Bang for the Buck Z97 Motherboard Showdown Part 2 - Building Experience
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,477 words · ~7 min read
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Welcome to the second installment of the 100ish dollar Z97 motherboard showdown.
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As you know from the last video, we normally focus on badass top tier
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motherboards, which are uncommon in the real world, and as we've demonstrated in
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the past, don't really impact performance in a positive or negative
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way. So, this series will focus on the more sensible, affordable motherboards,
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which most people will actually be
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buying. And we're going to explore their pros, cons, and tradeoffs. In this
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episode, we'll be covering the experience of building a computer with
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these motherboards. Things like PCI layout, fan header, and plug positioning
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when installing into a case, accessories, and even color selection
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will be covered. And videos for stuff like BIOS usability and finished system
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experience will be coming after CES, so stay tuned.
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The Cooler Master Neptune 240M features an exclusive pump design and their new
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Sencio fans to provide impressive near silent performance. Click now to learn
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more. One thing on motherboards that gets a
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lot of attention is the PCI layout. Even people that I've built for in the past
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have been overly worried about the futurep proof aspect of PCI layout
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despite them having no real intention of adding more than one GPU or any other
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card for that matter to their system. So for most people it is unlikely to make a
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difference, but it's still worth considering just in case. The top two
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slots and the bottom three slots on these boards are all identical. And
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those will be the most used slots anyways because even when someone does
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decide to add more cards, they're unlikely to use the ones in the middle
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that did vary somewhat because of their proximity to the top PCIe 16x slot,
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which will render one useless with any dual graphics card setup and the other
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not recommended to give affforementioned cards some breathing room. The fan
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headers, however, are of much greater importance if you want to take advantage
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of the fan speed control that's built into your motherboards. Many, if not all
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of these headers can be used in a normal system, and their position can make or
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break the appearance of your cable management. Every board accommodated
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having a rear case fan, but after that, they varied quite heavily. Gigabyte had
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a pretty balanced setup overall, although only having two headers near
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the top may limit your selection of AIO coolers slightly if the pump must be
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powered by a fan header. As Rock had the
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most included fan headers at six, but the positioning of them, while quite
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good for an air cooler, will no doubt be frustrating for anyone who wants to
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install a liquid cooling system in the top of their case, as none of the fan
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headers are at the top of the board, and only some of them were actually four pin
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PWM headers. ASUS lacked quantity with
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only four available fan headers, but at least the layout was fairly balanced and
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MSI had, in my opinion, the best layout of all of them with headers spread out
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all around the board, giving you the versatility to play around a little bit
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with the placement of your setup. Something to note is that the positioning in general here is the key
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point, not amount of headers. Don't forget, you can mostly fix availability
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issues with inexpensive splitters. On to other connectors. Luckily for the PC
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building community, motherboard manufacturers seem to have come to a
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good old consensus when it comes to positioning of standard CPU and
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motherboard power and standard case headers. We've passed the dark ages of
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randomly placed headers halfway up your freaking motherboard and 24 pin or 8pin
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power plugs randomly placed where they really really shouldn't be for the sake
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of system air flow. I like right angle sockets for SATA, but not all cases
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allow the stiff USB 3.0 no front panel cable to be installed this way. So, I
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understand why most boards opt for a non-angled socket, but I must say I
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really like MSI's implementation with two sockets, one angled and one normal,
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because even though very few cases actually have four USB 3.0 ports, this
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gives you the flexibility to even either have tidier cable management or better
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compatibility. As for the rest of the headers, USB 2.0, know front panel audio
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and front switches. ASUS, Gigabyte, and ASRock all had varying degrees of good
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enough labeling, but MSI's front panel switches labeling was kind of off in the
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middle of nowhere, which was a little bit annoying to actually kind of find
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and could be frustrating for some people. ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte all
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featured some degree of plastic guard around their headers, which can help you
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not screw up when tediously plugging in all your various headers, but the ASRock
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board did not feature any of these, but not a huge deal. The accessories
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included with these boards were essentially all the same standard fair
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you'd expect on a value board. Exactly what you need with no flashy LED
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displays and OC brackets or any of that kind of stuff. Each included a user
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guide of some sort, an IO shield, two SATA cables, one driver disc, and every
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board except for MSI included a case badge with Gigabyte and ASRock also
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giving you an SLI bridge as they support that feature. In terms of colors, every
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board had an unfortunate shade of brown for their PCB except for ASRock and
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ASRock, Gigabyte, and MSI all went with fairly standard blue or red color scheme
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with ASUS deciding to be a hero and go with gold. I get it. They're trying to
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communicate their whole we are the gold standard motherboards
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thing. But personally, I would prefer a propaganda sticker on the box instead of
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tacky gold on my motherboard. Although, if you want to go for that Iron Man
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look, matching it with some red components may work out for you. All one
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of you. Who's ever going to do that, Mr. Downey Jr.? In summary, this video is
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about the importance of paying attention to how all your components will work
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together instead of just how many raw features each one of them has
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individually. Thanks to standardization, your case will probably determine how
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well your cable runs work more than your motherboard. Your cooler will probably
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determine what fan header layout is best for you and your desired color scheme.
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Also, the colors of the rest of your components in all likelihood will
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probably determine what color you want your motherboard cooling heat sinks to
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be. So, the moral of the story is to plan for what you will actually use and
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not to overspend based on what you think you might possibly use in four to 5
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years when you'll probably be replacing this board. Anyways, by the way, the
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next video coming in this series will be the BIOS usability rundown of all these
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boards, which will also be very important. So, stay tuned for that. All
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right, guys. In the comments down below, let me know what you think is important
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about motherboards. And in the finished system experience and BIOS usability
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videos, let me know what you guys want to see. Again, comments down below or on
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the forum. While you're commenting down below, or before you leave to the forum,
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be sure to like or dislike this video depending on how you like the fact that
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we're doing kind of lowerend motherboards than we normally do. Share
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watching and I'll see you next time.