12 and Vulcan can actually favor weaker CPUs
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regardless of the GPU thanks to their lower API overhead and as we can see
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here oh well it just gets dominated even
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with a 1080ti in CPU intensive games
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like DSX mankind divided we get a decent
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bump with our overclock on directx11 but
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not on Direct X12 where we actually end
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up within our margin of error so then in
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all seriousness what are you actually
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getting with a board like this well you
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are locking yourself into an ancient
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platform that only had one very
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underwhelming generation of CPU support you are losing support for even sort of
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new features like USB 3 and SATA 6
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gigabit never mind NVMe and usb3.1 and you are stepping down to a
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level of build quality and firmware support that is frankly unacceptable for
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anyone let alone Enthusiast I mean yes
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technically you can overclock it K but
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barely with that said is it usable
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well if you take anything away from this video it's that the advice of don't
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worry about the motherboard should really be taken with the caveat that it
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means within a given generation of
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Hardware if you're buying the top of the line board for the heck of it you are
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doing neither the board nor your wallet any justice but in the case of this
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thing well I think it's safe to say that buying the Flatout cheapest is another
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no sorry I didn't I'll pay you next week no enough of that pay now so for your
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unrestricted 30-day free trial go to
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www.freshbooks.com techtips and enter lonus Tech tips in
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the how you heard about us section so thanks for watching I hope
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you guys enjoyed our fun little look at the cheapest motherboard on newegg.com
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if you dislike this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit the
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like button get subscribed maybe consider checking out where to buy uh
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maybe not this maybe we'll put some like reasonable motherboard and CPU option down there
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that we actually recommend as a good value we've got that Linked In the video
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description and uh so don't forget to subscribe and oh yeah also down there we
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have a link to our merch store where you can buy cool t-shirts like this
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one no wait no 3+ one I think it's like
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one phase for RAM wait no no there's no no no it's four there a four phase power
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what you talking about Willis that's not so bad 32 nanometer CPU do you know how
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big a nanometer is that's tiny
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man there's like there's like not even any copper in it you
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know uh sorry did we even slate that I'm
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rolling oh you're rolling oh good okay wonderful